Hi all,

Yes, we have come to the end of yet another BarCampBangalore, and I guess I’ve done a lot less of live blogging for BCB6 than I did for BCB5 (reasons include lack of enthusiasm, lesser participation, less quality sessions and so on and so forth). I’m doubtful about how enriching it was. It was indeed a nice way to socialise, and meet up with many like minded people.

But I believe it could have been a lot better.

My apologies to non BCB readers, whom I’m going to confuse using BCB jargon.

Here’s my roll up of the event…

• Sessions weren’t as illuminative as in BCB5.
• Sessions were not at all productive.
• Audience was distributed, with quality additions being distracted by non-purposeful non-tech sessions.
• Participation was less, and though some opine that it is better, I believe that BCB6 participation was way below the quorum for such an event. A lot of brainage was missing.
• Everyone were less enthusiastic about the sessions and the event, leading to general lack of enthusiasm. Even the bloggers were bored (which means a lot!) and very many people were seen sitting idly staring into nothingless.
• Proper, would-be-productive sessions were effectively thwarted by lack of interested brains.
• This prompted the session proposers from not organising the sessions.
• General mood itself was extremely negative. The only people who felt sort-of good where the first timers. All of the not-first-timers agreed that BCB6 fell short of the usual BarCamp atmospheres, except for a few extremely optimist souls.
• Bad means of communication.
• Very many people were trying to be politically correct - which is not required in an unconference. If there’s something wrong, we need to SAY that there is something wrong, face it, and attempt to find a way to sort it. What happened in BCB6, even in the feedback session, is that everyone was trying to be politically correct - not realising that negative progressive feedback was extremely necessary!

So what could be improved upon? Here are a few thoughts to ponder upon -

• Did the more number of non-technical and light hearted sessions lead to a general degeneration of the usually techie-brainy-productive atmosphere? I was very much critical of this notion when it was presented in the first day’s feedback session, but I realise that this has some value. Session after session of light hearted content indeed thwarted the interest for techie-sessions. Nobody would want to attempt to think productively for a notion, when there’s another parallel light hearted “kamasutra” session going on. Not that I don’t support these light hearted sessions - I’m all for them - but do they need to be segregated, or at least their ratio reduced, to preserve the productive atmosphere?
• Should these light hearted sessions kept for the evening?
• Should the camp actually have a camp? Code/blog/discuss through the night?
• Do we try to go out of the traditional BarCamp way and try to increase participation by publicity? By inviting people to attend, publicising the concept in colleges, press publicity etc. Of course, with limited censorship - we don’t tell them about the freebies .
• Do we increase materialistic rewards aimed to increase enthusiasm? For example, more stickers, public ice breakers, sell/publicise yourself during idle times, small contests with non-directly-materialistic prizes (like publicity for the website through a projector) and mentions of effort takers through BarCamp media such as the mailing list, SMSes etc.
• Shouldn’t the forum be functioning? It acts as a better, and long lasting, method of communication.
• As someone has already suggested, a projection of the BarCampBangalore Twitter screen could tremendously help to choose sessions. A better SMS system, with more people SMSing in can also work wonders.
• If someone (bloggers :P) could do proper live-blogging (using tools like CoverItLive) is each session, it could prove as invaluable archives! And a person who missed the session can always catch up on what happened during the sessions. Someone suggested that we capture all sessions on video - but that’s like a lot of work, and I don’t think we’ll have many volunteers for that :P. It involves capturing, editing, rendering and uploading video. A huge process.
• The Collective idea could be brought back - in a better manner. During the wiki registrations, we can ask the people to register their name under the collective(s) they want to attend, and possible ideas they can contribute. Thus, the collective leader has an idea whether to go ahead with the collective or not. The organisers need not go after the collective leaders.

Yup thats it for now! And I guess this will be the last post under my BCB6 tag. Unless a flame war begins

Oh, and I guess I’ll put this up on the BCB6 wiki - because these were views I wanted to express in the feedback session, but since everyone was trying to be politically correct, the expression was rendered infeasible. And I was requested not to attend the “wash-up meeting” since I was not present in the organising team from the start (perfectly logical of course), thus I could not get these views out to the present organisers.

But dear organisers, I’m not undervaluing your work! No way! I fully appreciate the enormous amounts of work, dedication, effort, and emotion you’ve put in to this event! Thank you! You guys did a wonderful job! But naturally, it could have been tweaked to be performed better.

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