Of course, not every camp has goals as ambitious as Burning Man or Foo Camp. , for example, is a series of day-long gatherings with talks and demonstrations for users of the blogging platform Wordpress.

, a San Francisco-based company that runs team-building exercises, has found a way to profit from the appeal of real-world gatherings. Corporate groups, friends, and even bachelorette parties use the Go Game's games--which often involve cell-phone technology, unusual missions, and a lot of collaboration--to grow closer through play.

It works because it gets people out from behind their desks, says Go Game cofounder Finnegan Kelly. Even Internet users who spend their days on Facebook are still sitting in isolation. "What people respond to," says Kelly, is "going out, meeting new people face-to-face, enjoying the magic that's around you when you can shut down the computer."

Kelly recently ran a game at the Austin conference , a festival for music and new media lovers. The 3000 attendees were assigned goofy objectives directed at "making more meaningful interactions than just exchanging business cards," says Kelly. "Let's say you have to create a weird handshake with someone you just met, so whenever you see that dude again you can do your custom handshake. That's going to leave you with a much more lasting impression. You'll be like, "I remember that guy! He's the one I did the handshake with!" Still, says Kelly, some South by Southwest attendees were too caught up in their Web 2.0 routines to bother with funny handshakes. "A lot of people's energy was just going into Twitter."