X : When is #mapcamp happening this year?
Me : Wed, Oct 13th.
X : What's the plan?
Me : Right now? Find some funding.

X : How much do you need?
Me : For a 1500 - 3000 person online event? Back of envelope calculation ... about £50k to make it happen. LEF has kindly sponsored it for the last few years but we now need to stand it up on its own two feet.
X : What does that mean?
Me : Like all events, it's a risk profile. So, today the chance of #mapcamp happening is 0%, as we raise some funds, identify costs and find ways of reducing costs etc then that chance increases to a point that we can say ... yep, we can do this.
X : What about ticket sales?
Me : Nothing can ever be guaranteed, so you have to position it to the point that if everything goes wrong the liability is acceptable. Ask me in a month then I'll have a better idea.
X : If it's all about cost, reducing liability etc ... why does anyone run an event?
Me : For the same reason we speak at events. We love the subject. If you didn't then you'd be mad.
X : What about "early bird" pricing.
Me : Yep, we use that once we're close to get us over the line then anything else that is made is spent on improving the event. By the end, it's all spent.
X : Volunteers?
Me : Everything is, from the speakers to the organising committee to the chairs etc. We borrow, beg and steal each year. Did I not say you've had to be mad to put on an event about a subject you didn't love?
X : What if you don't raise funding?
Me : Talk about doom and gloom. If we don't raise then I'll have a private zoom session with friends.
X : A public webinnar?
Me : £400+ ... I do love mapping but when push comes to shove, I'd rather spend my time and money on family.
X : Map Camp is a great event.
Me : Thanks. But it is also an accidental conference. It was supposed to be me going to a pub in London to meet up with a dozen people, it ended up as 1500 people in an online event. These things come and go. We shall see what this year brings us.
X : Do you enjoy map camp?
Me : I love it ... long hours, organising committees and schedule, trying to raise funds, chasing people, stress of it all, day itself and the final bill ... what wouldn't you love? Seriously, never run a conference unless you truly love the subject.

More from Simon Wardley

More from Society

We finally have the U.S. Citizenship Act Bill Text! I'm going to go through some portions of the bill right now and highlight some of the major changes and improvements that it would make to our immigration system.

Thread:


First the Bill makes a series of promises changes to the way we talk about immigrants and immigration law.

Gone would be the term "alien" and in its place is "noncitizen."

Also gone would be the term "alienage," replaced with "noncitizenship."


Now we get to the "earned path to citizenship" for all undocumented immigrants present in the United States on January 1, 2021.

Under this bill, anyone who satisfies the eligibility criteria for a new "lawful prospective immigrant status" can come out of the shadows.


So, what are the eligibility criteria for becoming a "lawful prospective immigrant status"? Those are in a new INA 245G and include:

- Payment of the appropriate fees
- Continuous presence after January 1, 2021
- Not having certain criminal record (but there's a waiver)


After a person has been in "lawful prospective immigrant status" for at least 5 years, they can apply for a green card, so long as they still pass background checks and have paid back any taxes they are required to do so by law.

However! Some groups don't have to wait 5 years.

You May Also Like

The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.