Pune Barcamp 5

I attended my first Pune Barcamp (and my first barcamp too) this Saturday at SISCR. Basically a barcamp is an ad hoc gathering of people interesting a particular topic; but without a pre-determined formal agenda. Instead, the agenda gets decided on the day of the event, in an ad hoc manner, democratically by all the barcampers. For more read this.

There were talks and discussions on many interesting topics. The fact that it is democratic and volunteered allowed many unconventional topics like 'Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit', 'Pune e-governance and civic activism', 'e-learning', 'Save Pune traffic' and 'Why should you twitter?' to be taken up. Ofcourse, there were purely interesting tech topics like wireless security, mobile application development, Google Analytics too. And then you don't have to sit in a boring lecture, could just walk out :). However, at the barcamp there wasn't much of an incentive to walk-out. Straight, to-the-point talks kept you interested and you had a choice of talks to attend. In addition, it was a keep opportunity for networking and having a few good discussions. All-in-all a good package. Looking forward to attending more barcamps.