BarCamp, BLR 2 - Day 1 Summary

I was trying to go around meet with people and also attend sessions. Here is a summary of the sessions I attended on Day 1 of BarCamp Bangalore 2.

Project Management @ ThoughtsWorks - Marco Jansen

4 Principals binding the Agile Development Methodology

Principal 1: Individuals and Interaction over processes and tools.

Stand up meeting with three questions - What did you do yesterday, what will you do today? And what is stopping your work today.

Principal 2: Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation.

Principal 3: Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.

Principal 4: Responding to change over following a plan.

Eye Donation Awareness - Pradeep Sudharshan

Pradeep's vision is to create awareness about eye donation, its advantages and its NEED. You will get all the required information from his website- http://www.giftyoursight.info/.

How corporations emerge from Nature - Sudarshan

Sudarshan explains this concept using Game Theory.

There are four aspects to look at - CC (Cooperating & Cooperating), DC (Defecting & Cooperative), DD (Defecting & Defecting), CD (Cooperating & Defecting).

Assigning Points:

DC > CC

CC > DD

DD > CD

DC > CC > DD > CD

5 3 1 0

With the game theory graph, Sudarshan shows that:

"Always Cooperative" is slowly diminishing and heading towards being distinct.

"Random" is also slowing diminishing.

"Defector" is slowly growing.

There are permutations and combinations of population distribution. Sudharhan explains various cases when he distributes population percentage between - Always Cooperative, Tit-for-Tat, Always Defective and Random.

New Player - Pavlov - He is always changing his approach based on the situation. He is like a Tit-for-Tat.

Now, we distribute the complete population between the 5 categories (Always Cooperative, Tit-for-Tat, Always Defective, Random and Pavlov). The graph shows that Tit-for-tat, Always Cooperate and Pavlov survive and others become distinct.

Pointers - Prisoner's Dilemma, Author's like Richard Dockins, Steven Wolfram, Roger Penrose, Dainea Dennet.

Mingle Box - Kavitha Iyer

Kavitha says that they have seen a very good growth in the last 3 months of MingleBox's launch. As per the feedback she received from customers (showed on the slide) she feels the key of their success is - easy Navigation and feeling safer to be on MingleBox rather than on Orkut.

Kavitha feels that the audience they are looking is below 25 and currently they have 75% people less than 25 on their site today. MingleBox is currently a 14 Member Team and they are looking for people sharing the same passion who can help the orgnization grow.

Being 'ActiveMobs' and having 'InactivMoney'

Kesav (one of BarCamp Bangalore2 organizers) introduced me to Sidu, Mostly Harmless (His VCard is reading this).

Are you tired of tracking where your money is going or are you tired of organizing an event with family or friends, Sidu has a great solution for us.

http://www.rachnabhat.net/activmobs/ - ActiveMobs is a solution, where you can register your mobile number and also your friends/family with a common tag and when you would want to communicate to all, send a SMS to the common number (9844622848) and lo! Your message is sent to all numbers which are registered with the site. Great way to communicate…

http://inactiv.com/ - Track spending your money. Its simple, register yourself and send a SMS to 9844622848. The server remembers all your messages and generates a report as to where you are spending your money….
Yes, it does remember the number of SMS's you sent and the money you spent in tracking your money :)

Social Entrepreneurship Competition

'Genesis' is a Social Entrepreneurship Competition collectively brought in by TCS, IIT Madras and MIT to come up with innovative ideas which are socially relevent and feasible.

http://www.genesis.iitm.ac.in/ - Go check it out....

BarCamp Bangalore 2 - Started

I am here at the BarCamp Bangalore right now. It is yet to begin and already the room is filled.....I am sort of excited to be here and I am quite sure there is lots in store for today and tomorrow.

I really appreciate all the efforts of the Organizers - arrangements are too good.

I also would like to thank the sponsors for providing opportunities for people like me to 'connect' and 'innovate'.

More to come as the day goes by...will keep posting....

BTW, here are few pictures before we start - http://www.flickr.com/photos/arunram

Social Entrepreneurship...

1. What is Social Entrepreneurship?

• Entrepreneurship for a cause, contributing to uplifting standard of living.
  It is your regular business model with Profits and Losses - You can be rich and well established too!!!
• Aim is to create a product/service which is 'purely' for social benefit.
  

2. What are the various areas? (In broad terms, to begin with)

• HealthCare
• Education

These two are primary requirements of any society. If these are available, then many other aspects can be addressed - Poverty, Quality of life etc.

3. How can individuals come together?

• People with common thoughts and chosen area to establish an organization.
• Commitment to enhance Quality of Life.

4. Is there a difference between Entrepreneurship Vs. Social Entrepreneurship?

• Desire to be an Entrepreneur with a difference while doing your regular work! - You need not give up your regular job, and still be an entrepreneur of your choice marking a difference...
• Changing the way we live...

BarCamping

I read about BarCamp (http://barcamp.org/) recently and was exicted to know that these type of forums existed to encourage innovativity.
As I am from Bangalore, India, I was interested to check out if there is any BarCamp activity here. Fortunately, there is one which was organized in the past and now we are getting together for another BarCamp. Visit BarCamp Bangalore Hompe Page for more details and registration...

I will write more in detail of my experiences after taking part.

Getting together

To bring people who are interested in innovating to change the way we live, I have created a new group - www.groups.yahoo.com/group/SocietyForward. Do come and join and let us work towards making this world a better place to live.