Also at Barcamp Bangalore 5 were Nithya and Prateek Dayal of Muziboo, an online music community. This morning after watching Shourya’s vidcast with Prateek, I went to have a look at the site.

There’s something about listening to a homemade amateurish production, reading the comments, and then moving on to another recording wherein the performer improves based on earlier feedback that is strongly reminiscent of sitting around with friends, unwinding at the afterparty, wherein someone strumming a guitar breaks into song and the others chime in, each doing it for the exhilaration of letting it out than with the intent of a musical production.

Muziboo may be on to something if they can build an environment that caters to such emotional release.

Plans are afoot for a Bangalore edition of Barcamp. Barcamp is an “Unconference”, an event where we eliminate the panel of speakers and let the attendees do the talking, on the assumption that most attendees are also knowledgeable and, being unencumbered by the formality of stage, more likely to make interesting conversation.

First, some history:

O’Reilly is a US-based tech publisher that, like all tech publishers, needs to become aware of emerging technologies well in advance so they can get a book out on the subject before it gets mainstream. Books have long gestation periods. Among their methods has been what CEO Tim O’Reilly calls “Friends of O’Reilly Camp” (Foo Camp), an annual event since 2003 wherein Tim invites a bunch of really smart people to hang out together in a camp (a real camp, with tents for accommodation) and teach each other stuff or brainstorm new ideas, without any predetermined structure. O’Reilly skims from this for their books and conferences.

The event was meant to be private, but word got out and this of course pissed off a lot of people who weren’t invited, or weren’t invited the following year. Hence Barcamp, a counter event where anybody can participate. (The words foo and bar have a long and unrelated history together; this has nothing to do with bartending.)

Now, before you think this is yet another tech conference that could be of no possible interest to you, hark! Barcamp is a geek conference, a place for anyone with a good understanding of any subject to come and learn from each other. Whether you are a photographer, architect, lawyer, biker or academic, the place is open to you. See my post to the discussion list with additional thoughts.

Barcamp’s hope is that (a) participants will have a good time (non-contributing spectators are not welcome), and (b) that the event will be a place to form collaborations and germinate ideas that will eventually see the light of day. This concern with outcome is critical: without that, this would just be a bunch of friends hanging out and celebrating their togetherness rather than their achievements.

Interested? Add yourself to the wiki and join the discussion list.