Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

So much for the fuss with getting Gtk# installed. I threw out the Mono framework package this evening, reinstalled it and the Gtk# packages from Fink, and now it all just works. No mucking with DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH and miscellaneous symlinks involved.

I’m looking forward to writing first class Windows apps on OS X.

Planning for Barcamp Bangalore 4 has been slow, but may have gotten into gear over the weekend. I have previously reflected on BCB3. This time we discussed how we could tweak the format to make it better.

BCB3 was an event of individuals organised into spaces. One registered as an individual, listed a session individually, and decided for oneself where one wanted to spend their time. We had four rooms available, designated Internet, Mobile, Society and Demo, for the broad categories of sessions held within. The designation of these rooms was admittedly not the emergent community definition we’d have liked it to have been, but on that we’ll excuse ourselves for a mix of excitement, impatience, and nervousness at whether the concept would work.

Of the four, I think it was pretty clear the Mobile crowd was the most cohesive. They had a full house both days and the same people sat through most sessions. Rajan observed that several were regulars from Mobile Monday. Their presence at Barcamp effectively turned that room into an extended MoMo meet.

There’s something to be noted here. Barcamp’s participant base has been growing with each event. We’re getting to a stage where it is no longer possible to have an intimate space like we did for BCB1 and BCB2, and yet, each event brings back familiar faces, people who’ve met each other at previous events and have conversed since. Coming to Barcamp, then, is not an isolated event, but just another milestone in an ongoing conversation, a regular interval at which to gather and share what’s new. We’re proposing tweaking the format to encourage this. You no longer register to participate in Barcamp; you instead register to participate in a collective that decides on its agenda before coming to the event.

If you’re not satisfied with the existing collectives, you propose a new one and gather the interested. We’ll assign the available spaces based on their relative strengths.

With this move, we recognise that we’re no longer following a format that encourages participants to move from session to session depending on what interests them. We’re instead asking that participants collaborate in advance with fellow participants, decide in advance what they’d like to achieve at Barcamp, and focus on it when at the event. The initial investment is higher, but so is the return. Activities like CodeJam and hands-on workshops were discouraged by the earlier format. The new one makes them possible.

But what of the serendipitous experience of encountering something pleasant and unexpected? What’s the point of coming to Barcamp at all if you’re only going to associate with your group, apart from having someone else taking care of your logistics? What of inter-group mixing?

That deserves attention. I propose we request (but not require) collectives to make exclusive use of their spaces only within limited hours, say 10 AM to 1 PM and 3 to 6 PM. The remaining time should be undefined, allowing individual participants to associate as they see fit.

At BCB3, Kiruba and Amogh expressed interest in a photography workshop. This could be one our collectives. It could propose to conduct a three hour workshop the first morning, disperse for the rest of the event, and reassemble for an hour before closing to discuss outcomes. It’ll no longer be bound by the tyranny of limited time slots. Its participants will know in advance what outcomes to expect and what they’re skipping to be a part of this.

And it’ll still be nothing like getting lectured by a fellow on a podium who may turn up an hour late or not at all.