Bar Camp Ahmedabad

How many are attending a barcamp for the first time?

All but two raise their hands. I don't raise my hands because I am holding this laptop.

This is a live blog on the Bar Camp, Ahmedabad.

So what is a Bar Camp?

An unconference, a treat for entrepreneurs, a place for youngsters on the brink of life, of start ups. A non-organized affair. Depending on the mood of the city , the venue, people walk in and write their name on the board outside, in the slot and someone else can come and rub it out.

Most of these participants are students, ripe and receptive for exchanging knowledge.
There are three rooms, this is happening in IIM, Ahmedabad, new building, on a crisp Saturday morning on 19th January.

The speakers are impromptu ( its an unconference, you see), but some have planned ppts.

You can be informal, you can boo out a speaker, you can walk in and out. Lets see how much fun we have .

The first talk is by Sanjay Banerjee . He talks on the mindset of entrepreneurs. He talks of dreaming big and commercialising your hobby, and leadership skills.

Second talk, by Ankur Shukla is a success story, from a small city Jabalpur. He mentioned a large figure, something close to eighty thousand hits on his websites, KoolKampus.com, Kyapoocha.com, KoolKareers.com , all being run by his company Kudos Infomedia

End of first post.


SESSION TWO:

I have moved to another classroom, a pretty lady (dressed in a saree) is going to talk of something no-technical, she said.

Her name is Vinita Shetty, the topic is mobile Governance (whatever that means).

Before she begins, we have Ruchit talking, about how he is going to change the mobile interface within a couple of years. He passes around his cell, showing people how it is already possible to access not just internet, also laptops, other mobiles cameras, from his server.

You can check him out at http://www.ruchit.mymobilesite.net/ Type in ruchit , and the password is samsung123.

Now for the pretty lady, the mGov.

People carry mobile phones, not laptops. (True.)

So people should govern themselves, through the mobile phone. Citizen to Government information flow, is what she is proposing. Make hell for the Govt, call them for every and any problem you have. A police complaint? You need not go there, sign up, just call them and the complaint will be registered.

A fresh new approach to democracy, where public private people (ppp) rule, hierarchy diminishes, voices can be heard.

The common man with a cell phone is empowered, protected, connected.

This was Vinita Shetty, talking of mGov. You can get more on metrobhoomi.com.

Lunch break!

Session three begins:

This is about motivational marketing.

The speaker, Sashi starts with a song, Na todo dil mera, a song I have never heard in my life.

He is gonna tell us about a tool to market. Make it easy for people to buy. That is marketing. Motivation is the fuel that makes a business run, or a person buy from you.

Motivational marketing: Be responsible to your customer if you want him to come back to you.

People buy, act on emotion and later, justify with logic. So emotion is the boss. Take aim at your customer's emotions.

How does a person benefit from your product? Directly and indirectly. Use emotional stimulators.

• Fear. Insurance policies are based on fear of death.

• Love. Connection. A personal touch. Children. Grandparents. Family.

• Sex. A woman's magazine like Cosmopolitan sports a sexy lady on the cover. It gets the men for obvious reasons, and the woman drool to find out how they should be looking to get attention.

• Money / Saving money. Most sales pull crowds on this emotional motivator.

You will find more on www.motivationalmarketing.com.

I need a break, see you next session!

Next talk. Sunayana, a student of NIT Surat Engennering, presents an interesting design for the web.

She is talking about Exploring Online Credibility, on websites like Wikipidia.

How to help people judge the credibility of information on Wikipedia. Any person can go make whatever contribution, factual, imaginary to the contents of the Wikipedia. For example, the Gujarat page carries many factual errors of the earthquake. This misinformation has survived there since many months.

Author credibility , reference credibility, endurance credibility can be the different sections depending on which, you arrive at an average credibility rating. This is mentioned in a small, separate area of the page. And this credibility rating will help in knowing how correct the information could be.

This is her online presentation. www.cs.cmu.edu/ourcs/presentations/ExploringOnlineCredibility

Now it is mykavita. Write your own poem.

Rakshit is getting ragged, or so it seems. Finally, he gets the point through. All of these internet websites like orkut, facebook, etc, communicate short messages, but these ain't serous writers, no sir. However, serous writers, meaning original, long time writers write blogs. They blog their thoughts, their poems, etc. However, there is no copy write on blog. Creative commons a is big confusion.

Your poems can get stolen from you, they can use them for commercial purpose like Fanna (a blockbuster hindi movie). And if that happens, can creative commons do anything?

In an unconference, this can also happen.

Sorry, I have lost count of the sessions. Now I am back in classroom 1, for Tapan Shah's attempt to demystify Facebook applications.

History of Facebook, is that it originated in Harvard, then opened to other universities, high schools, and now it is open to all.

The twenty four year old who mothered it is now a billionaire.

What is the one thing that draws crowds in a social network? Asks Tapan. Gossip, he answers. What are your freinds doing, who are they talking to? Basically time pass.

He gives something like a tutorial (that mostly bounced off my head) on Anatomy of Applications.

'Where did you get this from?' I ask him.

'I stole it,' said the hacker.

'So do you have it saved up somewhere online?'

Here : http://developer.facebook.com/

Feedback session :

More participation needed, be more vocal on mailing lists, no registration please, its dynamic, ideally, in a barcamp , there are no power point presentations. A ppt comes between the speaker and the participant. It creates a formal wall. It was fun. I am happy I came. The best part was that you can move out whenever you get bored.

What is a Bar camp? Where is the bar? Is there a bar?

And India won too. Claps claps claps.