Last night, the BarCampLondon5 backnetwork was revealed. I logged on pretty quickly. I noticed something amiss pretty quickly. On the schedule page, it lists "Moo Keynote" on the Saturday (Moo being the company that makes those adorable little stickers and business cards). I promptly tweeted it, and something of a storm has arisen over this. Have a browse through these search results if you want to see what I mean. 
There's also a thread on the Backnetwork forum (which non-attendees won't be able to see, so I'll quote). I started with this: We all love the Moo guys, but what's the thinking behind the keynote? [Insert memes here, etc.]. Note rules three and six.
I also pointed to a blog post I wrote last year about ArbCamp, a BarCamp ripoff event in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which had an attendance fee ($15), a keynote speaker (tickets for which cost $50) and significant amounts of drama.
A few friends and acquaintances joined in on the thread - Cristiano, Alistair MacDonald, Simon Willison, Andy Budd and others.
Desigan Chinniah, the organiser at eBay, responded like this: The MOO session should not be called a Keynote, and for that we apologise. We all know that BarCamp's are not about Keynote's, + the peeps are MOO are nice chaps and wouldn't want to in anyway be involved in a stunt. However we did want to have a session that would be attended by a high number of attendees, which would be presented by MOO as a session. In no way is anyone being forced to attend, as there will be enough food, wifi, games, entertainment and a whole lot more to get on with, as well as the use of the rooms/equipment should anyone want to also hold a session at the same time. - session will be like any other session - room being used has a large capacity and we believed that this session needs the space (also security restrictions on use of this room) - with all if not most people together, will allow easy distribution of any pre-orders made by attendees - the session will also unveil a prize available exclusively to BarCampLondon5 attendees
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Cian Weeresinghe also responded: Sorry my fault on this one, translating Excel into Backnetwork - like Dees said we were just prebooking Moo into a early session slot.
Keynote or not, it's still a pre-scheduled session, and there are rules about this sort of thing, specifically Rule 6: No pre-scheduled presentations
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BarCamp is a community event, and has a social contract - it is that contract and the attitudes underlying it that makes it a BarCamp. Now, there are reasons you may want to bend that social contract. I certainly have thought about bending them if I were to organise another SemanticCamp in London (stay tuned, by the way) - we have thought about setting up a pre-scheduled 'beginners' track because of the suggestions of attendees, and there are a very small handful of people who I would pre-schedule a session for, as a last resort - I won't boost their egos, but there are about five of them. In this case, I'm not bound by such a strict set of rules as BarCamp, but would still need very good reasons to deviate from BarCamp rules.
Sorry to go "rules lawyer" on everyone, and no doubt there will be people giggling about "BarCamp is SERIOUS BUSINESS" etc. Fine. But BarCamps are important to us. The reason why we go to them is because they don't suck. And we want to maintain that. Better to have a possible over-reaction today, than to say nothing and in two years time, go to a BarCamp to find out that it has gold and platinum level sponsors, a sponsor track, and bouncing adverts on screen between presentations. BarCamp sponsors need to know that people do appreciate them - and that we do pay attention when they don't jump around like a hyper-active Big Brother contestant - understatement is the name of the game, and a keynote is the opposite of that.
