Ponder Point

Its great to be back at Barcamp Bangalore. This time is was for the second edition. The venue for the event was the Thoughtworks office on Airport road. I was particular about showing up at 8:30 on the dot since the organizers had petrified about their “First come first serve” on their website. I was the 25th to register which surprised me. The crowded  mostly dropped in by 9:30 AM.

There were some rules at the venue:

The Thoughtworks folks had gone out of the way to make barcampers comfortable. They had cleared their work areas to let us use them for the event. This however came with some limitations which was understandable. Photography was banned and some tables and work areas were out of bounds. The atmosphere was great and set a great stage for a barcamp.

There were official photographers:

Photography was restricted to he “official” photographers due to the regulations of being an STP. Some of us (about 6 of us) were lucky to get flagged of as official photographers. I can’t imagine being in a barcamp without being able to shoot.  Felt like Reuters feeding my photographs on flickr for the bloggers at the venue after every session.

There were VCs:

C.H.U.D.

There were the usual suspects:

Muthu, Rajiv, Vakils, Harish, Kiruba, Satish, Rajan, and yours truly from previous barcamps. There were many others who were missing in action this year.

There were some women who spoke…

Sowmya from Aditi and Kavitha from Minglebox. There were a fair amount of women in the audience, but don’t remember seeing too many of them asking questions or making a point.
 
   

There were bloggers:

Not a battery of them like last year. But there were folks who live blogged though few.

The things I liked:

• The Thoughtworks venue was great. Lot of space, large rooms.
• Great internet speed. The best I have seen in 3 barcamps.
• The food was good.
• This time there a few women who spoke. This is an encouraging trend.

Things that set me thinking:

• Many of those who were actively involved in the debates did not show up this year. In fact I cant think of more than 15 people (in the 196 at Barcamp Bangalore 2) who were there last year.
• VCs seemed to get slots on demand. In fact we started of with a VC session. Wasn’t barcamp meant to be the hot bed of ideas and interesting debate.
• The afternoon sessions were lean. Where did all the people go?
• The exciting debates of last year were missed. We did have a great discussion during the Minglebox session on Media companies Vs Product/Application companies.