Attending my first barcamp in Rome

A couple of my friends were twittering about attending the Barcamp in Kuala Lumpur and that made me curious enough to make a search if there were one being hosted in Rome. A barcamp is a meet of a group of people where they talk about and share various types of ideas, be it about technology or even about sociology.

Having already attended similar events such as Interesthink, Nexus and Unconference while I was back in Singapore, I was quite pleased to see that we were in time to attend to the one hosted in Rome.

Digressing, I was really upset that I missed the last Blogfest and I only knew about it only a week after it ended. Oh well, hopefully in between to waiting for the next one will give me enough time to be more powerful in Italian

Anyway! I tried to register for the event as best as my limited knowledge of Italian would let me, and on the day itself, Cart and I got up bright and early (with the help of one hundred cups of coffee) and headed to this place called, Antù.

When we reached, it was rather confusing as the address stated Via Giuseppe Libetta, 15 but that turned out to be a housing area. We walked up the corner and there was a locked metal door. Knocking on it was futile. No one opened. It didn’t make sense. This was the address, was it not?

Seeing the stuffed letter box didn’t make me feel any more confident and I was very close to leave for home. It was raining and gloomy and the event would have started 30 minutes ago. But Cart didn’t want to give up. Luckily for us, there was a student walking out of the house and she helped to bring us to the right place. That was really nice of her :-)

Turns out, that it was at 15C not 15!

In any case, we entered a very interesting factory like building and I thought that it was quite a choice place for seminars, seeing how industrial it looked like with the choice of furnishings. I looked at the list of people who will share their information.

There was one of the organizers who approached and talked to us, and that’s when we realised that the event would start at 11am. My feelings felt very cheated :-P But that gave us enough time to sit down and compose ourselves. I looked around me. I was surprised to see so little people around. I think I could probably count them with my two hands. But no matter.

Oh, by the way, this is a form that you use to sign up for an hour of internet connection in the building. I found it interesting as comparing to Singapore, internet access is easily obtained sometimes even without having to sign up for it.

In any case, after waiting for a while, the first speaker was ready to speak.

I was in a bit of a tangle. Obviously it was in Italian and though I could understand bits and pieces, it was like a jigsaw puzzle to me. Sometimes I could see the picture, and sometimes I was clearly lost. I had to stop Cart every now and then to ask him what was going on.

Anyway, the first speaker was speaking about how he used technology to aid him in his passion, cycling. He created a site to meet like minded people like him and also created an application that gives advice to cyclists on which route was suitable to cycle on – if there were holes or construction works and likes.

The second speaker from Ninux and he shared about the possibilities of sharing a network. The more the people sharing, the better as it increases the probability of not having to having to pay a subscription fee in the long run. I couldn’t catch everything, so I must have missed some informational details but Cart was very fascinated by this one.

And soonafter it was a break for lunch. The next talk begins at 2pm. Cart and I explored the area to hunt for a place to eat and we found Pastarito! Cart used to bring me here when we were first dating but the branch that we used to go to was closed. So I’ve always kept my eyes opened to see if there were another one.

I was amused to see the picture of the new menu.

The picture is self explanatory

But as much as we wanted to spend time at Pastarito, we did not have much time as the clock was ticking and Cart didn’t want to miss listening to anyone. I had to gulp down my pizza as fast as I humanly could.

And I tell you, its not easy trying to scarf down a hot pizza down your throat. And we rushed all the way back to Antù and hoped that we did not miss too much.

Unfortunately when we reached back to antù, the doors were closed shut! Initially thinking that the talk has already started, we banged the door, hoping that someone inside could hear us and let us in. The proprietor opened. Turns out that there was a low participants and the second part of the barcamp was cancelled. Made us rush for nothing

But in any case, I was glad that we managed to catch the first part and I felt a sense of pride that Cart, who has never attended a barcamp before, found it very enlightening. I really hope to attend another one in the future and I sincerely hope that the organizers don’t feel too disheartened. There wasn’t a lot of people attending, but I’m sure in due time, there will be bigger culture of sharing.

I’d be very happy to help out too

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Sidenote : Ooh! This reminds me that there is a TEDx going on in Lake Como. Die die, I must go. I bet its conducted in Italian though, so I really must work out on my Italiano