I spent last week in Laos, taking a much needed vacation. Pictures and text forthcoming.

Rajiv Poddar thinks so. I’m not quite convinced that is the case. Consider this:

To my mind, BCB3 was the peak and the decline has started. One of the most attractive aspects of Barcamp was its simplicity. It was easy to find who was attending and who was talking about what. With each Barcamp it got progressively difficult to do so. With BCB4 it was impossible to get a quick snapshot and I dont expect BCB5 to be any different.

To think of it, the significance of Barcamp has also diminished over the past year with more events and unconferences cropping up. Barcamp itself has played an important role in germinating these events. These spinoffs have taken over the role of bringing together people around a narrower common interest.

That focused events are reducing Barcamp’s significance is indeed true. What Rajiv appears to have missed, though, is that as these communities gain traction and find their focus, they will want to move on and manage themselves, leaving Barcamp to newer communities seeking similar exposure. The collective format is designed around encouraging this.

This will mean each Barcamp has its own flavour in terms of what sort of participant it attracts, and this may not appeal to everyone, but Barcamp was never about dictating who’s allowed in and who’s not — or what they’re allowed to discuss.

The compliant about it becoming harder to understand what’s happening in the event, however, has merit and deserves consideration.

Registration of collectives for BCB5 is now open. Here’s the explanation on what’s new.

Based on discussions over the last few weeks, we're now using web forums instead of the wiki for collective registration. This means you’ll need an account at the forum in addition to your existing wiki account. This is inconvenient, but the forum hopefully provides a better interface than the mailing list and its online archives.

I’ve posted to the forum explaining how collectives may register.

(I’m on vacation through next week. Will be missing out on much of the action, but the break’s badly needed.)