Ive also felt that the crowd quality is a problem. But then, the motivates many to try out new stuff that they hear about in the camps. In one of the camps in kerala, there was a session on android and a few students were really interested in it. They are now developing android apps.
Vijay
· 1 year ago
Thats certainly encouraging Kenney. I guess students are very less participatory in most barcamps for some odd reason. We need to bring more of them in. I agree.
Vinodh Nandakumar
· 1 year ago
Definitely agree with all the points that you mentioned above, especially the need for getting rid of Projectors and PPTS :)
And about the crowd problem... how about if we mandate that every participant does a presentation or something of this sort so that we are sure only the serious crowd turns up.
Vijay
· 1 year ago
Vinodh, we are looking at a way to solve this quality issue. Dont want to talk about it now cause i know a few people will cry foul :) Give me a week, will unveil! :)
V.
Abubucker
· 1 year ago
The issue of crowd is a compulsion to meet our sponsor's demand for attendee numbers.
Certainly it's not conversational.Something needs to be done about it.
The idea of choosing a topic and going deep into it may be controversial because each attendee has a different priority at that point of time and may feel left out.
Fundamentally, we are running a grassroot conference rather than a UnConference.
Vijay
· 1 year ago
Abu, we arent exactly doing the event for the sponsors now are we? I dont think the attendees would mind if they all have to pitch in to cover the cost. I dont even think that should be used as an excuse.
"Fundamentally, we are running a grassroot conference rather than a UnConference." - Yep. Maybe basic awareness creation, which is a waste of time for people who are running startups and people who want to learn something more than what they are already know.
Ankur
· 1 year ago
Barcamp is about a equal opportunity platform. Equal Opportunity has it's disadvantages.
"I guess students are very less participatory in most barcamps for some odd reason."
I wouldn't say the same about Mumbai Barcamps.
Banibrata Dutta
· 1 year ago
Agree with the observations. While I would not say that the "Tropicalized Unconference" is bad, after-all it is in the spirit of "Localization", I was a bit dissapointed personally. On one had it reminds me of 'College-Fest' i.e. the ambience, the crowd, the hulla-gulla / shor-gol, which I enjoyed completely, but the "content", "take-away" part -- was only the 'Coffee Mug', I am afraid.
Speakers (largely), were just selling their "wares", "services" or "expertise"... and in most cases, (with "expertise"), they were clearly no where near being masters of the subjet, yet "kept-the-podium-to-themself". I don't expect all "discussion seeders" to be experts, but atleast act smart and do "facilitation". Encourage others to share their view-point, have open discussion. Some of the speakers selling "services", went to the extent of almost shutting-down others who didn't seem to speak in favour of the "need for such service", "cost of the service", ROI... What the heck! Technical content, IMHO, barring a small handful, was very dismal... but then, that's fine with me.
The best thing that I attended, the real unconference/barcamp'ish (in my imagination) session was the one of "Dating"... well facilitated, very well participated, true unconference.
Raxit
· 1 year ago
Vijay,
we are listening. !
indeed thatnks for promptin this, i know few folks, Atul Chitnis, also provided simillar feedback.
i observed small camp (barcampMU3 was rocking),(1 room , 6o campers, ppt is only for topic discussion and not for Text to Speech !, can refer stuff at raxitsheth.blogspot.com)
If you do have suggestion, plz drop to mail id or blogpost ! would love to execute
Tnx Again, Cheers, Raxit@MyKavita
Vijay
· 1 year ago
Banibrata: I concur. One of these days there are going to be t-shirts out on the "... all I got was this lousy t-shirt" :)
Raxit: Good to hear. Would love to get involved in planning a sensible barcamp. Feel free to drag me in, if you are planning one.
Aditya
· 1 year ago
Hi Vijay
Guess I saw this a bit late. agree with all the points you make. We've agonised over them too. Finally I think we've hit upon the solution. Talk with some of the folks who attended BarCamp Bangalore 6. It was absolutely conversational! I loved it and so did every one who turned up. We did something simple: no registration of attendees, only session topics and talk ideas. Almost every one talked over the two days. I would like further depth in the discussion is my only crib.
BTW, no one can "drag" you into a barcamp planning. An invite for a meeting goes out on general list with approx 40 days to go. After this first meeting, meetings happen every weekend. Anyone who turns up at any one of the meetings becomes planner. Do drop in.
Vijay
· 1 year ago
Aditya,
I do agree. It gets tough to be there for meetings, but yep, will be in the conversations.
1. This article was written much before BCB came into the picture, so it has nothing to do with BCB per se.
2. I think a lot has changed in BCB, so lets wait and hear results and the impact.
3. I am still hearing a lot of disgruntled voices. Actually, I was very surprised that all of a sudden an old post was picking up traffic, and i am tracing it to twitter feeds from BCB attendees saying "I agree with this post". So, perhaps there is still some fine tuning to do.
Pavan Kulkarni
· 1 year ago
Good read.. However, the last BCB I attended was 2.0 in ThoughtWorks, which didn't quite seem like what you are saying right now.
Vijay
· 1 year ago
Those were saner days Pavan :)
abeoye
· 1 year ago
Vijay,
Insightful post, thanks. All the points you have made sound logical. I am looking forward to the event you are planning.
Kesava Reddy
· 1 year ago
Wish you could have been there in BCB. FYI: There is no direct registration in BCB.
Only one thing I can say, Barcamp Bangalore always look out for Innovation and setting the example with in the ethos.
Best of luck for BCC.
The MNC Guy Kesh
Vijay
· 1 year ago
Kesava: I would have loved to come, but had to head to delhi to wrap up some stuff for Proto.in, since the upcoming week is startup lunch in Chennai. But it does seem like I missed some good fun. I should have skipped BCM and planned for BCB instead - oh well.
Rajiv
· 1 year ago
Are you talking here about an un-conference or a conference? Who has heard of rules in barcamps? Who makes those rules. Who are the organizers to tell me whether I should use the PPT or not. Or keep the room open for only 30 participants. Or keep it conversational for that matter> Or to do a demo or not. I will. I will use them if I like. I will do as I like.
Rules are what destroys a barcamp. Not make them. Its absurd to think that I'll attend a Barcamp and abide by the rules which the un-orgnizers have imposed on me. It can never be successful.
You leave the barcampers to conduct barcamp as they want.
Vijay
· 1 year ago
@Rajiv. Thanks for your perspective. It was kinda interesting to hear a very different and opposite take from Chris Messina. I guess he was the one who came up with this concept right? Oh well. Open to interpretations, I suppose.
Well Barcamps are GPL'ed. You are free to modify the format, use the name and conduct as many as you want in the format you wish. And contribute the changes back to the community.
And I dont think i have to tell you about the GPL license. You'd know about it. The only rule you need to follow is to do it way you want.
Vijay
· 1 year ago
Sure then, this will be a modified version. So what are we debating about here?
Rajiv
· 1 year ago
about rules. i dont think they make any sense.
Vijay
· 1 year ago
Great. Move on.
Nithya Dayal
· 1 year ago
I would strongly disagree about the takeaway being just the coffee mug as suggested in one of the comments. I have no clue how barcamps are conducted in other parts of the world or outside Bangalore, but the ones I attended in Bangalore were pretty helpful in a lot of ways.
The best thing about barcamps is that its very democratic, gives you the ease to start a session, run it and walk out of something if its not your interest. PPTs and whiteboards shouldnt be blamed for speaker centricity. There are always a few spoilsports who claim authority on the subject of discussion, stall other smoothly running discussions, but these are very stray happenings.
All Comments
And about the crowd problem... how about if we mandate that every participant does a presentation or something of this sort so that we are sure only the serious crowd turns up.
V.
Certainly it's not conversational.Something needs to be done about it.
The idea of choosing a topic and going deep into it may be controversial because each attendee has a different priority at that point of time and may feel left out.
Fundamentally, we are running a grassroot conference rather than a UnConference.
"Fundamentally, we are running a grassroot conference rather than a UnConference." - Yep. Maybe basic awareness creation, which is a waste of time for people who are running startups and people who want to learn something more than what they are already know.
"I guess students are very less participatory in most barcamps for some odd reason."
I wouldn't say the same about Mumbai Barcamps.
Speakers (largely), were just selling their "wares", "services" or "expertise"... and in most cases, (with "expertise"), they were clearly no where near being masters of the subjet, yet "kept-the-podium-to-themself". I don't expect all "discussion seeders" to be experts, but atleast act smart and do "facilitation". Encourage others to share their view-point, have open discussion. Some of the speakers selling "services", went to the extent of almost shutting-down others who didn't seem to speak in favour of the "need for such service", "cost of the service", ROI... What the heck!
Technical content, IMHO, barring a small handful, was very dismal... but then, that's fine with me.
The best thing that I attended, the real unconference/barcamp'ish (in my imagination) session was the one of "Dating"... well facilitated, very well participated, true unconference.
we are listening. !
indeed thatnks for promptin this, i know few folks, Atul Chitnis, also provided simillar feedback.
i observed small camp (barcampMU3 was rocking),(1 room , 6o campers, ppt is only for topic discussion and not for Text to Speech !, can refer stuff at raxitsheth.blogspot.com)
If you do have suggestion, plz drop to mail id or blogpost ! would love to execute
Tnx Again,
Cheers,
Raxit@MyKavita
Raxit: Good to hear. Would love to get involved in planning a sensible barcamp. Feel free to drag me in, if you are planning one.
Guess I saw this a bit late. agree with all the points you make. We've agonised over them too. Finally I think we've hit upon the solution. Talk with some of the folks who attended BarCamp Bangalore 6. It was absolutely conversational! I loved it and so did every one who turned up. We did something simple: no registration of attendees, only session topics and talk ideas. Almost every one talked over the two days. I would like further depth in the discussion is my only crib.
BTW, no one can "drag" you into a barcamp planning. An invite for a meeting goes out on general list with approx 40 days to go. After this first meeting, meetings happen every weekend. Anyone who turns up at any one of the meetings becomes planner. Do drop in.
I do agree. It gets tough to be there for meetings, but yep, will be in the conversations.
It was nice to read your post. I wrote something offering a different (not contradictory) perspective at
http://shouryalive.com/blog/bangalore-and-camps...
1. This article was written much before BCB came into the picture, so it has nothing to do with BCB per se.
2. I think a lot has changed in BCB, so lets wait and hear results and the impact.
3. I am still hearing a lot of disgruntled voices. Actually, I was very surprised that all of a sudden an old post was picking up traffic, and i am tracing it to twitter feeds from BCB attendees saying "I agree with this post". So, perhaps there is still some fine tuning to do.
However, the last BCB I attended was 2.0 in ThoughtWorks, which didn't quite seem like what you are saying right now.
Insightful post, thanks. All the points you have made sound logical. I am looking forward to the event you are planning.
FYI: There is no direct registration in BCB.
Only one thing I can say, Barcamp Bangalore always look out for Innovation and setting the example with in the ethos.
Best of luck for BCC.
The MNC Guy
Kesh
Rules are what destroys a barcamp. Not make them. Its absurd to think that I'll attend a Barcamp and abide by the rules which the un-orgnizers have imposed on me. It can never be successful.
You leave the barcampers to conduct barcamp as they want.
And who said Barcamps dont have rules. Read here.
And I dont think i have to tell you about the GPL license. You'd know about it. The only rule you need to follow is to do it way you want.
The best thing about barcamps is that its very democratic, gives you the ease to start a session, run it and walk out of something if its not your interest.
PPTs and whiteboards shouldnt be blamed for speaker centricity. There are always a few spoilsports who claim authority on the subject of discussion, stall other smoothly running discussions, but these are very stray happenings.
Rules?..I am not sure what kind of rules can help