Would you pay lots of money to help set it up in the first place?

I'd certainly consider it.

I wonder if something like this could be organised through github and kickstarter as a sort of open source crowd funded festival for geeks.

Could even be completely ambitious and plan to have it internationalised from the start with video conferencing devices of various scales and other assorted comms stuff connecting different venues around the world, then it's a lot easier to raise money globally.

And then sync events by projecting live streaming video of the different locations that are running the event? That would be cool!

I'm too busy to actually organise anything, but should you (or anyone else) do anything with this, I'd love to hear about it, so feel free to email me (email in my profile).