It is your camp

Barcamp Mumbai is just couple of days away. The event looks all set to be a mega hit, with 500+ registrations and 50+ topics of discussion on the wiki. The Barcamp Mumbai will be trying a threaded version of unconf, with special threads for Blogging called Blogcamp Mumbai Style, sharing ideas aptly called FireTalk and other threads on Technology, Startups and Hardware. Though barcamps are becoming very popular yet a majority of people will be attending the Barcamp for first time and here are my 2 cents for them.

What to expect at a Barcamp:

1. A lot of people with open mind: The coolest part of any barcamp are the people. People come to a barcamp with an open mind, they enjoy sharing their ideas and knowledge and are ready to learn a lot of new things.
2. Everything taking place on the run: Barcamps are unconferences and the philosophy behind such events is that everyone present at the camp takes responsibility of the camp. You can call it crowd sourcing where everyone take tasks on their own and get it done. So you will see a lot of people running around doing things literally on the run. You will notice that the agenda of the event will be decided at the start again by the campers using a whiteboard/paper wiki where they will add their names and topic on which they will conduct a session.

What to do at a Barcamp:

1. Attend the sessions: the primary reason to attend the barcamp should be to learn new things. Sessions are the best place to do that. The typical sessions at a barcamp are interactive in nature, they tend to be more of discussions than class room sessions. The speakers are again campers they are not invited, they come forward on their own with an idea to share.
2. Talk to people: the best part about a barcamp are the people taking part in the camp. Make most of it and talk to as many people as possible. Move around in the camp. I always say at the start of any camp remember the law of two feet, that is use your two feet to move to a place where you can learn or contribute.
3. Share knowledge: If you are at a place like barcamp please share the knowledge and you will be surprised by the amount of learning. Have discussion with other people at the camp and you can get quality feedback from a lot of good people.
4. Have fun: The most important thing to do at the camp is to have fun. Blog about the event, take pics, shoot videos, meet people and enjoy the whole thing.
5. Share contacts: Another important thing is that you should share your business cards/contacts/blog addresses with other campers before taking their leave. This will help you to get in touch with them later on.

For the Organizers:
Always stay unorganizers.

1. Make people comfortable with the open space: As a organizer you should make sure that people are comfortable with the idea of open space. The best barcamp happens when people are freely sharing ideas and that happens when they are interacting freely among themselves. It is very important that as an organizer you help them to break the ice, have a 3 words intro at the start, start interactions and that will make things easy for other. Keep the environment light do not through unneccessary rules at them (it will become a conf).
2. Do not try to control anything, rather open that to public/campers.
3. Let people use the platform: Barcamp is an open space event and people will like to use it in their own way. Let them use it the way they want, you should trust the campers if they will like it they will take part else they will walk away.
4. Have fun and enjoy: It is very easy to get stressed and be busy with useless things for the whole day. Let the event organize itself you have slogged hard to put together the event and the least you can do is to enjoy on the day of the event.

What to do post barcamp:

1. If you have a blog share your experience on it: It is the best way to give your feedback and also share your experience with people who were not able to attend the camp.
2. If you have taken pics, recorded videos, made presentations then upload those on to internet, with proper tagging so that other campers can find them.
3. If you exchanged business cards/contacts with other campers, drop a word to them so that you can keep the thread, that started at the camp, alive.
4. Add people you met onto your social network.
5. Share positives and negatives with the organizers. Drop them a mail, or post comments on their blogs as it will help them do a better job next time.
6. Whatever you learned try to read about it and if you learn something new in that area do share it in the next camp.

Buzzword buster:
Barcamp: Barcamps are open space events and they are participants only events.
Open Space: Open Space events bring a variety of people together to discuss topics that are decided by the participants.
Unconference: Also called unconf. Just another name for the Open Space events.
Campers: All the participants are called campers.
Wiki: It is a special site that can be modified by the user. Just like wikipedia.
Whiteboard: Also referred to as paper wiki or wall wiki. This is used to decide the order of activities at the camp. It is operated gain by the campers.
Blogger: One who has a blog is called a blogger.
Blogcamp: A barcamp specifically for the bloggers.
Unorganizer: One who initiates the Barcamp and brings together the campers.
Threads: Barcamp generally runs in multiple threads so as to have maximum sessions in the given time.

Always remember that Barcamps are community events, it is our event and it will be what we make it. So make sure that you do your bit for the camp as it is your camp. Looking forward to meet you all at the camp, if you see me just turn around to say Hi I will really appreciate it.


Tarun Chandel
Life, Learning and Technology