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

Tags: barcamp, barcampmumbai, Delhi, Idea, Internet, Mumbai, Networking, People, unConference

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.