Thursday, November 1, 2007
Is Barcamp Bangalore declining?
Rajiv Poddar thinks so. I’m not quite convinced that is the case. Consider this:
To my mind, BCB3 was the peak and the decline has started. One of the most attractive aspects of Barcamp was its simplicity. It was easy to find who was attending and who was talking about what. With each Barcamp it got progressively difficult to do so. With BCB4 it was impossible to get a quick snapshot and I dont expect BCB5 to be any different.
To think of it, the significance of Barcamp has also diminished over the past year with more events and unconferences cropping up. Barcamp itself has played an important role in germinating these events. These spinoffs have taken over the role of bringing together people around a narrower common interest.
That focused events are reducing Barcamp’s significance is indeed true. What Rajiv appears to have missed, though, is that as these communities gain traction and find their focus, they will want to move on and manage themselves, leaving Barcamp to newer communities seeking similar exposure. The collective format is designed around encouraging this.
This will mean each Barcamp has its own flavour in terms of what sort of participant it attracts, and this may not appeal to everyone, but Barcamp was never about dictating who’s allowed in and who’s not — or what they’re allowed to discuss.
The compliant about it becoming harder to understand what’s happening in the event, however, has merit and deserves consideration.
Rajiv — Nov 2, 2007 12:58:53 PM — # ↩
Collective Format?
Has the collective format really caused these groups to move away or is it something else? If you recollect, the splinter groups started moving away even before BCB3.
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Nov 2, 2007 1:30:54 PM — # ↩
Yes. I know several who claim BCB lost its soul starting with BCB2 itself. Communities grow up, transform, lose some adherents, gain new ones. Some manage to sustain across decades, centuries, even millennia. Others don't.
The hard part is with keeping a level head and learning to grapple with the change. In that sense, communities are just like startups, except they run on participation rather than cash flow.
Puneeth — Nov 13, 2007 6:27:12 PM — # ↩
Kiran, are you sure BCB lost its soul starting with BCB2? Do you want to imply that BCB2 had screwed up the format and the decline was inevitable? This is the first time that I am hearing a not so positive comment on BCB2. I do not know what it implies or what you meant by saying that.
Puneeth — Nov 13, 2007 6:28:18 PM — # ↩
Kiran, are you sure BCB lost its soul starting with BCB2? Do you want to imply that BCB2 had screwed up the format and the decline was inevitable? This is the first time that I am hearing a not so positive comment on BCB2. I do not know what it implies or what you meant by saying that.
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Nov 13, 2007 7:52:59 PM — # ↩
Puneeth, that was what I heard from some people when I asked why they don't attend Barcamps anymore. The accusation was that it had been hijacked by the entrepreneurship crowd.
I'm not making any value judgements on it, merely pointing out that there will always be someone upset with any change.
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Nov 13, 2007 7:53:48 PM — # ↩
Needless to say, I am not endorsing that claim.
Puneeth — Nov 14, 2007 3:36:39 PM — # ↩
Historically, right from BCB1 till date and BC Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, etc all have mostly seen entrepreneurial crowd - people who were willing to take the plunge or have just started. I doubt there will ever be any barcamp, atleast in India, that will not have entrepreneurs. Barcamps have become something of a breeding ground for startups. People in Chennai have been able to branch out by doing SearchCamps, BlogCamps, etc, but still find that a percentage of that crowd is repetitive in all of them and most of them entrepreneurs.
Kiran Jonnalagadda — Nov 16, 2007 11:03:55 AM — # ↩
Sorry, Puneeth. BCB1 billed itself a geek event and it was very clearly a geek crowd. While there was a significant entrepreneurial presence, they were not the majority. It should be understandable then that people who considered BCB1 their event are concerned that they're considered second class participants in the new iterations.
Ravages — Nov 4, 2007 12:17:26 PM — # ↩
I am attending BCB 5 only because I've been following the previous 4 versions and think this one would do better than the others. Also, I am hoping that BCB grows bigger and and all, and so want to cash in early enough. Get some geek cred by being on BCB before it went double digit. So, while I do think there's some truth in what Rajiv says, I don't think BCB has begun the descent.
Jude — Nov 17, 2007 6:11:40 PM — # ↩
I have to agree -- the crowd was a bit too large to benefit from disorganization. (I suppose I was part of the problem). I couldn't help feeling there was a lot of interesting stuff that I missed out on.
Yes, full marks for that -- it was a refreshing change from the likes of foss.in.chat team — Mar 25, 2008 5:43:57 AM — # ↩
Barcamp Bangalore
Either ruby is getting a very good response and java is one the decline or its just that the java developers are way too lazy to come to this event. Here is a scene from the ruby session.
<p><a title="Chat Sohbet Sayfasi" href="misschat.net">chat team</a></p>