A Review of Barcamp Chennai

Belated yeah, but was slightly caught up with work. So writing from memory and putting up only QQs.


What was good: Quite a big crowd, guys from a variety of backgrounds (some from the construction industry!), some really interesting presentations, got to hear about some very exciting stuff happening out there, very nice people, very well organized by Kiruba/Ganesh/others - attention to detail was impressive, lots of enthu.

What could be improved: Surprisingly low awareness about web 2.0 (even though the conference was about it!), turned out to be a general tech conf., maybe was a bit too long - could feel the drop in interest as presentations progressed.

Some presentations on the first day:
1) Ganesh Padmanabhan - Voicesnap
- Asynchronous voice messaging. Interesting app, but could be made more tech-savvy.
"What is RSS?" (Someone from the audience: Its like podcasting... :p)
"Are you IMS compliant?"
"How do you plan to make money from this ?"
"Does it have APS?"

2) Vinoo - Netcore, Product manager of MyToday.com
- A platform for setting up custom aggregators
"You have firefox?"
"People don't use craigslist much in India"
"Long term in a digg like position"
Audience: "How does your site compare with justsamachar.com?". Answer: We have him working with us
Audience: "Whats your business model?". Answer: "As of now we have no business model. We just want to crack the mobile space..."

3) Suman Karmuri - A programming language called NPL. A language for converting code into video!!
"I have written a language called NPL" Audience:"Why do we need another language?"
"This is the first public forum where this is being presented"

4) Vijay Anand - Project Infranet. Working with Ashok Jhunjunwalla@IITM
- Some form of a social security number for Indians
"In Canada it takes 15 minutes to start a company. It takes 96 days to start a company in India. And then they may reject it for having a name like 'Technologies'"
"There is no business model". "This is a very long term project"
Audience: "You can't solve a social problem by throwing technology at it"
Audience: "So how will it solve the problems of the poor?". Answer: "This will give the government a framework to monitor rural information" (ah! fellow consult :p)

5) Balaji Subramanian -
- System for tracking files
"Complementary technology to RFID"

6) K.L.Narayanan - Art of web 2.0 (Finally!!) - Founder director for 360degree interactive.
"Data comes first, container comes next"
"Data DJing"
"Amazon web services costs Rs 6.75 per GB"
"Web 2.0 is about people participating in a whole lot of ways"

Disclaimer: QQs are meant to be out of context

Some Photos from the Barcamp