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I had a funny feeling as I was getting to leave the blogcamp. A feeling of incompleteness. A feeling that something had gone inconsistent with my expectations. A feeling of disappointment. Maybe it was unreal expectations. After all this was the first blogcamp I had attended. But it certainly wasn’t the first conference I had attended.

Soon after I expressed that feeling of disappointment, I did get a few DMs n tweets wondering why. Sure seemed like I was one of the less excited people at the end of the blogcamp – a small minority perhaps. But there was an event, an event which I decided I had to act upon and express. For no other reason, but that it was the right thing to do. And if I ruffle any feathers along the way, so be it – with one caveat. I still think the unorganisers did a tremendous job of just putting the act together and providing a platform for so many people to come together and interact. Nothing I mention is meant to replace or override my deep appreciation and gratitude towards the unorganisers for that. I am certain there were other positives as well, but when you are writing a rant, its important to focus on the rant.

So here were some issues that contributed to my disappointment at the blogcamp.

• Understanding of Audience segmentation :

  To me for any event of this size, the audience is the king. The organisation of the sessions needs to be conducted towards maximising the audience value. There existed segments of diversity in the audience here. Part of that diversity actually already showed itself up in a thread prior to the blogcamp on the post Why you should attend BlogCampPune – 2. Some bloggers were already less than keen to attend a blogcamp. In general, I have gathered that there seem to be three primary blogger profiles. The expressionists focus on blogs as a vehicle for their creativity and expression. The amateur enthusiast value drivers focus on treating a blog as a vehicle to provide a substantial value to their audience and often end up classifying themselves into specific niches to be able to maximise that value. Finally there are those who treat blogs as a vehicle of commerce. There was no apparent attention to any of this segmentation. And as any person especially with a marketing background will tell you – segmentation is critical, to be able to provide maximum value. I have to be speculating here, but I felt this camp could’ve been run better if this segmentation had been addressed. Have global discussions spanning all, followed by birds of feather separation. Separate threads running for each segment of the audience. It would still not provide the maximum potential value for each audience member, but certainly would at least contribute to optimisation.

  Due to lack of concrete data, I am going to proceed on an uninformed conclusion. That the audience (there were 125+ of them) was predominantly non commercial in focus and was there to learn how to make their blog content superior. Blog marketing, page views, SEO was not at the top of their priorities. And yet the first two talks in the primary room devoted extensive attention and time to these topics. I have no issue with the topics, but given my uninformed conclusion, I just thought that it was a poor fit for the large audience.

• Logistics and Infrastructure :

  While SICSR is a great patron of local events, one has to understand that its architecture is not particularly suited for Open Space based events. Two classrooms – one large and one small with small exit points don’t allow for easy movement of people. So attempting to conduct a set of sessions based on Open Space Technology (something I shall question later) in that architecture was definitely something to ponder upon. This was not an insignificant issue. It was an important issue which led to a substantial dilution of one set of sessions and a suboptimisation of the net result whichever way one looked at it. Instead this very architecture could’ve been leveraged by focusing on conducting separate session threads, each collectively addressing a different audience segment. An opportunity that was missed.

  There was also another way to segment in this case. The projector in the second room did not work with many laptops due to a faulty cable. One could’ve classified the presentations as “projected” and “non projected” thus helping reduce the substantial downtime in booting up each individual talk. But that was not to be either.

• Time Management :

  A fair amount of time was spent upfront in every blogger introducing himself at some length. I think thats a great idea for a group of say 25 bloggers. But in a group of 125+ people the rule no. 3 in the Barcamp rules should’ve gotten applied – only 3 word intros. There was even a amusing situation I saw of one presentation extending itself with no intervention from the unorganisers, and finally one of the audience actually started playing the ringtone from his mobile just to hurry up the closure. If that was an isolated session it wouldn’t have been important. But combined with the fact that there was no segmentation based on audience interest, along with the fact that simultaneous presentations were scheduled with parallel time slots, and one of the two rooms started to be behind schedule, meant people’s planned juggling between the rooms also went for a toss. I for example had to leave before Navin’s presentation ended and had to miss Vishal and Sandy’s presentations, as the other room was apparently on schedule and I had to reach there well in time to prepare for my presentation and then struggle with the faulty cable for a long time. I don’t know if that disruption happened for others or not.

To me personally the biggest factors for my disappointment were :

• The lack of focused threads (BOF) meant that I ended up attending the commercial / success focused presentations and missing the content or blogging experience focused presentations eg Sandy’s.
• I felt a strong focus on marketing, pageviews, SEO etc. in Ankesh, Ankur and Jim Karter’s presentation – focus I thought was perhaps not why a majority of the audience had come there. I heard Navin articulate reader value and content. (I missed Meeta’s presentation entirely and Aditto’s partially). But what came across as the overriding impression was that there was a big imbalance between, the % speakers focused on blog success through tactics (SEO, Marketing) and those on content and readers vis. a vis. the same percentage spread from an audience interest perspective. I must admit that I enjoyed Jim’s presentation thoroughly as a manager and not as a blogger – at the clean and incisive way of approaching blogging as a commercial enterprise. However this was also the strongest element in my disappointment – that blogging is being viewed at so very commercially. I have sufficient commercial considerations in my daily activities. It was just completely disappointing to see bloggers discuss pageviews, clicks and SEO as the goal and content as the vehicle to reach the goal, with value to readers being just the necessary component for the ecosystem. Raised in me exactly the same cynicism that I have such an abundance of, when I come across managers discuss a P&L as the goal, with the commercial offerings as a vehicle to reach the goal, and customers being a necessary participant in the ecosystem. I shall leave the reader to decide where the cart is and where the horse lies.
• The changing rules had me confused. I first prepared for a half an hour presentation, then changed it due to an apparent statement in the media that no presentation would be allowed to go beyond 10 minutes only to find again that the time slots were 30 minutes. Add to that the necessity of having to leave an interesting presentation and struggle with the setup for some time. (I really detest ever keeping an audience waiting for more than a minute – seems like I ended up keeping them waiting for ages). I am not quite sure what exactly the rules were as far as the presentation time slots was concerned.

Trigger
I did refer to the fact that there was an event that happened which actually triggered this response. It was the publication of this “Post BlogCamp Pune Self-Analysis kit” (especially starting with slide 13). So I did the self analysis. And I did not restrict my analysis to self – I pulled in the whole blogcamp and the notion of blogcamp and the rules around a blogcamp and Open Space Technologies. I did an analysis on the whole set. Barcamp, Blogcamp, Open Spaces are all new terms for me. But when I am faced with “Laws”, the first thing I generally do is to try to do my homework. So I decided to explore these laws on Wikipedia.

Turns out the four rules and law of two feet are an essential tenet of the Open Space Technology. Also turns out Open Spaces help especially in the following context as per Wikipedia :

Proponents[who?] claim that OST suits groups of any size; groups ranging from five to several thousand participants have used it. According to its proponents[who?], it works best under the following conditions:

1. the topic of the meeting involves a real business issue (however one defines “business”)
2. the participants really care about that issue
3. the issue has so much complexity that no single person or small group can fully understand it
4. the issue requires highly diverse skills and people for a successful resolution
5. the participants have genuine passion about the issue; which can often include conflict (compare criterion 2)
6. the issue requires immediate action (a “decision time of yesterday”)

There was no issue that required immediate action here in the blogcamp per se, that we had to focus on. There was no decision we had to reach. So was this a completely inappropriate choice? Not really. Unconferences share many characteristics of Open Spaces, and BarCamp introduces a further variation. Interestingly the page on Barcamp states (emphasis mine)

FooCamps and BarCamps are based on a simplified variation of Open Space Technology (OST), leaving out some key elements like the 4 principles and the Law of the Two Feet but maintaining the self-organizing character of OST.

Now I am confused – are the 4 principles and the law of 2 feet applicable to bar camps ? Apparently those are the Laws we should’ve remembered while conducting the self analysis. And theres one more set of rules for a Barcamp. This includes the 3 word introduction as one of the rules. It also states “Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.” I would interpret that as stating that presentations should get terminated once a time slot is over. And while a time slot is flexible, that it varies between 10 minutes and 30 minutes is inconveniencing to say the least.

So exactly what are the rules and the Law here ? I’m confused. And with regards to moving around etc. may I suggest the architecture of the location simply wasn’t the most conducive. If I may put forth the thought that under a classroom situation, it might just be better to move around the speakers and their time slots to suit the audience rather than expecting the audience to move around.

So next time we have a bar/blog camp, am I likely to refrain from attending it ? Far from it, I would like to see if I can contribute positively. But not as an unorganiser. As an organiser. There are some situations and contexts where the highly unstructured plays work. And there are some where they don’t. The important thing is to not focus on the structure of the event – focus on the value to the attendees. 125 people for 6 hours is 750 person hours of attention. Its important to use it most effectively.

Suggestion
Next time we hold a barcamp / blogcamp, lets take cognisance of at least two factors. If it is a classroom structure lets adapt to it. And if the audience is diverse, lets work to figure out how it can be segmented and Birds of a Feather colocated. And finally lets understand the audience a bit better and encourage content which satisfies their needs and tickles their imagination in appropriately proportional terms. And lets have rules. We need rules. But if the audience isn’t satisfied, lets screw the rules and service the audience.

And if you are wondering where audience entered the barcamp vocabulary – when you have 100+ attendees and about 10 speakers, it means you have a 90+ audience at the minimum. Not what barcamps were perhaps designed for.

PuneTech is 1 year old today. Birthdays and New Year days are a great time to reflect upon the year gone past, and it was a little difficult to let go of an opportunity to comment.

A community is as strong as its participants. A community is also as strong as the people who bind it together. A tech community is fed by content. A tech community is also fed by character. What I have learnt about PuneTech is that even if it is modest in attracting newer people into the fold, it does a great job of binding it together. In Navin Kabra and Amit Paranjape, and supported by many others one realises one has met a set of people who really want to bind and then grow rather than grow and then bind. Important elements for a solid foundation for a community.

In the past one year PuneTech has provided a community / platform / vehicle / opportunity / facilitation for (in no particular order):

• Increased creation and sharing of Technology related content, especially related to Pune based companies and individuals
• A watering hole for people with related interests to come together, interact and grow their interactions.
• Collaboration with other bodies of overlapping interests, most notably the Pune Open Coffee Club
• Network engagement and sustainance supporting essential infrastructural needs of a network such as event organising / sharing / reminders
• Visibility driving for participants by both writing about the community participants or allowing them to write about themselves.

One of the things that does strike about PuneTech is its freshness and its willingness to experiment, learn and retry. Its not only growing but continuously reinventing itself to stay more relevant and useful. In retrospect, a part of the the Pune Technology Community is far better served today thanks to PuneTech. Kudos to PuneTech for a great year. And while in my limited knowledge, it has been more successful than any other similarly focused effort in Pune, it could grow even faster. But what I like about it is that its growth so far is much more sustainable than it is rapid. Allowing the growth to gather more momentum while continuing to retain sustainability will require many more of us to ask ourselves how we can support PuneTech and then help providing and implementing the answers. Thats the kind of nutrition a 1 year old needs.

PuneTech just published its Comment Policy. Given its role in promoting technology usage and knowledge transfer in and outside Pune and (in my perception) to maintain a strong brand perception, this is just what the doctor ordered. Its a pretty detailed policy, but the short version is cute enough to tempt me to reproduce below :

if (the comment is not relevant to the article)
     We will delete it;
       /* take your irrelevant rambling elsewhere */

  else if (the comment is a personal attack)
     we will delete it;
       /* rude people not welcome here */

  else if (the comment has abusive language)
     we will delete it;
       /* we are trying to have a civil discussion here */

  else if (the comment exposes PuneTech to legal liability)
     we will delete it;
       /* we don't want to get sued
          that distracts from the purpose of this website
          more details below */

  else
     your comment is welcome;

Disclaimer :I am not a lawyer, neither do I claim to understand law well. The perspective below is based on my reading of the two bills which was not conducted in complete rigour and detail. The following is my understanding it. For a legally valid opinion kindly consult a lawyer.

Just last month, the Indian Parliament passed the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006. The bill is currently pending Presidential assent (to the best of my knowledge) and is expected to become a law soon. Unfortunately this document is a little hard to follow since it refers to changes made to the earlier applicable version of the law as defined by The Information Technology Act, 2000. One has to read them side by side to understand the full import. This post primarily focuses on the implications of the changes to the law but may refer from time to time to the implications of the earlier version as well.

Digital Signatures and Certificates : This is a very large section of the bill. I think I shall need to read it more carefully. So I am completely skipping that section and may choose to write separately about it later.

Computer networks and their security :

This bill now brings into purview wireless networks (the word wireless got added to the definition of a network). While an intermediary earlier was someone who stored or transmitted a message, it is a far broader definition as stated below.

Note that a message has been replaced by a record which broadens the scope quite a bit, and in my perhaps lay interpretation is likely to bring under its purview all the software as a service or a network service providers.

Offenses

The earlier law had two offenses listed in this section, which now have increased. Lets take a look at them.

The first offense description related to tampering of source code continues to remain the same unchanged -

The next offense Hacking with a computer system is now far less precise, and loosely means any dishonest or fraudulent activity in the context of a number of computer related activities as described in Section 43. That section incidentally has now been supplemented by Section 43A which under its purview now requires “body corporates possessing, dealing or handling any sensitive personal data” to maintain reasonable security practices and procedures (with a two year prison sentence in case of default). I will not dwell on Section 43 since it lists out a broad range of activities which can have negative consequences on computer systems and networks.

A new offense description can now be found as follows :

This is an onerous clause requiring us to be very careful in many of our online communications. I think to the extent it brings in accountability in online communications it is welcome. It is my belief that both the prosecution or courts are unlikely to pull people up for frivolous comments unless there are strong negative consequences and / or it is a persistent activity with a deliberately negative intent. However I still feel concerned about the rather loose wording which still could get misused.

The next offense is related to pornography. The first clause of the offense continues to the best of my reading ablities to be unmodified

However it has now been further expanded by the following

I could not find any reference in my reading to either consumption or storage of pornographic content to be an offense.

Interception and Decryption : While the wordings are different I could not find any substantive changes in the clauses related to the state rights to Interception and Decryption, except that the word Monitoring has also got added. But its safe to say that the Central Government can pretty much continue to snoop on any electronic transmission as they believe necessary. Couldn’t really figure out what if any difference this bill makes.

Modifications to the Indian Penal Code : The penal code is now applicable to “any person in any place without and beyond India committing offense targeting a computer resource located in India”. So people who are not residents or citizens of India targeting Indian computer systems are now classified as offenders. Incidentally it should be noted that the penal code already applies to “Any citizen of India in any place without and beyond India”. However that seems to be now made much clearer by the explanation which states that “the word offense includes every act committed outside India which, if committed in India, would be punishable under this Code”. While I am not certain about it my lay reading seems to indicate that Indian Citizens committing violations outside India will be eligible to be flagged as offenders. If my interpretation is correct, Indian Citizens involved in publishing or transmitting pornography or in activities which could get classified as an offender as per this law, , will get classified as offenders under the act in India, even if such activities are legal in the parts of the world where they or their computer systems reside. However I must insist I am not too sure about this.

A law misconstrued and misunderstood ? I wasn’t quite sure how to react to blog posts like “India Sleepwalks To Total Surveillance“. However I really can’t respect the way the bill has been represented. Some of the bold statements in the post say, “Thou shall not author a joke. Not even forward one”, “Thou shall not surf Bollywood news” and ” Thou shall not watch porn”. I really could not find any evidence to support such views whatsoever. The sad part is that such posts get picked up in articles like Blogger Writes from Inside the Newest Police State on the Planet, discussions such as slashdot - India Sleepwalks Into a Surveillance Society and tweets such as these. I have spent about 6 years in US, and the remainder in India. I have always been very happy with the freedoms I have received in India, even though I do know that very unfortunately a small proportion of the population does get victimised or harassed due to the stringent laws from time to time. I won’t be surprised if a substantial proportion of Indian Citizens actually support the clauses against pornography. And finally the draft bill has been under discussion since 2006 so I couldn’t understand how the world’s largest democracy sleepwalked into something (though I am certain this and another bill got completely fast tracked after the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks). The fact of the matter is that this has always been a state of stringent laws, with laws which don’t always agree fully with the western world. I think we should rate our laws based on our aspirations and desires. While I shudder at the privileges the government has in terms of eavesdropping, I am quite ambivalent on the strictures against pornography and greatly welcome the enhancements related to electronic signatures and increased accountability in terms of online communication and network security maintenance. Its really a mixed bag in my opinion. If at all India is to be considered a police state as in some opinions, in my opinion it is certainly not because of this bill.