WiCampKolkata was cool! Kolkata is now alive!!
// July 20th, 2008 // No Comments » // BarCamps, Entrepreneurship, Events, Technology
The start wasn’t that very pleasant for me though. I was asked to submit my camera in the security counter. Have never seen that happen in a BarCamp. It could have been mentioned on the wiki that we cannot carry x,y & z and could save some time and hassles.
Anyways, there were better differences than that to be written about. Firstly, it did not follow the conventional method of dynamic barcamp scheduling(as I would call it 
). Pavan Soni, the lead planner who has successfully conducted WiCamps in other cities earlier and is also conducting WiCampKochi in the week to come, was anchoring throughout the camp, discussing various facets of innovation and inviting the session-takers.
The attendance was much more than I had expected at the WiCampKolkata. When I had registered on its wiki, there were only 13 people on it and that was only 5 days before the camp. The day the camp was held, the wiki had 96 registrations, and almost 100-110 people turned up.
Like I said, there was no wiki on the spot to register sessions. The few sessions that were registered on the online wiki were the only ones that were taken apart from a session by Myshkin about his entrepreneurial venture Anaemedia, a pathbreaking product to curb the number of anaemia-triggered deaths in India. He had started in 2005 and the product is still under development.
A notable session was Ram NK’s, about his experience of leaving a really cushy-comfy position in the UK and starting up RangDe, a non-profit peer-to-peer MFI he started with his wife earlier this year.
Overall the camp was cool, the attendees were diverse and a good boost to open communities in Kolkata. I am looking forward to a lot of action out here.
