Barcamp Bangalore 07 Winter Edition Kickoff

Barcamp kickoff meet was there at India Coffee House at MG Road. I reached there just in time to find the Barcamp regulars Arun, Hari, Jace a.k.a. Kiran(I found out that day), Srinivas and Keshav among others whom I kind of met for the first time. Since I was there before others could join in, I had a little chit-chat with them. One thing was clear to me at that time, Collectives or no Collectives would be the hot topic.

Soon more people joined us, among those who I remember are Vinoo, Manasi and Kiruba. Well actually there were too many to remember and without the list from Hari I dont think I can recall all names :-( Another important mention that I would make here is Aditya who joined us on phone.

Well as I had predicted Collectives or no Collectives drove the discussion. Most of us made it amply clear that collectives are required but we need to buck up the communications part. Another suggestion was to make the collectives instead of folder like, make them tag like. But frankly I felt that it did not address any issue that was the reason to look around for other options. Bangalore Barcamp being the largest of all needs a different treatment. More than that we needed make the objectives of the having this kind of unconference clear to all participants. There was this another idea of having no projectors or rather no ppts. According to some including me they actually play a spoilsport rather than anything else. But then most felt that though they are somewhat destructive but at times not having it would be a rather sad thing. Also less rules is more fun. Hence the idea was a total reject. A lot of hot debate on how the old timers loved the first two bar camps and not the last one. I suppose people get greedy. They want to attend each and every talk that is going on and sadly that cannot happen. Another line of thought was making barcamp more focused on topics, the way the Chennai guys do, Wikicamp, Searchcamp, Blogcamp and others. This was quickly dismissed by the Kiruba himself who was clear that the barcamp has its own charms as an umbrella organization. Soon after we left for our ways with the idea that we would be doing something good to start an ecosystem in Bangalore, which can actually make Bangalore truly a Silicon Valley.