BarCampPune - A geek's day well spent socialising!
And so the day came to be well spent thus ......

The morning alarm at 6 came in real handy, I actually opened my eyes and shut it off **before** my room mate (who sleeps at the other end of the world in the same house) woke up and did the honours of shutting off! A miracle indeed. I have been a good boy today mommy.

After the geek in me was ready, by ready I mean, laptop, charger, GPRS capable phone and extension cord packed for action. I set out only to be fleeced by the auto guy :( After that I felt I am taking a journey to the ‘other world’. Travelling from Koregaon Park thru Aundh thru Hinjewadi Tech Park seemed like it was taking forever.

I’d like to draw a parallel of Pune with Bangalore of 1998. Pune, as I see, will being to lose the IT players just like Bangalore has coz of infrastructure related problems. The only achievement seems to be the Mumbai Pune Expressway. The road parallel to Yerwada jail leading to Pune Airport is still being made, for the record I recently completed an year in Pune. Pune still has its chance of retaining IT businesses if it acts now.

Ok back to today.

Nevertheless reached that place a bit poorer thankfully not in enthusiasm. The initial minutes were spent photographing the SCIT (wikipedia) campus, which is opposite to the IIIT campus. While IIIT and Symbiosis are no competitors but ‘somehow’ that reminded me of Google opening its offices next to Microsoft. :-) Surprisingly, there was a lot of *professional grade video* converage. Something close to unheard of at BarCamps. Good thing.

Proceeded to the registration. The process essentially was to collect the right size of the T-shirt and some stationary. And then write a banner with your name - meaningless. I immediately made a point with a ‘why’, they wanted to take mug-shots of people, which never happened or I missed it ? Never mind. I think the turn out was great with the numbers being ~200.

The intro-session was nice with opening address by Tarun and his companion. BarCamps have never had that. It made the interaction a nicer experience. Also, people got a chance to ‘broadcast their packets’ and campaign for talks and announce their interests. Pretty cool.

The talks started as per ‘Indian Standard Time’ pretty much inline with BarCamps and Foss.in :-) The first talk I attended was Sulekha.com‘s. It started with a typical ’what is web 2.0‘ and proceeded to how Sulekha was trying to facilitate the same. Good attempt, needs to gain momentum. There were lots of suggestions and ideas gathered and a healthy discussion ensued. Good stuff :-)

The talk that followed that was by Melody. Melodious name! :-) So it has a focus on the downsides to information being available so freely (as both beer as well as freedom). Good case studies, safe language ;-) and presented nicely.

The lunch (menu) was good and just right. A little less spicy would be perfect. :-) Also, a beer would have been appreciated for obvious reasons. I know, I know its NOT a *Bar*Camp! :P

Chatted with Tushar and fixed his Ubuntu laptop. Nice meaningful exchanges.

Then came the smsGupshup.com folks. This is what I would suggest as a product demo. This totally rawked! People registered and created their blogs on gupshup.com all by means of a mobilephone. And yes It worked!™ The product did the talking. All the speakers essentially said were the ’smsGupShup.com n00b HOWTO’. That was it. Great show folks.

Just as I was taking some time off and re-charging my laptop. The Pune LUG folks turned up and gave me PLUG sticker which now my laptop adorns and an OpenSUSE CD. Thanky. :-) I like the gesture.

Then I attended the podcast talk. It was from the publishers of Pune’s first youth magazine. It was a good talk on podcasting for newbies.

And then there were many responses to hire me. Thanks to all who pinged me. Will get in touch soon / wait for your e-mail. :-) It may be important to mention that previously at BarCamps as well I have ended up with *good* job offers. the crowd actually went abuzz when I announced the same. There were many who came to hear my experiences about ‘how to land a job at WhateverCampCity’. I hope it enriched you and opened up possibilities.

Then I had a impromptu chat with Tarun and others. There was this lady I talked to who was a journalist covering the event and she talked to me about the job offers I got. Tarun was interested in ‘what sucked’ today. Guess what sucked? The WiFi. People spent more time fixing WiFi rather than Blog about. And WTH a ***Blog***CampPune without WiFi? So how do you expect them to blog? So not much blogging. Period.

That apart there is an icing on the cake too! Just like the intro session, there was a consensus session at the end. Awesome! The newbies got a general set of action items. I believe there is a follow-up meet as well being planned. I wish people did this at BarCamps as well!

And then there were buses organised. Good thing. Imagine another auto experience ! :( Came back in the company of Anil and another guy (unable to recollect his name :-( ).

Hit back home after being hijacked by my room-mate at Aundh and ended up roaming the *rest of the city*! :(

So one clear chicken soup later I am here fighting (still) Flickr to let me upload my photos! WTF! :( Photos mostly tomorrow.

Ah! Done. I feared that this would also become like my birthday report! :|

Alright. Good night.

-N