Ideacamp Pune, an unconference organized at Persistent Systems, Pune saw huge gathering of people coming in from various corners of India. I was there at the event too.
Here’s my take on the event:
Well… “a picture says more than a thousand words…”
Take a look at photos here..
Well, I reached at the venue at around 10:30 am and the event had already started. The registration was a breeze, I moved up straight to one of the 2 hall’s. The discussions had already started and the topic was, “how to convert your idea to a market ready product”. The speaker showed up videos from the american inventor show and it brought in a debate on invention vs innovation. Everyone actively participated in this since it’s one of the oldest, argumentative type topics. My straight view on this topic was “innovation is when you are not trying to re-invent the wheel, any other original work never done before is invention”
Next up was Abhay - (semantic web - 42) who talked about semantic search, he gave several examples of how this new method would change the way people look at search results. Also, the semantic search pulls out relevant information in the form of photos, videos & content. There is really no doubt about the success of these kinds of innovations but it’s still a long way to go.
Large number of students also showed up to the event, one such talk was ‘Swarm Intelligence Algorithms and Applications’ by Harshvardhan Pande and Hasan Poonawala, they talked about the ant methodology and also showed a visual simulation of how it works.
It was about 1pm by this time and we moved straight to the top floor for lunch, the arrangements and the food was really superb and very well organized indeed. I happen to share thoughts with Rajesh Moorjani, Ilaaka.com during lunch time and we exchanged thoughts on how online advertising is really not working in india and the social web in general.
Then we moved straight downstairs to the post lunch sessions and the first up was the talk SMS-based micropayment service by Shashikant, he talked about how small payments of denominations Rs 1, 2, 5, 10.. can be made by introducing a new model into the current telelecom industry. What you could do is introduce a model similar to paypal but which works on the mobile and you are done.
At the same time in the other hall was a very inspirational talk which i missed by Dr. Anupam Saraph who talked about his vision for pune and how we all can help work towards our dream Pune!! Well, after his talk the whole ideacamp theme went from tech to a more social one with talks about NGOs and how to help rural income generation. Another talk which i personally liked was the talk by Freeman Murray (mp3 player based learning for students), he talked about how mp3 players can redefine the way in which knowledge can be transferred. The idea was to put all the content which is suitable for learning via voice on to the mp3 player which is now very cheap (less than Rs.300) and distribute it amongst students. The idea is self explanatory since we all are aware of the fact that “listening is much more effective than reading”. Freeman is also working with several NGOs to bring up this concept and has already started with a small trial in one of the schools.
After this was the talk caled “India, I care!” which i almost missed but the theme was social again and ran in the line of how we could make our city the best place to live in and how could one go about taking initiative and make the world a better place.
Well, after these the theme moved again to the tech world with the talk “Eco friendly IT labs” in which he shared thoughts on how to save power and it’s impact on world, since i had researched on this topic in my engineering days by writing a paper titled “Green Monitor” it was really great to find someone thinking on the same lines.
Next up was my talk “Do you need to go to Google?” in which i expressed the need for a single dotcom or a single localized search which would prove to be more effective than using google for localized search. My whole idea behind this thought was to see how pune reacted to the new concept since we are working on several products focused entirely on pune. It was good to see people’s reactions on this one and i got the feedback i was looking for.
After this we went straight to the snack corner where Tea & Samosa was served and this was actually the best time because we could network with other people and share views.
Post tea where sessions by a few other talks like “how to eliminate waste and increase value” , “how to ideate?”, “Single login system” and a few others. By this time of the day it was about 6:30 pm and it gave time to sum up the discussions we had through the day, we also discussed the next steps that should be taken to keep the tempo going.
My Views on Ideacamp:-Ideacamp as a concept is very good but there are a lot of debates surrounding it like, people might not reveal their ideas thinking someone might steal them which is very true indeed and there have been some many incidents especially in the tech industry. Also, we saw this live at the event where people did not disclose lot and things went mysterious but at the same time you can have 2 people thinking about the same idea in different corners of the world, so it all depends on how people take it.
Another thing which we be good to incorporate is to separate the tech & social tracks since it could make it more streamlined. Also, there should be a platform ( a website maybe ) to keep track of how the progress has been since the idea was out.
All in all it was a great event, special thanks to the volunteers and organizers who made such a big event possible. Hope we have many more ideacamps in the future…
Take a look at photos here..
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