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By editorial@silicon.com, 9 August 2001 18:13

COMMENT 'Know thyself' said the Oracle of Delphi. That seems to be advice being taken seriously by those living in a post-redundancy world without Oracle or Delphi. Yes, casualties of the dot-com crash have found a novel way of taking a break from the stress and strain of applying for new jobs in Silicon Valley. At Recession Camp - which follows the tradition of US summer camps - unemployed dot-commers and techies gather together to talk about life, unemployment and chill out with outdoor pursuits. And play Twister. The happy campers also like to sit around campfires and sing "dot-com" ditties - changing the lyrics and titles of well-known songs to reflect the melancholy state of the turbulent new economy. Bye Bye Web-van Delivery Guy, based on Don McLean's American Pie, is a firm favourite apparently. According to the camp's founder: "You can't look for work all day, everyday. You need to take a break and get in touch with others and yourself." Of course, the news was greeted with incredulity and chortles by many on this side of the pond. This sounds like yet another daft idea from the good old US of A. After all, this kind of thing would never have any mileage in the UK - or would it? Unemployment is a serious issue. We have self-help groups for recovering alcoholics and victims of drug abuse and every conceivable victim of anything else - why not a camp for unemployed and disillusioned techies? These days, you can't read an IT news site or magazine without some pundit screaming "SKILLS CRISIS" at you. So why don't the big employers suffering from the crisis dip into their pockets to set up such camps. They could then cherry-pick super-chilled out techies who are totally at one with their Unix workstations. The main hurdle to getting this sort of thing off the ground in the UK, of course, is the cultural barrier. It's difficult to imagine an unemployed IT manager from Godalming getting out of his Audi and sitting cross-legged in a field with an ex-Webmaster from neverstoodachance.com. It's even harder to imagine them playing Twister together. After all, that wouldn't be very British would it?