Barcamp Bangalore ... Rock the world

Well if India is diverse its so because of the people. Barcamp is for, with, by people and no wonder you had the ultimate kind of diversity in it. You had lawyers, CA, MBA, profs, CEOs, coders, developers and geeks (yes they are different) among various other people. It was an awesome mix of ideas and people. The planners met some time back and we had a lot of discussion over how to do things this time around. I was a yet another experiment. Thankfully it came out good.

If there is anything to complain about, it probably is the content. But friend isnt content something that has to come from us, the junta. I had been planning for some sort of an open source project. I thought BCB would be a great place to find people. But sadly it did not turn out the way I wanted. No hands to join in for the project. But anyways I did get some feedback on the objectives of my BuddyHere.

I did take another session on Hacking Canon compact camera to provide extra features. I will be writing a post on it soon. Among other things that I loved at the Barcamp this time around was the interactive session on SaaS or Software as a Service. Obviously its an amazing idea but still there challenges to be overcome. The multitenancy of database is surely going to go a long way in turning things around. The lightening talks, I believe are the best. In just 3 minutes so much gets exchanged. I am right now pondering over the idea, if we can have lightening talks a little more often than Barcamps. I feel most content that is presented at most places can be covered in 3 mins. Obviously these lack in depth knowledge but these are to enough to acquaint you about things which are happening around the world. Also worth mentioning is Rajeevs session on why VOIP is banned in India. He has started a google group to work towards making VOIP a reality in India. Please join us at http://groups.google.com/group/voiceofvoip for getting VOIP in India. Session on Logo designing by Aashish Solanki and the demo of Inkscape, the open source vector drawing tool was also very cool.

Besides these the interesting technical sessions there were these amazing talks about things like Genuineness of Horoscope, palmistry and Handwriting analysis. It was actually a high tempo discussion with some people (understandably) calling it a farce, whereas some others trying to prove it right. Well that discussion obviously did not end with anything but the sad truth is people still believe in this shitSad. Other sessions like dating and how to save Nanda Road were also very good. People had a good time think over these and talking about them.

Besides these what I loved was the fact that participation level was really high. Each and every person was trying to get his thoughts out. Probably this is something which will fire up a lot of innovation in India. I am actually looking at some startups which will be either rock the Web Biggies off the top or would be fodder aka acquisitions for them.

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