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BarCamp as a Movement

April 24, 2006

What is BarCamp? Technology communities who previously depended on companies like O’Reilly to organize events on their behalf now self-organizing their own events. The typical O’Reilly conference can cost each participant $2000 plus travel. The typical BarCamp can be organized for less than $2000 for the entire event! The first BarCamp in Palo Alto was held less than a year ago and since then there have been BarCamps in more than 40 cities around the world.

The BarCamp phenomenon, or perhaps more precisely the BarCamp Movement has been made possible by the social nature of the Internet. In the past many of us who didn’t live in San Francisco were jealous of the vibrant technology community in the Bay Area. We oganized BarCampDallas in an effort to ‘organize’ the less than vibrant technology community in the North Texas area. Our BarCamp was held in January and has helped foster closer ties between North Texas technologists as we had hoped. Unexpectedly, the movement in general has helped us join a newly self-organized global technology community.

I spent the past week in Bangalore, India and attended BarCampBangalore on Saturday. Why travel from Dallas to attend a free, self-organized event? Why not? BarCamp has allowed me to join a global network of technologists and now I feel comfortable getting on a plane to hang out with entrepreneurs, developers and designers anywhere in the world. I don’t need O’Reilly to schedule an event in Bangalore - I can just attend one organized by people from Bangalore.

There have been (or are planned) BarCamps in Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Seattle, Toronto, Paris, NYC, Dallas, Washington DC, Portland, Vancouver, Santa Cruz, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Delhi, Los Angeles, Austin, San Diego, Chennai, Hyderbad, Bangalore, Ottawa, Minnesota, Brussels, Boston, Houston, and CapeTown. People are trying to organize events in Atlanta, Chicago, London, Manchester, Phoenix, Seoul, and Berkley. Get on the wiki and start your own - let us know about it and we might be able to come…

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Uncategorized 

Comments

2 Responses to “BarCamp as a Movement”

  1. Brian Breslin Says:
    April 24th, 2006 at 10:58 am

    Well if you think about it, it might actually be cheaper for you to attend a free event in bangalore than spend on conference fees + travel.
    So the $2k you spent on travel to bangalore ends up costing you less overall than the cost to wherever o’reilly’s would be (assuming it was coach class). Plus in bangalore you can meet alot of talent that might prove useful to your various startups.

  2. Rajan Says:
    April 25th, 2006 at 5:23 am

    Hi Alex,

    Sad I could not catch up with you at the barcamp. But it was great that you were there. Barcamp bangalore was trully awesome. It was my second barcamp and the first barcamp hyderabad which I helped coordinate.
    We are already planning on having barcamp 2. Just immediately after the end of first hyderabad barcamp we have started planning for the second one.
    It would be great if you could make it there incase you are planning to travel India around that time.

    http://barcamp.org/BarCampHyderabad2

    Rajan

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