BarCamp Is Coming to Phnom Penh

 

 

Get ready guys!!

A groundbreaking technological event will soon come to Phnom Penh this September. Known as BarCamp Phnom Penh, the event is slowly becoming a new talk of the town among the local geeks, in place of the First Clogger Summit last year.

The local edition of the International BarCamp, which is a network of user generated conferences and events, the Phnom Penh BarCamp hopes to provide local technology enthusiasts with an opportunity to unionize and share among themselves skills, knowledge, experiences and updates about the world’s latest technological advancement. The event comes at a time when Cambodia is fast moving into the information age and when computers and Internet have become more central to Cambodian lifestyle.

Last Saturday I was fortunate to be part of the BarCamp planning meet-up, thanks an invitation from Tharum Bun, a fellow Cambodian blogger who initiated the local BarCamp idea. Joining us were several other blogger friends, namely John Weeks aka Jinja, Ramana Sorn, Chantra Be, Nobert Klein and Bart Geesink from the Open Institute. From what I understood, that was already their second meeting – the first one was held the previous week.

Our meeting was very informal and laid back, and was full of interesting moments. Our discussion covered not only the BarCamp but also several other topics of interests, the most interesting of which was on the One-Laptop-Per-Child Project. Bart and Nobert were very kind to let us look at a sample of the laptop, thousands of which are slated to be introduced to primary schools across Cambodia in the near future.

A first glimpse of the laptop took our breath away. Everyone simply couldn’t help but admire this cute gadget. Though specifically designed for eight-year-old kids, the laptop operates on a unique operating system called OX, (Not XO Hennesey for sure ) and comes with word processing, music and color painting softwares as well as wireless internet. Did you notice the two ears? Those are the wireless network antenna. According to Bart, its battery is also very durable. It can last up to 2-3 hours, which, of course, puts many SONY and Apple laptops’ to shame.

Its screen is also very flexible. Users can turn it 360 degrees w/out worries. Though its keyboard is very small (Well, remember? It’s not for adults. 8-year-old kids, OK?), the laptop does come with many USB ports, allowing us to plug in an adult keyboard very easily. To cut the long story short, if interested, please http://www.laptop.org/ for more information. Your kind donation is very welcome.

Back to BarCamp, we are currently looking for a venue with big space and great atmosphere for the event. We were thinking of bringing it to either IFL or the main RUPP campus, whose suburban locations and characters fit the requirement best. I am planning to bring the issue to the IFL management next week. Hopefully we’ll get a green light from then. Will keep you guys posted, I promise!

So please watch out for this upcoming geeky event! Hope a lot of people will participate.