Night Dreaming (by Sudar)

As planned, I attended the second edition of BarCamp Chennai and it was very good. I missed the fun on the first day but made up for it on the second day. We had some very nice sessions and above all I really enjoyed the discussions which we had during the sessions.

Dream Moment

I experienced a dream-come-true moment when I shook hands with Kiruba. I have been following him in the cyber space for nearly 2-3 years, but it was only now, I got a chance to talk to him in the physical world. 

Sessions

There were lot of talks which took place on day two. Almost all of them were very interesting and lively.  I will try to brief on some of them which I attended and found interesting.

First was the session titled “Indian Education System Sucks” by Viru. The session was very interactive, partly because of the title and partly because of how Viru handled it. There were lot of points which were discussed and towards the end almost everyone agreed that there are some major flaws in the system. Once the problem was identified and accepted the discussion shifted towards finding out the possible solutions to make it better.

Next was the session titled “Global Financial Meltdown and IT Industry” by Sukumar, Ganesh, Raj and Syed. Out of all the other sessions this was very informative and I personally learned a lot out of it.  Sukumar gave an insight about the core reasons behind the meltdown and how it might affect India. The following are some of the quotes which I noted during that talk.

The world nearly came to an end in 2008

If you borrow 5 lakhs, you will be afraid of the bank, but if you borrow 500 cores, the bank will be afraid of you.

There is one more time bomb which is waiting. US has around 1.6 trillion dollars in credit card balance.

The western press is misleading. They talk only about ideology and not about common man.

Aswin anand has a nice write-up about the other sessions, so I am not going to repeat them here. Thanks Aswin, you saved a couple of key strokes for me. 🙂

Wifi

If you ask me, one thing which really sucked was wifi. It was very slow and most of the time it timed out. I was planning to do live tweeting during the event, but because of wifi and my laptop battery, I only managed a few.

Photos

I took a couple of photos during the event with my amazing Powershot S5 and you can view them in Flickr. You can also do a search in Flickr with the term bcc2 to get other photos.

Verdict

Overall, it was a very nice event, well planned and executed. Without any doubt I could say that it was a huge success. The credit goes to the organizers for taking extra effort to make the event a success. Thanks guys and eagerly waiting for BarCamp Chennai 3 🙂

The second edition of BarCamp Chennai will happen this weekend (Oct-17 and 18) at IIT Madras. 

The first edition which happened in April 2006 and was a great success and I hope it will the same this year too. It has already started to get some press coverage and you can find the article from Decaan Chronicle here, kudos to the organizing team.

I will be attending the sessions scheduled for the second day and let me know if you are coming and we can meet up.

More details about the BarCamp can you found at the official BarCamp Chennai Website.

Well if you

• live in Chennai
• a bit savvy about technology
• read Decccan Chronicle this Sunday

then you must surely have heard about BarCamp hitting Chennai. Yes the next BarCamp is going to take place in Chennai on April 8th and 9th.

If you haven’t heard or still wondering what is BarCamp then here is the text straight from the official site.

BarCamp is an unconference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. The BarCampChennai focusses on Web 2.0, Social Media and Next Generation Internet.

BARCamp is an open, welcoming, once-a-year event for geeks to camp out for a couple days with wifi and smash their brains together. It’s about love and geekery and having a focal point for great ideas, like FOOcamp but open.

The event will be free or very close to free. But there’s a catch! Partipants are expected to contribute back to the conference by participating actively. “Active participation” might mean giving a presentation, helping with a presentation, blogging or podcasting the event, or whatever other creative ways to contribute people can come up with.

There is no audience. Only participants! This is unlike any conference you have been to before. It’s new, it’s different and it’s going to happen in our city. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join. When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers. When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

Wanna participate ? no registration, no fees, no need to send email nothing, just go the BarCampChennai page and add your name to the confirmed Participants list. It’s a Wiki and if you are not comfortable editing it then check out this tutorial.

Wanna present a topic? Just select your topic from this list and add your name to the Confirmed Participants list. Again it’s a Wiki so just edit it.

Wanna organize? Here is the list of things to be done. Select one and continue working on it.

Happy BarCamping..