Sushrut Bidwai

Barcamp Pune 5 was overall a good experience. Uncoference community always put up great show and this was no exception. Few highlights-

• Attendance- Well lot of people did not show up. Around 100+ people. I guess postponing hurt the attendance to some extent. But its always quality that matters and not quantity. Lot of cool geeks, entrepreneurs, gorgeous girls turned up which made it highly enjoyable event. Enthusiam is always there in barcamps, actually it is the USP of barcamps. People travelling from Mumbai at 4am in the morning to attend it says it all!
• Content- Again few sessions I was looking forward to did not happen. But had lot of good sessions, discussions. Presentation by Anthony on Entrip was really good. He talked about his team’s experience at the SeedCamp which is THE Y-combinator of the Europe. Well done Anthony for making there and sharing experience. Rohan’s session on Google Analytics was also excellent one. He explained in lot on getting started with Google Analytics. Another good discussion was on SEO. Ankesh, Rohan gave lot of information about SEO and how to go about it. Its always to good have some SEO knowledge and Ankesh’s first hand experience about it was very useful. After that I have now installed the plug-ins they mentioned like All-in-one-SEO, Sitemap generator on my blogs. Thanks guys. Apart from that, there were few other good sessions by Freeman on Techstart, Navin on using Twitter, Arpit on Venture funding and Headstart to name a few.
• What we missed - Free T-shirts. I know you will think I am greedy (which I am though), but having T-shirt of barcamp gives community status. I won’t mind paying money to have the barcamp pune 5 t-shirt! Last night when I was heading back to Nasik, student (girls :D) from COEP who were in the same bus ,talked to me about what is barcamp and why you were attending it and all. I was wearing the BarcampMumbai4 t-shirt then.

After the camp we ganged up at Apache with Anthony, Sameer, Asfaq, Shardul, Nick, Freeman, Natasha, Rohan and few others (forgot the names, sorry guys). We talked a lot about twitter, entrepreneurship. Had great chat with Shardul, Rohan about enterprise market in India and swapped few stories we had in dealing with domestic markets.

All in all it was worth the travel and everything. If you are still not attending such events then believe me you are missing out on meeting lot of interesting people, missing out on all the GYAN given at free. Looking forward to next barcamp. And yeah announcement after receiving lot of encouragement from Asfaq and others, we are now putting in place plans for Barcamp-Nasik-Zero. We will announce details very soon. If you want to be on the planning committee then drop a comment and I will get in touch with you.

Misc barcamp, barcamppune5, entrepreneurship, startup advice, unconferences

I have become sort of regular in unconferences, specially in Pune. There are many reasons for attending such events, unconferences. There are many more reasons in participating in such events!

Few reasons-

1.  People - These camps are organized by people who share passion of entrepreneurship, are super geeks (hence super cool) people rather than typically big shots who are not approachable at all. So we are listened to in making decisions, changing few things around to make it better event. People who participate, attend such events are also very passionate, full of energy and life. Specially amount of young entrepreneurs attending/participating in such events is amazing! And yes probably only place to meet really cool, geeky girls for me, so :-D.

2. Content - Content of the barcamps is based on the people who attend it. So its really upto us to improve the quality of the content discussed. Overall I see great discussions happening on lot of issues related technology, entrepreneurship happening in these unconferences.

3. Open platform - You have something to say, you will be heard! You dont have to have big background to come and speak at unconferences. This gives everyone a chance to bounse off ideas, take opinion of fellow campers.

4. Networking - There are lot of networking events that happen all around India. Most of these events are having high entry barrier. Unconferences are typically free. But most importantly people attending these are full of energy, helping and understanding. These people come with passion of innovation and are more useful as a community to each other than the business suit wearing entrepreneurs who behave like businessmen most of the times.

So I am attending Barcamp Pune 5 . If you are there drop by to say hello!

Misc barcamp, Pune, unconferences