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The Sprouted Delhi BarCamp 5 was exhilarating an experience, Although it was not as glittering as expected from the sponsorships and registrations.

The formal/informal inauguration was done by the behind the scenes slide show and video by picturulize featuring the key guys behind this wonderful unconference.

Then the talks/sessions proceeded, I attended a talk on Pylons and Schevo , It seems Pylons might be better than django in terms of modularity, but django has become a rockstar for python community and  django has much more active community than pylons.

The other talk i really liked was about Building a scalable architecture of web applications by Bhavin Turakhia, CEO Directi, It was very much power packed and a must see for any web developer.

The talk of the day was The Global Financial Crisis and India by Pankaj from Teknatus, It was very interactive talk and if we can get the video of the talk that would be far more informative, It tells about the harsh realities India might face in near future. Some keypoints of the talks were :

• Indian Economy is very much integrated  with global economy, so it is prone to be hit by global slowdown, we may see its consequences in coming six months or so.
• 30 years back Indian saved 70 percent of there income, These days it has gone down to 11 percent. So the if the economic disaster strikes, It is going to be a nightmare for many.
• The US financial crisis is result of sheer ignorance of US policy makers and same can happen to India

This presentation was a big hit with the listeners, it got extended to 90 minutes session from an alloted 30 minutes. The day ended with the coyright infringement talk by twilightfairy and how she fought with mainstream media big wig TOI for her rights .

The second day of barcamp started with an interactive discussion about blogging and as the participants arrived ,There was a talk by Barcamp4 and Barcamp5 Coordinator Piyush about Entrepreneurs and Marriages, as most of the Entrepreneurs face matrimonial issues , There was very healthy discussion about it .

Fabian form Ubuntu told the audience about its importance. A hackathon was called on by two young hackers Pratul and Parteek , but it turned out to be a ubuntu installation and  support session for newbies.

Nikhil from Medianama, interacted with enterprenures about there ventures. The day ended with a call to change the conversation to ‘Poverty’ on blog action day by simply arun.

You can search youtube and slide share with tag bcd5 for videos and slides respectively.

The Delhi Barcamp4 was quite an eye opener and great learning experience for me as it was first Barcamp. To quote from DelhiBarCamp5 blog :

The seeds have germinated.
A lot of sunlight and some water sprinkles have softened the outer shell.
Little sprouts can be seen carving out themselves.

Lets  see wats in store for this sprouted  barcamp, as for me my first barcamp as landed me into  job work with RouteGuru.com as I was tested positive with EBC’s(Entrepreneurial Blood Cells) (Really ?).

Looking at the sponsors list and talks/sessions , it seems it is going to be big. I am looking forward for the sessions on Python programming , Terracotta and of course lots of Entrepreneurship gyan.

Check the venue details here or simply sms “rg <your location in delhi > to bcd5” to 56767 to arrive at the barcamp reception.

Place : IIT Delhi Seminar Hall Main Admin Block

Date : 11th and 12th October (Saturday-Sunday)

Timings : From 10:00 AM to 6.00 PM (these are ought to be stretched as it is an unconference)

and yes we will get a free tshirt and free lunch there

so join the fun !

After being postponed 2 times , The Delhi Barcamp 4 started at Amity audi quite well as scheduled. All credit to Piyush and volunteers the people behind it.

I reached the venue much early and met this guy Nilesh and IITK and IIML product , He has just started a startup and runs a music school and he was to perform in the evening beer party .

Then the event started in a formal way , But by an amazing personality Mr. Talwant Singh , A Judge by profession who has used IT in the district courts to evolutionarily automating the processes of District Courts, A first by some one in Government Sector. No wonder he blogs for cyber security.

He presented a good talk and said build something that works and is simple to use even for an illiterate person.

Then it was talk on entrepreneurship incubation my Amity ppl, Then we moved to the presentation halls. First interesting talk was by chahiye guys (one of the main sponsors) . The presntation was a bit over crowded by the American names but the emphasis was on building something that adds value.

Nirat Bhatnagar said there are two ways to make a difference :

• start a business and make profit only
• start an NGO with no profit no loss.

But there is middle path also , to put ethics in you business , to do something that adds value to society.

Then a nice talk by two young guys on building facebook apps. They had built a cool Gift sharing app iGift in their summer training.

Another session was by Alabot guys , there product is really cool , it uses NLP and sits as middleware to give results for any query from different sources. The talk was more market oriented more then telling how it was built . There was demo for getting air ticket from chennai to banglore. from IM and it provided awesome results.

In the mean time i met my twitter frnd Mayank Dhingra , He is working some really cool stuff at a startup that works in Mobile and Python . Then the guys frm quite famous slideshare , Arun and Gaurav.

Then it was lunch . After lunch Guneet from chaahiye told about developing web apps with salesforce.

and Demo by RouteGuru folks .

The the last talk was by two firangs Nick and Charlie from UK and Germany . They out sourced themselves to India for yet another startup for yet another Rails app Entrip . This talk was pick of the barcamp in terms of demo and the work they had done . Entrip is mashup of Google Maps , flickr facebook and many other api’s to show travel trips by frequent travllers on a map .

The two presentation i really liked were by prashant on weird topic East Internet company , he elaborated how the History of expeditions lead to colonies and Wat will happen with the internet .

Get the East Internet Company presentation here.

The other presentation was by Akshatt on Folksonomy the term given to social collaboration over Internet . The power of contribution/sharing can do wonders. Get the Folksonomy presentation here .

There was quiz to go and a beer party later , but i had to leave as i had been offred lift to gurgaon by another startupper from Masplantaz. He is working on some product on Rails . Wish i hear another startup success story.:)

And Yes i got the free T-Shirt  which says ” I want to change the world but they don’t provide the source code “

This was my first barcamp. I wanted to hear about python/django stuff . But it was Rails and Entrepreneurship all the way .

My Takeways from the Barcamp were:

One should build some thing that is simple and that adds value.

Check out the Barcamp Pics at Flickr.