Blogcamp Pune, report 10 days later....

Here is my 2 paise (coz, it's freaking 10 long days late) worth of report for Blogcamp Pune.

It was a really good day, had some hectic, some interesting, some funny, some fulfilling, some crazy moments. I am quite a contended guy today, I lived the intent of event to the core. It was good to see that things did turned out well without moving away from our focus to be simple and unconference to the core.

It was a god event, attended by 150 to 180 to 200 bloggers (we never kept the count and different people reported different numbers). There were some really interesting people and had some good discussion with various people attending the event.

Here, I am trying to think in the chronological order what happened on 16th June 2007 at SCIT:
7:00 am in the (too early) morning: got a call from Star News, they wanted to cover the event, (ahhh goood morning)

7:45 am: Call from Amit, he wanted to know If I needed anything from the city? I asked him to get some sticky flakes.

8:00 am: Nothing is there in the atrium, we are suppose to start in another half an hour. I was running all over SCIT for desks and chairs for the Sponsors space.

8:15 am: Tea desk is up and Amit has also come and Rajesh has also come. Met Rajesh for the first time, wow that's what I call my kinda team.

8:30 am: There are 5 - 6 campers already in, good start. Me and Amit busy putting up the Sponsors wall.

8:45 am: We have some volunteers in, (and thank you for extend your hand, we needed it the most), for the registration and putting up the wall.

9:00 am: Dude! Where's my whiteboard? Crapp it's no where to be found.

9:10 am: Let's go to the auditorium. Cool there are around 50 campers already in. Ranjan is busy clicking the snaps. We have a whiteboard up as well, good going, but atleast 40 minutes late.

9:30 am: are we planning to start or not??? Campers are still coming in, there are around 150 (ok some will say 120, i am not sure) campers in the auditorium.

9:40 am: I started the show with a small intro on what a Blogcamp is and the concept of unconf.
9:50 am: The introduction round started, lasted longer than expected, but it was really good, set up the tone for the whole day. It is an unconf and supposed to be like this.

10:40 am: Let's go the acads block for the two threads. Oh by the way there was no wifi in the audi, BAAAADDDD!!! But it's there in the acads block.

11:00 am: The rough ride starts, no one is able to connect to the wifi. It sucks and I am very tensed as there are people waiting for the talks to start. Wifi never really came up though.

11:30 am: Somehow, Parag got the things rolling in thread two and Sulekha was able to start the show.

11:40 am: Started the second talk in thread 1. Had to intervene with a "Time Up" note, never wanted to do this, but once the people started, they were never ready to stop and others were waiting.

12:05 pm: running around the room with another "Time up" note, (one request please follow the timings, you will save a lot of headache to organizers like me) please forgive me if I offended anyone.

12:30pm: for the first time I am standing still, and attending the Rediff talk. Raised a question on one of their feature, don't know if it made sense to them.

12:45pm: The unconf is on and is in full flow. The real unconf was going on in the atrium and not really in the threads. The true intent of unconf is getting together with campers and share knowledge, get to know others. That was what going on in the atrium.

1:00pm: Lunch Time. Had good time at lunch. I started to settle and so was the situation, I started to interact with campers and met various interesting bloggers. I always anticipated, early hiccups and kept the lunch time intentionally longer. It gives good time to mingle with other campers.

2:30pm: Back to unconf. The threads at classrooms were not that interesting and I found the atrium to be the most lively place. I sat there with atleat 10 groups, got to share soem good ideas, and also interacted on some good topics, like podcasting, some technology, some money making tips on blogs and some upcoming trends in the blogs... hmmm interesting.

3:30pm: During one of these small groups sharing sessions, we thought of having a discussion on Modern Media Vs Traditional Media (one reason was to get all the media people present at the camp to share their views on the Modern Media and not merely bothering everyone with their unending questions. It was an uncof everyone need to participate...). It turned out to be a very good discussion and as expected a heated one as well.

4:00pm: Parag started another discussion on "Blogging for Learning Professionals", very interesting thread.

4:30pm: Let's get back to the auditorium, it's time to take a look back at all the learnings during the day. The session was really good and got some good feedback from the fellow campers.

5:30pm: It's over! Great day!! Thanks everyone for coming to Bgogcamp Pune!!!

Some Random notes:

1. We never took the names down of attendees, what's the use of that?? We would have just wasted some papers and time, all the names were there/ are there on the wiki.
2. Wifi sucked big time, I AM (REALLY... REALLY) SORRY FOR THAT!
3. The sponsors or the people who are looking to promote their products at unconfs need to learn how to do it. It is different from a conference so the promotions has to be different. Need to share something of value with the crowd and you will be talked about, give marketing talks and you will be trashed. Need to learn GUYS!!!
4. The majority of crowd at the camp was attending an unconf for the first time, so they were not sure how to go about it. It would have been better it they were well prepared, or atleast had read what to expect at an unconf.
5. I was little disappointed with the bloggers, they never came forward to put their names on the white board and start a thread for them. Remember campers had put 40 odd topics on the wiki... where were these guys.
6. There was just one rule at the Blogcamp Pune, "Rule of two feet" (walk out if you are not gaining from or contributing to the discussion and join another group). I don't how many of you followed it, I found it very helpful and also got to meet a lot of interesting people at the camp.

Had a good time at the camp and now I have a firm belief that, if you have a pure intent, things will fall in place for you. Hope all of you had a good time. I will be writing a few more learnings from organizing the Blogcamp Pune in coming days.

I thought while going through :
1. the hectic daya at SCIT
2. the feeling of satisfaction after a good event.
3. While recollecting what all happened during Blogcamp Pune

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Tarun Chandel
Life, Learning and Technology