BarCampBangalore - It was the biggest of them all !!!

BarCampBangalore was the third BarCamp that I attended in the last two months (after Delhi & Chennai) . And it was the biggest of them all !

I’ll probably write a post later to bring out the differences that I felt amongst the three events. In the meanwhile, heres a bunch of images that will give you a much better sense of the event that any blogpost I could possibly write.

- ‘We DON’T have a business model…’

I would vote for this being the most ‘unforgettable moment‘ of BarcampBangalore. Shreyas & Kaustubh are techies, who have their own respective day jobs, but their big passion in life is music. Together they plan to start a website for non mainstream music and their presentation was about their plans for the site. Their session was preceeded by a barrage of web2.0 presentations, all of which were greeted with a big ‘whats the business model‘ skepticism from the audience. These guys kicked off their presentation by scribbling on the whiteboard- ‘We don’t have business model and we are not a web 2.0 company‘. The ‘sick-of-web2.0‘ crowd loved it and cheered them on all through their session.

- Lightning talks - they came fast and furious…

Lightning talks were a ‘on-the-spur-of-the-moment‘ innovation at BarCampBangalore. Speakers were selected impromtu (and at random) from the room and had to stand up and speak on any topic of their choice for no less (or more) than five minutes. It was going great guns till the IPR discussion started, which hijacked the entire discussion for the next half hour.

- Entry Tax that every person had to pay at BarCampBangalore

Alex Muse stood like a tax inspector at the gates of the Yahoo office; anybody coming in had to hold his/her name tag close to his/her ears and pose for a photograph..heres the output of this exercise…Alex..I loved the way you did this.

- Doesn’t this image seem kind of…….warped ?

Off course it is…..half of it was projected on the wall and the other half on the ceiling. What else did you expect at an unconference ?

- Tara: maybe you should have been dressed in pink that day…

I loved Tara Hunt’s session on Canadian Pill Shop; it was hip and cool. It accentuated the focus on the ‘community aspect’ of all things web 2.0. But hey Tara, shouldn’t you have been dressed in pink that day….

- Feni, Toddy, Narangi, Arrack, Santra…

The conference rooms were named thus…quite innovative…and meant to reinforce the intoxicating nature of the event. The ’scheduler’, incidentally, looked like a chessoard….with speakers moving their Post It notes around to try to grab the best rooms (or at least a projector) for their sessions

- Thats what sessions at BarCampBangalore looked like…….

- Speechless at BarCampBangalore

This security guard at the Yahoo office was speechless at the sight of his office being invaded by a bunch of techno-zombies

- He’s the guy who started this fire………..

Chris Messina taking us through his BarCamp story..cheers to him, for setting the tech community across the world on fire…

- Three Cheers to the BarCampBangalore organisers

The four musketeers of BangaloreBarCamp-Manish, Muthu, Jace & Jessica

- Alex Muse seems to have got a receptionist’s job at Yahoo !!!

No, this is just the ‘beg, borrow or steal a chair‘ principle at work in BarCampBangalore…..

- Suman should get the award for the ‘Most Determined Speaker’

This is Suman, with his second attempt at demoing the programming language he has developed. His presentation at ChennaiBarCamp got disrupted badly (inspite of his desperate attempts) due to a last minute hard disk crash. He was determined to show off his stuff without any glitches this time..and his determination was rewarded.

- This guy actually had his rucksack on while presenting..

Sumeet seems to be in a hurry to rush off on a camping trip…must be a hardcore camper…

- What ! Arjun Ram serving ‘Taazza‘ beer ???

I thought he is planning to serve you ‘TaaZZa‘ news. Anyway, till TaaZZa hits the stands, we are not complaining about this…

- The party’s over ; Adieu till we meet again

This photo kind of sums up the days event; it was cool and invigorating while it lasted….Look foward to a lot more of this…

- Whats this….err…somebody attempting suicide by hanging….?

Was BarCampBangalore such a stressful experience? No..No…, its just the magician at Geoffry’s showing off the Great Indian Rope Trick