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Barcamp Chennai – Recap

For those who are new to the term Barcamp, here is the definition

BarCamp is an unconference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. The BarCampChennai focusses on Web 2.0, Social Media and Next Generation Internet.

The two days at Barcamp Chennai were a revelation of the enthusiasm of the community here at Madras(it still remains madras for me). Kiruba & Co did a phenominal job of managing the show. As typical for any “un”conference, the twists and turns of the events made it all the more interesting 😉 But alls well that end well! The show was great success. Even a few reporters decided to show up and mingle with the geeks! If anything else “blogging” has gone mainstream in India! “Live Blogging” was world class! Video blogs, photo blogs, limited podcasts & live updates Way to go folks!

The audience was diverse, from final year students to entrepreneurs! People flying in from Delhi, Bangalore, Bombay to a remote demo session from California.

As for the sessions, there were as colorful as a rainbow .. ranging from Mobile Computing to User experience design. A lot of people attended Day 1 and the numbers dwindled on Day 2, but the response was still fabulous. The wiki has lots of information on the same, so I will spare you folks the boring details.

Some constuctive feedback below to be take with a pinch of salt 😉

A demo session – While there was lots of presenting, it would be nice to have had an hour or so for an information session where people could walk around and try out products/demos. Would have been a good way to connect and let the rubber hit the road.
Bandwidth – The bandwith at the event was fairly limited and was troubling at times. But with a university infrastructure the organizers did the best they could. Hopefully next time around some company would pitch it and this would be a non issue!
Questions – As the number of sessions were fairly high, the presenters to had to stick to time! While the enthusiasm of the crowd was great and interaction was great, it puts a strain in the content that each presenter can address. This is a double edged sword, too much restriction would make a conference defeating the purpose of the “un” conference! It guess it probably a responsibility of a the speaker to channel the question or postpone to the end of the session (Note to self! 😉 )

Towards the end of Day 1, we headed out to a beach south of Chennai! A wonderful way to connect and catch up with folks! A fabulous location and a perfect stop!

As for us at Taazza, this event was an awesome beginning! A great way to get the balling rolling. The presentation was very well recieved! Taazza’s review contest generated some fabulous reviews. Here are some of the questions that we were asked

“When were you launching” – Asked my most including The Hindu reporters
“Do you compete with MyToday”
“Whats your mobile stratergy”
“What is your business model”

Some of the feedback that we recieved were around color scheming, data accuracy and mobility. All well taken, please watch this space for some updates on this front. Meanwhile please keep those comments coming at feedback[at]taazza.com!

Some day we will be camping on the beach around a fire with our wifi laptops attending Web 3.0 sessions!