I spent the weekend of October 22-23 at BarcampPhnomPenh via Saigon. The experience was exciting as it was illuminating and I just wanted to share some of what I learned there.
The first day we got there was exciting. We arrived around 8:30am to find hundreds of people scattered about in a relatively large open area surrounded by sponsors’ booths and a mainstage where some of the sponsors were sitting at. The first thing that struck me was the wild and vibrant atmosphere. Here are some of the things I learned on the first day:
- Mainly Cambodian organizers: I found that most of the organizers for BarcampPhnomPenh were Cambodian. By contrast, in BarcampSaigon most of the organizers today are foreigners. Why is this? Is it because organizing an event like this is intimidating? I’m not sure. It seemed to me that most of the Cambodian organizers were quite friendly with each other and even quite casual about organizing. This was interesting, I think by contrast, BarcampSaigon is a bit more serious. So the question for me is, how to get more Vietnamese people involved in organizing (so that it can be sustainable) and how to make it fun? For example, at one point some of the Cambodian organizers started making fake tattoos with their markers that said “Barcamp” or had the BarcampPhnomPenh logo and were taking pictures showing off their “tats”. I think this is awesome, it shows their youthful and hopeful spirit.
- Excellent English level: Another thing that struck me about the organizers was that their English was excellent (something I think Vietnamese education needs to catch up to).
- Sponsored Entrance: The entrance was different mainly in that people got BarcampPhnomPenh stickers and they handed out a lot sponsor and marketing materials at the door. I think that’s worth trying at BarcampSaigon, and could give sponsors yet one more place to put their sponsoring materials.
And onto the festivities:
- The Opening: The opening happened in a rather large open area (not as big as the opening room in RMIT) that wasn’t air-conditioned, so it was a bit hot and quite crowded. Considering their Barcamp had hundreds of people in a smaller space, I’m not surprised that this happened. So that’s a big difference between BarcampSaigon. But their open sponsorship area was really nice, after the Sponsor speeches during the opening and they got to voting, people could wander around and interact with sponsors. Some of the sponsors even had activities (very smart) that got a lot of people involved.
- The Voting: The great thing about BarcampPhnomPenh was they had a voting system in place so that they could decide on which presentations to go first. I think that’s really smart and I’d especially love to implement this in BarcampSaigon on Dec 11th (at least for the big rooms). This gives the presenters a chance to see if their presentation will be relevant to the people and also fills up rooms.
- The Designated Rooms: For BarcampSaigon, an idea that we’ve been considering is having a room that is named after a Sponsor that gives a certain amount. This way it would give Sponsors more visibility to their brand. In BarcampPhnomPenh what they have is designated room per topic. They had about 7 rooms (plus the main opening area) with these topics under each room: Software Development & Design, Server & Network, FOSS, Business & Social, Women & Technology and 2 Rooms for Others. This gave people a good idea of where to go if they weren’t sure of which topic they’d like to go to and made sure that everything was focused.
- 2 Days: BarcampPhnomPenh was two days. This means that they gave enough time for people to come and be exposed. In total over 1,000 participants came over that two days. Would love to do that with BarcampSaigon.
- Job Board: A great idea that BarcampPhnomPenh has is their Job Board, which we will definitely implement at BarcampSaigon. Basically, the idea is, a board where companies can post job openings and anybody can post their resume to be reviewed by companies. It’s awesome and puts Barcamp into a more recruitment position, which it really is.
Overall, it was a great learning experience to see how they organized, and as usual, it was fun popping in on rooms and seeing what kinds of things people were presenting on. I also loved hanging out with folks of like-mind across the border, across the ocean and continents. Below, you’ll find some pictures of some of the things I talked about above (was too lazy to put them along with the text, haha).
Since all BarcampSaigon have all been hosted at RMIT, you are dictated by the rules of RMIT of where you can place sponsorship banners. They only allowed signs outside of the auditorium, a big one inside and small ones in each room. They were strict about this as per RMIT policy and regulation. You will not be able to get around this one while you are still at RMIT.
For Barcamp Saigon 1 and 2, there were many Vietnamese organizers. I know a Vietnamese wanted to start Barcamp Saigon 3 but a group of Expats got together and held secret meetings to organize the events. SaigonTweetup followed the same example, formed and run by Vietnamese and then somehow it became more Expat lead. So both events went in the wrong direction.
If you guys are willing to give up your air conditioned rooms, you should start to bring the Barcamps and other Tech events to the local universities. Google had no problem when they held their GoogleDevFest at the University of Technology. FossAsia holds their events at local universities as well. This makes it more Vietnamese focus.
Just my ten cents worth.
Hi Kevin, agreed about the RMIT policy.
Yeah, I’m not sure what happened with BarcampSaigon3, I just know that most of the leaders in the early more Vietnamese lead Barcamp and Tweetup’s left the country. We’ve been doing outreach and have 50-50 now, but would like more Vietnamese leaders in the mix.
Re: Universities – We’ve had a lot of trouble trying to get into more local universities. In the last two Barcamp’s we’ve made a concerted effort to find a new location, but no one has agreed. Still trying though.
Well, if Quang Trung is not too far, I know the chancellor at SaigonTech. Facilities are great and you will have access to the IT community there.
If you can get a sponsor for some buses from District 1 to District 12, this could work but in the past, events there have been successful.
Can you guys try to hashtag barcampsaigon on Twitter?
Lets meet up.
We’d love to do it at Quang Trung, I believe that we contacted them for the last Barcamp and this one with no success.
I imagine getting a few buses up there would probably be no trouble as I don’t think it’s too costly.
Do you follow @BarcampSaigon on twitter? I think the #barcampsaigon is quite searchable, no?
Oh, add the Subscribe to This plugin or similar so I know when you respond.
Just installed it, please let me know if it works. Thanks.
I love this Spam Free WordPress plugin as well. I will start using it.
I just added @barcampsaigon to my Fav Tweet List. That is why I am missing the notices. I will try to make this Barcamp but normally I avoid all Tech events. I think it could be a great place to start off the Saigon WordPress User Group.
I meet with the chancellor from SaigonTech at least once a month. Let me ask him at the next meeting. He will be very supportive and I doubt there will be the same restrictions as RMIT. SaigonTech gave me an okay for Barcamp Saigon 1 in case RMIT turned us down at that time.
I just realized the barcampsaigon.com website is located in Germany. Bring it back to Vietnam.
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