Barcamp Hong Kong 2009

Went along to Barcamp in Hong Kong this weekend, Have to thank all the guys & girls involved in organizing it. As it was a chance to meet some interesting people, who I did not realize where even in Hong Kong.

Barcamp Hong Kong, is perhaps a little different from what you might get elsewhere. First off it's not so much a techy thing. (Evidenced by the sight of 1 Linux desktop = mine...) I gave one talk on 'D', and went to a couple of others with lesser technical emphasis - drupal / OO JS etc. but the majority of talks where either business development style (raising funds, startups). or iPhone related (with out the coding stuff).

I guess this comes from the general attitude here that most programmers tend to regard it as a stepping stone to management or something, and have very little passion about the whole industry.. (as someone described it to me).

The technical talks gathered at most 20 people (out of I guess 200-300 people at the camp). And unfortunately, my talk/chat/discussion got rather hijacked by someone who wandered in, was completely non-technical, and started asking irrelivant questions. (self reminder, politely say, this is for programmers only next time)

Overall it was not much of a learning experience, rather the chance to actually meet developers with similar interests, (and see that they actually exist) - Shame I had to leave early for family stuff, as the drinks would have been good...