Realisations post Mumbai Bar Camp 2

I rather enjoyed the Pune Blog Camp - what with me presenting and all the TV and newspaper journos clamoring for interviews, it was great fun!

So last Sunday got up bright and early and decided to attend the Mumbai Bar Camp2 (at IIT Powai).

Now, it must be mentioned that a Bar Camp is different from a Blog Camp. The Bar Camp deals with technology in general while the Blog Camp is specific to blogging.

Knowing that, I still thought I could learn something if I attended. Right? Well, read on, we’ll address that in a bit.

Saks & I got there a tad late (they were almost done with all the intros to the topics).

The first thing that strikes me as we enter the over packed auditorium is that the air-con is not working. One guy vacates his seat, just next to my friend Rajiv Dingra (Founder & CEO of WatBlog) and so I quickly steal it in time to find out the wi-fi is not working either. Well.

Since the topics and the explanations of them are rather going above my head and I was rather tired from lack of sleep after partying late Saturday night (This is what I was hearing: I’ll be talking about gaming technology and it’s zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, sorry wha-huh?), I used the time to try and see if I recognized anyone.

And I did.

It’s weird but so many of the faces were people I knew (or knew of) or had at least seen before.

Realisation #1 -> I’m a geek. And I belong to a geek club.

I’m still shaking in my pants (did I mention my pants actually were a really nice pair of jeans with a butterfly encrusted in silver on the right pocket? No?) from that realization when I found myself putting up hand for “those who’ve not yet registered”. Tsk, tsk, bad Melody. No free geek T-shirt for you at this camp.

Fast forward to post registration (nope, didn’t get the T, what you think that was why I came?), Saks and I are standing at the rather chaotic board outlining the topics for the day. And no, she didn’t understand most of them either.

We finally choose to go to the Seminar Hall - this very hi-tech decision was based on the hi-tech fact that there was an AC in that particular hall. Nice.

Talk 1 is by a guy who doesn’t know it yet, but is going to get majorly questioned throughout his talk by one particular person present. No, not me, what did I know to ask?

I just sat there, through the barage of information, questions and answers, thinking - H-UH????

Realisation #2 -> If you don’t even understand what a conference or camp is about, it’s probably likely that you won’t get any of the talks at the conference / camp

These are samples of some of the words that I didn’t understand:

defacto standard mobile video streaming entertainment solutions RTSP protocols algorithm s2.4 (which turned out to be H.264) for video streaming iPhone using overedge or overwi-fi convergence of declining ARPUs simbian applications dfeijft awpokimen sdfiootuy helpmei’mdyinghere.

And more (lots more) gibberish like that.

Realisation #3 ->Damn, I’m not even a geek. At least these geeks know what’s happening. I’m a lower life form. I’m a BLONDE geek.

That realisation, putting me lower down in the food chain, I finally stopped even trying to figure out what was going on and entertained myself drawing on my little Nokia post-it book (nice touch guys!). My drawing comprised mainly of me (cute lil stick figure) and all the matter of the presentation floating about 10.36 feet above my head.

Saks was also entertaining herself with the little book and by this point was busy rolling out little chits to form the initials of her name. And other, er, interesting words. See sample:

Realisation #4 ->This is probably a good time to make like a rat and quit this ship.

Which is exactly what we did. Only onepointsomething session after we had come, we left. Not before saying our hellos to a few people - including Aditya Mishra (one of the organisers) who met us almost a year ago at G’s bday (& who recognized us immediately, nice!) and Nigel (a web developer) who came upto me, pointed and said “thevoiceinmyhead.com”.

My need for attention thus being (somewhat) dissipated, Saks and I left and consoled ourselves over Pizza (what better?!), where I had my final realisation for the day:

Realisation #5 ->It’s easier to get people to donate for charity if you just ask them to add it to their bill.

Was particularly impressed by the ‘add Rs. 10′ to your bill in support of UN’s World Food Program. Sometimes while walking out of a store I see a donate-to-this-or-that charity and I may put some money in. But I also may not. When paying a bill that is always more than 50 times the amount however, Rs. 10 seems like nothing. Good marketing imo. Ended the meal full, and happy we did a small little bit for someone else’s stomachs too.

PS: This week (14th - 20 October 2007), is World Hunger Relief Week. Do check out their site (link above) and also please donate whatever you can towards this very worthy cause (see ‘ways to donate’ on their page, you can also send cheques).

Tags: BarCamp, BarCampMumbai2, Blog, blogcamp, BlogCampPune, bloggers, bloggersmeet, IIT, India, Mumbai