What lacks Devcamp Bangalore

Devcamp Bangalore is another attempt to have a good unconference style developers conference. But I feel its been plagued by several issues. I am writing it today because I did not want to generate negative publicity around an event which could have been one of the bridges for moving of Indians from coding coolies to tech giants. Still there were certain things which made me doubtful of the motive of the event. I am post now about it because there are only a few hours left for the event to start and I am going to attend it. But these are something which the organizers on their part must make sure does not happen.

First thing is, probably this event was there because Martin Fowler was coming to Bangalore. He is being treated as the chief guest. His topic too is yet to be decided. In true Barcamp spirit, this does not happen. I dont know if Martin Fowler is driving this camp or the campers themselves.

The event homepage at one point of time had link to a post by a gentleman who had genuine disappointment against Barcamp Bangalore. He believed that Barcamp is no more techie stuff. It is encompassing a whole lot of other stuff. Well I don't mind that post, but to promote something by bashing another event is ethically incorrect. I was particularly offended as I had some role in organizing Barcamp Bangalore. It was the first time I was into it and the people there were really supportive of the fact that I was there. I liked their principle that Barcamp Bangalore should be umbrella organisation for all topics which cannot afford to have a separate unconference. I liked that attitude. I appreciated this event  because Barcamp Bangalore was reaching some of its goals. Obviously the post on the main page was not required. Also Barcamp is as good as the people participating in it. I why people hate Barcamp because it still allows to have your own talk.

Anyways these guys have managed to get some real good topics on the board. I hope I get to learn something new tomorrow. I know that for sure that even for next two years I wont be doing something that would be worth talking at a barcamp like this.

Topics that I am really interested in are

  • Writing a reddit clone as an orkut application - Jude
  • Programming with Android - Selvan,
       1. Touchscreen, SMS handling, Handling web-pages
       2. Phone state handling
       3. Programmatically accessing mobile hardware (Vibarator et al)
       4. FixedPoint Math, 2D Graphics, 3D Graphics with OpenGL-ES
  • Let's Develop an Open J2ME Mobile Game - Zarina 
  • Deploying python web apps on the desktop - Siddhi
  • Microformats and Semantic Web - Jeswin P
  • Clutter: Creating cutting edge hardware accelerated UI on linux - Shreyas Srinivasan

By the way, since Martin Fowler's topic is 'yet to be decided' I will take a call on it tomorrow.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Interesting post 100rabh. I shall be waiting to read about the event and the way it went as well.
Cheers
Vaibhav
Helping laymen become technology enthusiast at http://technofriends.wordpress.com
February 10, 2008 4:58 PM
100rabh™ said…
Well Vaibhav, the event went very well. I was actually happy that the event happened well. There were some interesting take aways for me from this devcamp. I will surely be blogging about it in a few days. Will be waiting for the next one to happen in a few months again.
February 10, 2008 5:16 PM
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