Monthly Archive for April, 2009

We’ve got a few days to go before BarCamp Hanoi 2009 happens and we’d share a few things with everyone before the event kick off.

First of all, if you cannot attend BarCamp Hanoi 2009, we kindly request that you let us know now (via the email barcamphanoi [at] gmail [dot] com) so that we can “un-register” you. This will help us better prepare. You will be still able to track the event via our channels for live reporting.

Here is some important information for the event.

Event information

• Date: Sunday, April 19, 2009
• Time: 8.30AM to 5.00PM
• Location: RMIT International University, Hanoi Campus – 2/2C Van Phuc Compound, Kim Ma street, Hanoi. [Google Maps]
• Lunch: will be served
• Parking: there is a motorbike parking, and a car parking not so far from the location.
• Public transportation: public bus lines 07, 09, 13, 18, 20,…. Please check it here (maybe it’s quite outdated but it’s the best version we have got)

How to prepare now

• Bring business cards (name cards)
• Bring a laptop. BarCamp is an online-offline event. Having a laptop with Wifi is very important to help you participate and communicate.
• Bring a camera if you would like take photos.
• Bring a video camera if you would like to make videos of the sessions.
• If you have available job postings, we will have a bulletin board where you can display them.

Be ready to participate

This is the most important thing. Remember BarCamp is about participation. This event is for you and by you. If you haven’t started yet, now’s the time to start preparing your session. You don’t have to be an expert at your topic; as long as it’s not too specific, there’ll probably be someone else present who can help you out. You can also contribute to the conversation during a session. This is a great way to participate, since it spreads knowledge from everyone, instead of just the leader.

• Topics may include, but are not limited to: online services, social media, startups, UI design, entrepreneurship, VC, Web 2.0 technologies, online marketing, online advertising, online payment, e-commerce, open source software, hardware hacking, robotics, mobile computing, bioinformatics, programming languages, even the future of technology or global issues.
• Possible formats: a presentation, a round-table discussion, a technology demo, or …
• Time length: 25 minutes or 55 minutes long
• Equipment available in every room: a whiteboard and a projector. Ideally, you should bring your own laptop if you give a presentation.
• Preferred languages of presentations are English and Vietnamese. If you have a presentation in English, you may want to have your presentation translated into Vietnamese for the benefit of everyone. The same thing goes if it’s in Vietnamese. We can help with some of the translation. For help, email your slides to barcamphanoi [at] gmail [dot] com and we will put them on Google Docs so that everyone can help in making it bilingual.
• Keep in mind that presentations have to be interactive, so dedicate 20-25% of your time for questions and small discussions.
• Please make sure your presentations fit in dedicated time. We’ll have 5 parallel, synchronized threads of presentations, so even difference of 2 minutes can spoil the rest of event.

Schedule

• When you arrive, go to the pre-registration table, where you will get a namebadge. Start thinking of 3 tags that describe you, what you’re passionate about (or want to talk about). Having written tags on your namebadge is a great conversation-starter with other BarCampers.
• We start by gathering together in one space and going around the room to introduce ourselves. There will also be some announcements. As with all BarCamps, the schedule and location of the sessions will be decided on the day of the event by everyone. People who intend to lead a session will add their session info to an empty schedule grid. If you see a session you’re interested in, go to it. You can check it for updates as the day progresses. There will be a live online schedule for you to check via your laptop.
• After a couple of sessions, you will have a significant amount of downtime for lunch. Feel free to wander around and socialize while or after you eat. More announcements will be made, and any newly proposed sessions will be announced.
• After the sessions are finished, please stick around to clean up. It’s generally as simple as throwing trash away and taking down signs, but all the help is appreciated.

Collaborative Technology

To fully communicate during BarCamp, it’s important to be familiar with certain technologies, preferably before Sunday:

• You can chat with other BarCampers and follow live news from BarCamp participants at BarCamp Hanoi Live
  • You should create an account on Twitter and use the hashtag #barcamphanoi when sending your own tweets during BarCamp so that people can track.
• You can follow live news from organizers at Twitter updates for barcamphanoi

Another important activity at BarCamp is sharing the session proceedings with everyone in the world. During and after the event, try to upload:

• Presentation slides to SlideShare with the tag barcamphanoi
• Photos to Flickr with the tag barcamphanoi
• Videos to YouTube with the tag barcamphanoi
• Web links to delicious with the tag barcamphanoi

General Tips

• Rehearse your talks and leave room for questions. Your audience will thank you for it.
• Don’t plan on having wi-fi for your talk. You probably will — but always plan for Murphy and his blasted law. If it’s really crucial to show things to people, take screenshots and do screencasts just in case.
• Be kind on the wi-fi. No torrenting or crazy 12-megapixel full-size HDR Flickr uploads, please. Share the bandwidth, share the love.  If you don’t, we have ways of finding you.  We are computer nerds, after all.
• Speaking of sharing, share and be helpful.  We’ll get into this more down in the conduct section below.
• Shirts are free, but please don’t take more than one for yourself.
• Please don’t bring anything illegal. It’s not that we care, necessarily, but we would like to not get shut down over anything silly.
• No, you don’t have to speak, but we’d hope, if you’re there, that you have something to share. This is a good place to come out of your shell.
• Any and all photos, videos, slides uploaded to Flickr, Youtube, SlideShare should be tagged with ”barcamphanoi”.
• If you use Twitter to report about BarCamp Hanoi, don’t forget the hashtag #barcamphanoi.

More Questions

If you have any questions, just send an email to barcamphanoi [at] gmail [dot] com

Logo 25

We would like to congratulate @forty4vn on the logo number 25 which gets the most votes with the total number of 54 votes.

Barcamp Hanoi 2009 logo design contest has lasted within a month: 3 weeks for designing and a week for voting. With 40 logos in total 48 logos for joining the contest which attracts 147 voters with total number of 432 votes. Finally, we have found the logo which attracts the most people and that logo will be the official logo for BarCamp Hanoi 2009. And our official logo will appear in official Barcamp Hanoi website (http://www.barcamphanoi.org), banners, annoucement as well as T-shirts for everyone joining Barcamp Hanoi 2009.

Thank you very much for your great contribution to designing the most wonderful logos. If your logo is not chosen this time, we hope that your logo will be the chosen one next time. And great thanks to you who are interested in voting for our official Barcamp Hanoi 2009 logo in this contest.

Although the contest is public and open, we can not avoid some voting issue. In a short period of time, there was 2 groups of spammers continuously voting for logo number group: 13, 15, 17 and 30, 31, 32. All the unfair-detected votes was removed.