BarCamp

Blogging has it own advantage, not only for the corporate world, according to me browsing through blogs of meaningful content is a good timepass. The other day, I chanced to stumble upon a blog which informed me of an event which I would have missed otherwise.

The event is called barcamp. Now all my geek friends must be well aware of it. But to me the Concept was totally new and would have to came to know of the event only after it had taken place. This thing occurred with FOSS, the details of which I came to know from Krishna’s blog after the event took place actually.

Why? What?

For the novice, a bar camp is a spin off on the original tech conferences that are routinely held in the tech-world. Tech-conferences generally are loathed by a majority of geekdom as they charge a hefty fee ranging between Rs. 3500 to Rs 10000 for attending the conference. Moreover participation is limited to the invitees only.

History

O’Reilly like all tech publishers, needs to become aware of emerging technologies well in advance so they can get a book out on the subject before it gets mainstream. Among their methods has been “Friends of O’Reilly Camp” (Foo Camp), an annual event since 2003 wherein Tim invites a bunch of really smart people to hang out together in a camp (a real camp, with tents for accommodation) and teach each other stuff or brainstorm new ideas, without any predetermined structure. O’Reilly skims from this for their books and conferences.

The event was meant to be private, but word got out and this of course pissed off a lot of people who weren’t invited, or weren’t invited the following year. Hence Barcamp, a counter event where anybody can participate

Panacea?

Bar Camp is an ad-hoc "un-conference" born from the desire to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. The chief unwritten rule of bar camps require that you come prepared to share something with the other attendees. Attendance is open to anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn. The presentations are also placed on the web for the benefit of those who could not attend. All Bar Camps have dedicated ‘Wikis’ - websites that allow users to add or modify content, giving information about the event,

Delhi hosted the first ‘desi Bar Camp’, with 75 participants at the Adobe office.
The next immediate Bar Camp is on April 8th & 9th 2006 at Anna University, Chennai.

There is a simulataneous one being held on April 8th at Hyderabad too at IIIT, Hyderabad.

That one will be followed by one in Bangalore on the 22nd of April at Yahoo! Software Development India Pvt. Ltd

For all you guys who do not want to miss the occasion, get registered at
http://barcamp.org/BarCampBangalore

All Bar Camp venues and dates are let known at http://barcamp.org/

For the people who want to organize such a stuff in their own city, I came across an an excellent link.