Joe -

Every community, be it virtual or physical, needs naysayers to keep it on course and realistic. The 'TorCamp' community, both online and off, has a number of such people, but none who so regularly corrects us as you. Thank you for doing so and for providing a moral compass and antidote to the groupthink that we might otherwise fall victim to. That said, your post about Camps and Copyright attacks TransitCamp, the TransitCamp organizers, Radiant Core, and me personally with a vehemence usually reserved for mortal enemies, baby seal clubbers, and grandma purse snatchers. Since you don't have comments enabled on your blog, there was no forum for a response and so I never had an opportunity to do so. Now that you've decided to use a blog post made in support of your efforts to raise the matter, I can publicly say we disagree on a number of things related to this topic:

• That the TTC would ever have paid for the knowledge they gained from TransitCamp. Before we ran the Camp, they didn't understand the value that the community could provide and now they do. We believe that it is worth investing some of our time and expertise, which we can (and do) get paid for on a regular basis, in improving a public resource like our Transit system. If you disagree with that basic premise, then don't participate in the effort. TransitCamp didn't take away anyone's ability to earn consulting revenue from the TTC and we believe that it actually enhanced it by making them more open and willing to work with outside voices.
• That the pledge we asked people to agree to was in any way harmful to their interests. We asked them to agree to it because it was effectively a condition of participation by the TTC: they were curious and willing to attend and be part of the day provided that participation didn't give an unfair advantage to any of the potential bidders on a website contract. You may not like CC licenses, but we do and we feel that this one accomplished two purposes: 1) to highlight the intent of the day, being primarily to assemble a community and to create public works available for the betterment of the TTC and for use by any member of that community, and 2) to provide the security that the TTC staff needed to be part of the event.
• That you had to participate. You were free to read the pledge, read the 'fine print' and decide that you didn't like our policies and weren't going to attend and contribute. The pledge made it quite clear that your attendance signalled your agreement with the terms (and I should point out that you were the only attendee who had any issue with them). If you didn't like the terms, you should have said so before the event and not attended.
• That Radiant Core are the presumptive winners of anything. We will definitely participate in a bidding process for a TTC contract if we are invited to do so, but the process will be open to whomever qualifies. I encourage other firms to submit bids as well: although we think we're the best team to build the site, it's more important that the TTC has an industry leading web presence than that we get selected to produce it.
• That TransitCamp was my idea. It came out of a well documented session and was the brainchild of the collective effort of myself, Michael Glenn, Mark Kuznicki, David Crow, Will Pate, Madhava Enros, and Joey DeVilla. Only two of us work for Radiant Core. The idea of the event was to tap into the collective wisdom and passion of the community and to produce a wealth of ideas, designs, documents, and concepts which everyone, both internal and external to the TTC, could use to make the website better. That includes us, any other vendors who submit bids, members of the community who have launched projects like OpenTransit, and everyone else who has been inspired to make a change.

You are always welcome to attend the events that we - the community at large - plan and organize. You are, of course, also welcome to help in planning and organizing them too (and that's not me welcoming you: anyone is encouraged to step up and take ownership too). You've forgotten more about topics like accessibility, signage, and typography than I will ever know and I wish that you were more open and willing to share in that knowledge in a way that didn't involve alienating the other passionate people around you. I hope that you continue to be part of this community, and if the cost of having you is that you feel that your purposes are best served by attacking our efforts to make Toronto a better place, then I hope you continue to do so.

In the meantime, until you enable commenting on your blog, this is the last comment from you that I'll publish here. It's not fair that you attack people for their efforts from within the safe walls of your comment-free blog and then bring the fight to their blog in the comments section (and yes, I've read your post about why you don't allow them). The world of blogs was built largely on the ability for people to respond and engage in conversations and your one-sided soapbox doesn't fit that model. As mentioned above, I appreciate that you take a critical approach and I'm (mostly) glad for it, but by refusing to allow comments on your site, you rob those of us with the maturity to respond to your posts (rather than to you personally) of the opportunity to do so. Comments can be moderated (as the comments on this blog are), and there's no need for you to publish the comments that you feel are personal attacks. Allowing people to comment on your posts is acknowledging that people may either agree or disagree; providing a forum to do so is taking responsibility for what you have written. You have an incredibly valuable viewpoint to impart, Joe. I just wish you would do it in a more accountable way.