BarCampBKK3 - my experience!

Mon, May 25, 2009 Tweet Vote on HN Last weekend(23rd and 24th May) I attended BarCamp Bangkok 3, it was an awesome experience... In this blogpost i intend to outline some of the interesting aspects of it from my viewpoint. (Photo Credit new_davich on flickr) Firstly over 700 people registered on the Barcamp Website. Atleast 550 people showed up at the actual event. That is 550 people registered at the registration desks on Day 1. There may have been more people turning up throughout the day who didn't register and I don't yet have the figure for Day 2. This IMHO would make BarCampbkk3 the biggest BarCamp in ASEAN. There were many people who flew in to Bangkok from overseas exclusively for the BarCamp from countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam and Hong Kong. Many to Bangkok for their first time. Many thanks to Sripatum University(SPU) for agreeing to be the venue. They were very helpful and even provided us with 20 to 30 volunteers to help with the arrangements. Opening Ceremony! - Dont be scared barcamp isint anything formal.. this is exception ;) (Photo Credit new_davich on flickr) I collected the following schwag :- BarCamp Bangkok black T-Shirt (Thanks Luke for the awesome design) - Photo Credit Virak An eco friendly cloth Bag from SPU (Photo credit Preetam Rai) ATIZ white T-Shirt (if you can find photo ping me) Yahoo Car hanging thingy. (if you can find photo ping me) Tech start-ups in Thailand Among the interesting topics covered were some presentations and a discussion relating to Start-ups in Thailand. There were talks focused on financing issues and other issues faced by startups. The most common factors discouraging Thais and Foreigners from setting up a start-up in Thailand is(IMHO) the procedure and red-tape involved in setting up and managing a Thai Company. John mentioned about a friend who flew to Singapore in a morning and by afternoon he had his company set-up and ready for business. So thats about 10,000 Baht for the airfare and about S$200 to S$300(about 4,700 to 7,100 Thai Baht) for formalities, etc. Here in Thailand even if you know exactly what to do, it would take weeks. Ben from Proteus Tech gave and interesting talk titled "How to Create a Successful Technical Startup". Proteus Tech is also interested to encourage the potential Thai entrepreneurs. Proteus Tech said in a statement:-

"We hope to organize a startup event to help people understand how to write a business plan and define a business strategy. Then we'll have a follow up "startup gauntlet" where we give them a chance to present their biz plan and get evaluated + win some seed capital to start."

Ben's Presentation - Why didn't I see this a few years ago, I learned some of the points the hard way. Overnight Activities This was the first Barcamp in Thailand where we stayed at the venue overnight. The evening started with drinks at a nearby pub, after which we returned back to the venue. I tried in vain to help people getstated in Linux, but looks like nobody was interested... We played a couple of rounds of a Werewolf Game which was interesting, the foreigners always got nominated to be werewolves and kicked out first.... @murz (tried to) introduce us to a board game "Adel Verpflichtet". The rules were so complex that she had to draw a flowchart to explain it :) Along with Jan, I did a "SEO site clinic" where we analyzed volunteers websites from an SEO viewpoint. Unlike last BarCamp, this was attended by very few people, probably due to clash in timing with other more popular topics. Overall it was very exciting to be a part of BarCampBKK3 looking forward to BarCampBKK4 Links:- BarCamp Bangkok Website : http://www.barcampbangkok.org Pics : http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=barcampbkk3&w=all Slides : http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?lang=**&submit=post&q=+barcampbkk3&commit=search Blogs : http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=barcampbkk3