The event started with Rajdeep, Anash and Seshu going into the depths of the OpenSocial API and what it stands for. Anirudh, on the other hand, took us for a deep dive on the AppEngine. Their presentations covered everything from introduction to even code snippets. We also had presentations from Google’s partners for OpenSocial: Impetus and Satyam. They gave an insight on what they are doing with OpenSocial. I’m afraid, i still haven’t received any of the presentations from any of the presenters, although with a quick search on SlideShare, i was able to find some similar presentations. I’m embedding two of them here:

OpenSocial:

AppEngine:

The audience there was mostly of a technical background, with most people from startups. There were a few familiar faces too: Manik from Vinsol, Kapil and Gaurav from SlideShare, Vineet from Impetus, Lalit from GeoBeats, Guneet from Chahiye.info, and a few other people i could recognize from previous events like BarCamps, OSSCamps etc.

As far as my views go, OpenSocial is a great initiative by the OpenSocial foundation, comprising of Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Flixter and hi5. Its really gaining momentum, with more and more people adopting and coding for it. The AppEngine on the other hand is at a very nascent stage at the moment. The only language it supports right now is python, and also has a lot of restrictions (which can be found in the presentation above). But then again, Google is offering a LOT for free with the AppEngine, so im no one to complain!

All in all, it was a great experience, and i would look forward to more such events

So the sessions started with all of us introducing ourselves, along with tagging the event with 3 tags each The event started with Navjot’s presentation about GuruGeeks. The presentation was enjoyable, and i appreciate all the effort he’s putting into it! Next up were Manik and Akhil of the Vinsol team with a presentation on deploying rails apps on Amazon’s EC2, again being a very interesting presentation, it captured the attention of all present there. They even showed us a live demo of how to go about it! I just LOVED their sweatshirts! It had “Ruby makes me happy” with a cute ruby thingy on them. Check them out in one of the pics below. Next up was Vineet of Impetus presenting on “Planning Poker – Agile Estimation for Dummies”. After this presentation, the organizers decided to make two batches and proceed with 2 sessions simultaneously. So 2 groups were formed, one was the technical group and the other was the social group (which had presentations related to blogging and social networking). I remained with the technical group. Next up was Jignesh of Amazon with his highly informative and impressive session on Amazon’s EC2 and S3 web services. This was the best session of the entire event (i hope those who attended would agree with me ). We had to break in between for lunch. Jignesh completed his session after lunch. We had Abhishek with his session “Everyday Productivity with Windows Live Tools”. I personally didn’t like this session at all. It was more like a marketing attempt from Microsoft. I mean the guy was showing off windows live mail (outlook express replacement for vista) as if it was the ONLY email client on earth! Guys from ThinkDigit would know how i felt (this dude was like gx_saurav and iMav amalgamated into one life form ) Anyway, i think such sessions should not be allowed on events such as BarCamp. There was another “marketing” session by some company offering free server hosting for 3 months to budding startups (sorry, forgot their name). In the meantime, Kapil also joined us. The Vinsol team took the stage once more with Sur giving a session on “Ruby Insights – Some unsaid things about Ruby Programming Language”. Once again, the session was very informative, with him giving some tips and tricks for Ruby programming. He even gave some live demos of small code snippets. I moved from the conference room to the Networking room, where Akhil was giving a live demo of deploying rails apps on EC2. Jignesh was also there to answer our questions concerning EC2. After this, the sessions were over, and people were just interacting with each other. We clicked some pics, and then, were invited by Kapil to Ruby Tuesday for some snacks and beer, all sponsored by Opera Software! Me and Apoorv decided to accept the invite, while Deepak and Prateek decided to call it a day. We had a lot of fun (and beer ) there and interacted a lot with all present there. We were there until the very end when Navjot (representing Opera Software) paid the bill

So that was it! Now you’ve got a first hand experience of the entire event! But be sure to actually be there next time! I REALLY enjoyed the entire experience. Im now looking forward to attending such events, and ill be attending OSS CampDelhi 2 next week

Pics:

P.S. Ill be updating this post as and when i remember stuff

Heh, no its not a booze party From the BarCamp wiki:

BarCamp Delhi is proposed to be a camp where we get together and discuss/rant/brain-storm/share opinions about about Web technologies & trends, Mobile Internet, Hacking, Blogging, Vlogs, Social Media, … everything about the Technology that interests us. As said before, “It’s about geekery and having a focal point for great ideas.”

This would actually be the first time i’d be attending a BarCamp. Got to know about BarCamp last year through Amit of Uzanto, but missed it last year. Anyway, im surely attending it this time. Expecting to meet a lot of like minded people geeks I urge all people who can make it to the event, to register at the BarCampDelhi3 wiki page. As for those who would have to miss it, dont worry, many people would be live blogging the event. Ill also try and blog a bit about it, otherwise ill surely link you to the people who do blog about it in detail

Venue:  Impetus Technologies, D-39/40, Sector – 59, NOIDA

Date: 8th December 2007 (Saturday)

Schedule:

Log On – 9.30 am
Lunch Break – 1.30 pm (45 min)
Log Off – 5.30 pm

See you there!