Barcamp Kathmandu 2010

Khanchuwa Jwalanta presented something on liguid dish that does not put you in hang over and i assumed barcamp kathmandu 2010 will be of same type. But its different. Hang over of yesterday's barcamp kathmandu is still on. Many ideas and thoughts that i witnessed at barcamp kathmandu are still playing in infinite loop inside my head. I feel the loop will terminate only when i pour some of the thought about yesterday's event in the blog. But mind it, it is not full coverage of the event and so don't create news out of it. In barcamp style i should say, it is unblog of unconference. ;)

My pick for the event were
1) Crowdsourcing and Microwork in Nepal by msears
2) Sharing for Science by Ankur
3) Story Cycle (katha chakra) by saurav
4) Karma, a Framework for Creating Educational Software by peter.gijsels
5) Nepaluino by ujwal2 and
6) Udder This! by jhusilkira

Due to my son's DPT injection, i reached at event site arround 12 noon only. I was late. Before i reach the venue i knew i missed two of my pick Crowdsourcing and Karma. On the way I thought surumai bolna kati hatar yo khare haru lai as if they were going to miss a train to their home and by the way there is no train system in kathmandu. But its due to me so nobody to blame.

When i entered the hall, it was packed, full, over crowded and no seat available. Event was at the end of Youth and Media. On screen there was Thank You slide and some question answer was going on. Event was rocking. As my next picked session Sharing for Science was on the queue, i came out of hall and talked with some new people and old twitter friends. Bibek Shrestha was floating the idea that we should have frequent some type of developer and designer meetup to share onces knowledge. I totally agreed with him.

Ankur entered the hall shouting next session was his. So i also followed in. But the next session was of Chirag Bangdel with big question Why Art?. Only line i remember from his session is "Science keeps physical body alive but Art keeps one's soul alive". Conclusion is Techno Mani's also should learn art to be human with heart not just brain. Don't ask me the full form of Mani. :)

Then much awaited Sharing for Science started. Ankur shared his idea on establishing science journal library by the help of community. His definition of community just involves Me and You. I won't forget the slide with big hand with index finger pointing out and defining You that includes me too. According to him he has already registered site sharingforscience.org to get feedback and of course support for the idea. He is starting Sharing site with Popular Science and New Scientist magazines. He wants other to help to form the community by sharing some other publication or magazines to s4s. His big plan is to form big national level library later on. I wish him best of luck and i am sure a lots of people already thinking to lend some hand for the s4s community. I am also ready to help.

Then there was lunch break. During lunch i got lucky to put some of my question to Crowdsourcing presenter Mark Sears. My basic question was how will he ensure quality in crowdsourced work. He told me he has two ways for quality control. First way is to have to do same task by multiple people and compare them. Second one is there will be different level of checking by his staff and give points according to their quality of work. Another question was type of work he will bring. My point was spaming and writing fake blog for some product is not very interesting work to do. He is still in process of finalizing the services he is going to offer to the client.

After lunch, i joined session by Ujwal Shrestha about Nepaluino. He demonstrated very interesting projects based on arduino. Then followed by barcamp kathmandu promo video and photo show of its making. It was interesting. Then followed by DUPLICITY. I found that experimental video little disturbing so i won't write any further comment about it. Then session on khanchuwa.com totally refereshed me. Khanchuwa Jwalanta gave totally new meaning of OLPC. :) I really liked his presentation style and idea. Then next session was on "What you wear is not what you smoke" by Subin Shakya. I got good knowlege about hemp through his presentation. It was the first time i have heard about it. Many thanks to subin for this introduction. He is real hemp mani.

As i am also FOSS lover, i attended the session by Abhishek Singh on "How would you celebrate Software Freedom?". He asked to think about ways to celebrate the freedom provided by FOSS. SFD is one of the day when all FOSSians celebrate. His presentation slides were well designed and very pleasing. Final session i attended was by Geshan Manandhar on "Drupal Content Management System - A non technical introduction". His session was much like show case of Drupal where they have been used.

All in all barcamp kathmandu 2010 is great experience and had chance to know so many mani in same event. But there was one suspence till now what happened to Jhusilkira. May be turned into pupa to become beautiful butterfly.

links:
twitter: barcampktm
Session spreadsheet: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AihCxa4ZhLTkdFR6VlBjRkpyaVRXbk9kdDhrSm9uQXc&hl=en#gid=0
Tag for tweet: #barcampktm and #bcktm10
Site: http://2010.barcamp.org.np
Photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=471773&id=525455322
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=254884&id=535101350&page=3
(these photos are not mine. they are owned by respective facebook user)