I certainly did. After the first BarCampDC (Aug 2007), I attended a couple other uncon-style events and helped put together one the following May (SocialDevCamp). Since I knew that ZendCon had tried one uncon, I wrote Cal Evans a pitch on three reasons why he should “hire” me to run the 2008 ZendCon Uncon.

I contacted everyone that I thought had something good to say and convinced them to get involved. People like Ed Finkler, Jason Austin, Garrison Locke, Ben Ramsey, and Terry Chay stepped up beforehand and others like you and Matthew Weier O’Phinney and Stefan Priebsch joined once we got there. I even got Mark DeVisser involved. He was CMO of Zend at the time.

Conveniently enough, the following week I was headed up to Toronto to meet Marco for the first time. That was when we decided to form Blue Parabola. :)

I just described the goal, the community made it a success.