Barcamper Exchange Program

May 15th, 2009 by Prateek Dayal | Print Barcamper Exchange Program

Everyone agrees that the hardest part for a startup is to get the early set of enthusiastic users. We got our first set of really enthusiastic users and evangelists from Barcamp Bangalore 5th edition (BCB5). They gave us tons of good feedback, blogged about us, turned into passionate users and got more passionate users. Its not very hard to imagine why this happens. The thing about barcamps is that there are geeks there who are willing to listen to you simply because you have created something yourself. They don’t care whether the whole world is using your service yet or not. If you have something cool and can convince them why its great, they are willing to try it out and even talk to other people or blog about it.  They may sometimes get attracted to your service simply because its built in Ruby on Rails (or their favorite framework) :)

However its very hard to travel to different cities or countries to attend such events and demo your startup and talk to the people about what you do. This is where I feel bootstrappers have a disadvantage compared to the well funded companies.  But we can easily fix this problem by having a Barcamper Exchange Program (lets call it that untill we find a better name) where we have a pool of barcampers who are willing to demo your app in their local barcamps. They won’t do it for the money or as a favour but simply because they are in the same boat and know how hard it is to get the word out there.

In fact such a thing is not too hard to execute. One can simply create a group on linkedin where all the upcoming barcamps can be listed. Startup founders can join the group and show their interest in being demoed at a particular barcamp and tell which barcamps they can demo someone else’s startup. If there is good matche in interest/geography etc, the founders can take if offline and demo each others startups.  It may require some tweaking but you get the idea.

However as wise men say, ideas are worthless. However I wanted to post this on my blog and see what people feel about it. If there is enough interest, we can go ahead and create the linkedin group and take this forward!

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 1:57 am and is filed under barcampbangalore. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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28 Comments

  1. danw
    May 15 09 at 3:14 am

    Perhaps the barcamp ethos is different where you are, but at all the UK ones I’ve attended, marketing pitches are heavily frowned upon. BarCamp is about sharing knowledge, not pitching to people.

    This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

  2. subbu
    May 15 09 at 4:36 am

    What will be missing in such exchange programs is the passion. Founders are passionate about what they have built. That’s the reason why they can go on talking about it forever. That won’t be the case with others.

  3. silencio
    May 15 09 at 4:49 am

    The BarCamp Los Angeles mailing list just had a long post-event conversation about talks and scheduling. I believe the consensus was that if disclosed and something that people are truly interested in discussing and listening to, that marketing your own product is not taboo. And that we should feel free to walk out and/or publicly let the presenter know that you believe s/he just crossed the line into too much marketing territory.Although I really hate product pitches, the last BarCampLA I attended had a pitch/presentation that I thought did a good job keeping it appropriate to BarCamp: one of the awe.sm founders was presenting his service and the conversation was a lot more about analytics for short urls and how to deal with issues that may arise from the general idea, rather than about awe.sm itself.

    Anyway, back on the actual topic of the link: I hate the idea. Mostly because all the fun in presentations about startups (in my opinion) is about being able to chat with the founder(s) about growing pains and experiences and more that other people merely demoing your product wouldn’t be able to discuss. And also in my opinion, it’s that extra bit that’s way more appropriate to a BarCamp than a demo.

    If this person is so interested in doing demos in such a manner, he should just go create DemoCamp Bangalore. Or maybe sponsor the next BarCamp in his area and similar events.

    This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

  4. Prateek Dayal
    May 15 09 at 4:51 am

    Hi Subbu

    Yes .. there is nothing like demoing your own startup but if you get someone who is excited about you to demo your startup, its not too bad either.

    So many people demo twitter, facebook etc to their friends and colleagues and make them try out the service. This is something similar but before the service has achieved critical mass.

  5. prateekdayal
    May 15 09 at 4:57 am

    Its true in Bangalore too but there are always sessions where you can talk about your service or general ideas. The intention is surely not to piss off the other barcampers.May be the idea is not specific to barcamp but in general can be used to spread your service in areas you can’t go to personally. May be if not a pitch a tshirt exchange. It can something like http://girl.inyourshirt.tv/ but at a peer level.

    Btw, I wrote that original post.

    This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

  6. prateekdayal
    May 15 09 at 5:00 am

    > If this person is so interested in doing demos in such a manner, he should just go create DemoCamp Bangalore. Or maybe sponsor the next BarCamp in his area and similar events.As the original blog post says I am a bootstrapper and I think its really hard for bootstrappers to sponsor event.

    That said, I do understand/appreciate the other points you mentioned.

    This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

  7. silencio
    May 15 09 at 5:16 am

    > As the original blog post says I am a bootstrapper and I think its really hard for bootstrappers to sponsor event.Yeah, I had that in mind when I was writing that sentence, and wasn’t sure how to approach it because "sponsor" usually tends to imply money and there’d be an obvious shortage of that – I’m well aware, I’m trying to bootstrap my startup too :) But I don’t mean you should necessarily be contributing money to the event, but rather that there are things that can be done without spending extra money that could still help a lot towards organizing a BarCamp that can help spread the word about your product. (Did I use enough "that"s in that sentence? hah.)

    Anyway, I still think you should fork and start a DemoCamp or StartupCamp in your area if there are enough interested people. It not only means you can set the rules (like, oh, 10 minute slots for demos) but also would attract more people that weren’t interested in the free-for-all-ness of BarCamps but have an interest in one that is startup-specific: investors, other founders, you get the idea. And of course, you could use a BarCamp to get things started in a myriad of ways and to let people know that there is such an event and oh look, here’s some demos of products you might be interested in. Or maybe it could be a sub-camp within the BarCamp where you can just have a dedicated area with shorter sessions for people to demo their stuff.

    This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

  8. silencio
    May 15 09 at 5:16 am

    > As the original blog post says I am a bootstrapper and I think its really hard for bootstrappers to sponsor event.Yeah, I had that in mind when I was writing that sentence, and wasn’t sure how to approach it because "sponsor" usually tends to imply money and there’d be an obvious shortage of that – I’m well aware, I’m trying to bootstrap my startup too :) But I don’t mean you should necessarily be contributing money to the event, but rather that there are things that can be done without spending extra money that could still help a lot towards organizing a BarCamp that can help spread the word about your product. (Did I use enough "that"s in that sentence? hah.)

    Anyway, I still think you should fork and start a DemoCamp or StartupCamp in your area if there are enough interested people. It not only means you can set the rules (like, oh, 10 minute slots for demos) but also would attract more people that weren’t interested in the free-for-all-ness of BarCamps but have an interest in one that is startup-specific: investors, other founders, you get the idea.

    This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

  9. danw
    May 15 09 at 5:46 am

    Putting on a barcamp/democamp is very easy. I put together MobileCampBrighton in a few spare hours and it only cost about £50 of my own money. There’s usually some company/coworking space/pub you can use for free.

    This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

  10. prateekdayal
    May 15 09 at 5:57 am

    But it still does not solve the problem of not being able to demo in a different city/country.

    This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

  11. Ronak R. | RokZRooM
    May 15 09 at 10:09 am

    The dream is seen, partly fulfilled; and now it needs to be convinced to the world. Begin telling your story the from where you started witnessing. Share your dream. From where the painting starts and to where it leads. And then, gradually but firmly, the dream will change the reality. :)

  12. Nagesh Pai
    May 17 09 at 3:49 am

    I have yet to attend my first barcamp. I am a plain user and evangelist of Muziboo and not much into programming, or even entrepreneurship :).

    Folks like me who are fond of a brilliant startup service can contribute to the extent of demonstrating what the site can do from a user perspective. They may not be able to share the exact technology thats being used to develop.

    would this be useful in a barcamp?

  13. Prateek Dayal
    May 17 09 at 3:54 am

    Hi Nagesh,

    Yes thats the idea. Its like how you find users demoing startups like twitter for the value they bring to fellow barcampers. If you think that your fav. startup adds value to others and they are willing to listen to you, talking would help a great deal. Its how every blog coverage helps in spreading the word

    Prateek

  14. Shrinidhi hande
    May 17 09 at 11:31 pm

    Try something like this: Having a friend in another city represent your start up in that city and you can represent his startup in your city-is this similar to what you were proposing?

  15. Prateek Dayal
    May 17 09 at 11:35 pm

    Hi Shrinidhi

    Yes its something similar. The only problem is that you won’t have too many friends with startups in other cities. Though you can always make new connections over the course of time and use that network

    Prateek

  16. Shrinidhi hande
    May 18 09 at 1:23 am

    Any friend who is interested and qualified to represent you can be useful right? It isn’t necessary that he/she also has a startup…

  17. Prateek Dayal
    May 18 09 at 1:36 am

    Hi Shrinidhi

    Thats correct. Any friend who can represent you is useful. I misread your comment before. Sorry about that.

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