Shwetank Dixit

On the weekend, I went to thiruvananthapuram, AKA Trivandram, where Barcamp Kerala 5 took place on sunday. I think the event can be expressed in the testimonial I sent to Anand about the event

I came all the way from Chandigarh to attend Barcamp Kerala. My hope was to meet and exchange ideas with the best technical minds in Kerala. However, BCK5 went well beyond my already high expections. The crowd was not only knowledgable and technically strong, but also were very humble, polite and had excellent communication skills, as evidenced by the presentations conducted. The Technopark campus, with its beautifull campus and excellent infrastructure, proved to be an great venue. I've took part in a lot of Barcamps across India, and I have to say BCK5 was an especially great experience. Kudos to the organizers and sponsors.

And I really meant it. Let me elaborate further...

First, the crowd: In terms of quantity, it wasnt the biggest, just around 120 or so IMO. However, most of them were pretty knowledgeble and had excellent communication skills. Also, most of them spoke in english which made my task of the understanding whats being said, much easier. The presentations were quite good as well, and most of them avoided the cheezy stupidity of clip-art and unnessery text which often plagues presentations in India. Many of them also showed live code examples, and I found quite refreshing.

Secondly, the infrastructure: The Technopark is Trivandrum is certainly one of the most beautifull business parks I've been to, and the conference hall there was quite nice as well. There were mics for everyone in the audience as well, so nobody in the audience had to shout to get their points or questions heard. Usually in other barcamps, people hesistate to ask questions for the same reason, especially females. The hall was air conditioned as well, which was a relief from the hot and humid weather outside, and the sound system was quite good as well, the voice of the speakers being audible throughout the auditorium, even at the back.

Thirdly, the enthusiasm: The geek community in Kerala is certanly alive and thriving. The enthusiasm I felt there was reminiscent to the not-too-recent barcamp in Kolkata which i had attended, which was the first to be held in that city. The guys really seemed excited to meet everyone else, many of whom they only knew through twitter and hadn't seen in real life.

Fourthly, it was all in one hall. We decided against seperate tracks, mainly because they werent as many people there to make one. However, this played out well for people like me, who like to keep track of all the talks, and hate missing out on some talks just because you're attending another. Having just one track gives a more close and intimate atmosphere, otherwise things seems a bit too spread out sometimes in barcamps here. However, the reality is, as an event grows, multiple tracks are a neccessity, but I like the fact that BCK5 didn't have it.

Fiftly, the talks itself: The day started out with a talk on the Keralite youth, and how a new attitude and greater encouragement is needed to spur the youth in Kerala to do something with their lives. The speaker butressed his point with a lot of stats, but did not provide the source of all the figures (I somehow forgot to ask him as well). The talk by Praseed on making a compiler in .Net was also quite awesome, though I reckon it went over the head of most people (at least the ones who were not so technical).

One more notable talk was by Binny VA, titled 'Development: What they don't teach you in college (everything important)'. I agreed with his basic premise that colleges don't teach a student anything really, if it comes to a normal web development job. However, I do disagree on a couple of points. First, like it or not, for many (not all) students in India, the first introduction to computers (even when they choose computer science as their major) is college. And for many, college provides them the first introduction to programming. Colleges also put young students in touch with other bright students, and together many of them help each other learn and implement some nice cool stuff.

Technically speaking, everything taught formally in college is from curriculla available in books, and as long as you read the proper books or sites on the net, you can gain similar knowledge, theoretically speaking. However, in reality, college is a time in which you are developing not just intellectually, but socially as well and IMO, its still a better idea for most people to stick through college than drop out and do a job straight-away. Having said that, Binny VA mentioned a whole lot of stuff that I wish college students knew before they start their first day at office.

I also spoke there. I spoke on HTML5, SVG and standards in general. The talk as well the swag I handed out, seemed to be well recieved I ended up having extended discussions even after my session ended.

There was one more gentleman, who was a farmer. He founded a site, in which through an iFrame, he linked to the publicly available stats of the Kerala governement. The interesting thing is, these stats, which were hidden somewhere where not a lot of poeple would see, shows a bunch of irregularities in the sale of rubber by the governement. The government then contacted him, and asked him to remove the iFrame, stating that their content is all rights reserved, and linking through the iFrame is not allowed. He asked us, whether this is correct. Sadly, I think the gentleman can't do much in this case. The content is all rights reserved by the Government of India. If they want (which they do) they can rightfully order him to remove the iFrame. However, he can take a snippet of the data and if he adds some analysis to it, and makes a review of it, then it maybe permissable under fair use (Just like snippets of paragraphs are sometimes included in book reviews).

BCK5 was a great event, and kudos to the organizers, especially Anand and Kenny.