Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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BarCamp Mumbai 4 is around the corner. For the uninitiated, barcamps are “unconferences” that are organized by volunteers and attendants talk about anything and everything under the sun. Since these kinds of events attract people who love experimenting and networking, the kind of audience that attends is skewed towards technologists, programmers, coders, media and Internet enthusiasts.

And like all the other unconferences, these are open to all and anyone can take and/or attend any sessions. There are no rules. There are no formalities. If you like a session, you interject. If you dont like, you walk out. If you are looking for a job, take a session on showing off your skills. If you are looking for clients, showcase your product/service. Its like one large Kumbh ka Mela where everyone is trying to sell and buy at the same time.

Sounds great but honestly I dont really like the concept. With a large audience, more often than not, sessions tend to be unfocused (is this actually a word?), covering really diverse themes, by often not so good speakers (trying to put another bullet point on their CV rather than furthering the cause) and fail to add any real value to the attendants. Please note that I am not implying for a single minute that the quality of speakers is bad or the sessions are shallow, just that the ones I have attended weren’t up to the mark.

And after all the rambling, there has to be a way to make them better and excite the right kind of people. If I was one of the organizers, I would have done the following things to help the cause …

1. Tweak the format. Let is remain an unconference. Just add a theme to it. Something like a codecamp or a markcamp. Where it attracts only a certain kind of audience. Thus at a codecamp, lots of coders with all kinds of experience levels could come in and talk about coding and other things.
2. Pseudo-Workshop. I honestly believe that doing things is a far far better way to learn and experiment than just talking and listening. What if the barcamps were actually workshops? For example someone might take a workshop on Social Media and participants might brainstorm and plan and implement a social media campaign for a product. (Loknath Swain is trying to do the same at BarCamp Mumbai 4). Can there be more sessions like this?
3. Speed Dating. People might argue that BarCamps are a good way to network and meet new people. In my opinion, the meetings are real short and shallow. Although I have seen very very interesting results come out of networking at unconferences but they can be made better. What if in a huge room, all participants are made to meet every other participant for exactly 5 minutes? In these five minutes, both the participants can talk about anything under the sun and if they like each other and want to continue talking post the event, they exchange contact details. That simple.

What do you guys think? Do you have more ideas on how to fix these unconferences? If there are enough good ideas, may be at the next unconference, will put some to fruition.

Coming back to upcoming barcamps at Delhii and Mumbai, although I am not sure if I will attend any of the two but some sessions look really promising. Please attend and do share feedback.

Schedules

• BarCampMumbai 4 is happening at IIT Mumbai on 4th and 5th Oct 2008 (yes its a two day event).
• BarCampDelhi5 is at IIT Delhi on 11th Oct 2008 (they are still debating if its going to be a two day event or not).
• My posts on BarCamp Mumbai and BarCamp Mumbai 2.

P.S.: I had used the word un Conference about five times in the post and everywhere I got the spelling incorrect. Thanks to Shefaly for pointing out. So much so for my language skills :D

Stumbled across this slidedeck on slideshare. Really cool. Friends at n00b.in will be really happy :)

Nokia WOMWorld sent me a Nokia E66 to review (read other reviews on E66 here) and after a lot of hick-ups and delays, here is the review. And with the advantage of hindsight, the review is all the more pertinent now since E66 been launched in India recently and lots of users would be looking for reviews on this handset.

Nokia E66 is yet one of those sliders from the E series family. The E-series is known for its ease of use and intuitive interface. E66 offers full multimedia and Internet experience with its wide display and high-resolution screen. It is a true office use phone with support for popular file formats like pdf, doc and xls etc.

Coming down to positives and negatives,

Positives

1. Looks. It looks really impressive. In any meeting, people noticed the device and were actually curious about it. The display is brilliant. The metallic finish is awesome. Further, I loved the grip on the handset. It fitted perfectly in my palm and I dint have to clasp it too hard or too loose. It felt like an extension of my hand. Very comfortable to hold.
2. Office Applications. Has all the applications one might need for productivity preloaded on the phone. Obviously you could download more from the Internet and use one of the many connectivity options (Bluetooth, wifi, 3G, infrared).
3. Integration and Memory Usage. Love the way applications install with one click. It is easy to update them, remove them and then again reinstall them. In fact if you run more than 5 applications at the same time, the phone still works fine. This is in contrast with other phones that I have used in past.
4. Long battery life. It easily had more than 24 hours of standby time and about 10 hours of talk time. I did not measure it with a stopwatch but I don’t charge my phone very often and in the entire month I used it, I never ran out of battery.

Negatives

1. Bad camera. Although the phone boasts of a 3 MP camera, the image quality is surprisingly bad. I expected the camera to be better.
2. Keypad. Although ergonomics dont permit a QWERTY keypad, the regular keypad becomes a hindrance for an office phone. There are times when I wanted to write emails but could not because its too cumbersome and time consuming to write emails on a regular keypad.
3. Accelerometer is buggy. There are quite a few times when you rotate the phone and the display freezes. It takes good 3-4 seconds to come back to normal and by that time you are almost frustrated.
4. Snooze time is 5 mins. I hated this bit. I am used to snooze time of 10 mins and getting up is a long process. But with this device, I missed quite a few meetings because I would simply turn the alarm off (rather than get pissed off at a 5 min snooze).
5. Too expensive for Indian market?

Price

• I don’t know about the MRP on this phone but most of the retail outlets are selling this phone for about 20K in India. I find this price point for a Nokia E66 really steep. For 20 grand you can actually go for a Nokia E71. E71 has a CandyBar form factor and has a full QWERTY keypad with almost identical features. And personally I love CandyBars more than Sliders or ClamShells.

Ending Notes
In the end I would give this phone 3 on 5. Although it has lots of features and is probably the best slider available in India right now, the phone lacks a decent camera and is probably priced on the bit higher side. I would recommend it to someone who wants a powerful business phone and does not need a camera.

P.S.: Cant do a technical analysis. If someone wants to write about it, lemme know. Will update the post.

I chanced upton this awesome tag cloud generator (called wordle). It takes a feed stream and creates a tag cloud for the content that it find there. Here is the chart for Saurabh Garg on New New Thing and it says that my last few posts have been on “community”, “reports”, “group”, “people” etc.

Full size image here

What are YOU talking about?

Date: 29th March 2008
Loc: SJSOM, IIT Mumbai
Agenda: None :)

And this “none” agenda makes a barcamp an interesting place to go. I was there for Mumbai Barcamp 2 also and I met few good people there. Hope to bump into more people this time. Also, last time, I saw a lot of people and companies walking in herds and trying to create things without even knowing “the why” question. Hope things change this time around.

Register: http://barcampmumbai.org/BCM3_registrants

As of now 200 people have registered already. Keep watching this space for more.

Update: As on 26th March, more than 400 registrations. Looks promising.