Barcamp Saigon 2019

1.) Barcamp Saigon is taking place again this weekend after several years break. Can you give us an overview of what visitors can expect at Barcamp this weekend?

In one word: diversity. Barcamp Saigon had its root in the tech community. Tech topics have routinely dominated previous events, though it gets lesser every year. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Barcamp Saigon is meant to be a platform where everyone with an idea gets to share. This year, to mark a new start of Barcamp, we have worked with professional communities in tech, design, fintech, marketing, and F&B in an attempt to introduce the open space concept to sectors that were foreign to us before. At the moment, there are 70+ registered talks spreading across all kinds of topics. I am quite pleased with how this attempt has turned out.

2.) How did you personally get involved with Barcamp and what motivates and inspires you to play an active role at this unique gathering in the space in Saigon?

I volunteered at the first Barcamp Saigon back in 2008, because it happened to be hosted at my university. But I only started leading the team much later, in 2014. I am motivated to drive the adoption of the unconference format because as a twenty-something, I understand how hard it is to get heard in this exhilarating hyperactive city. Imagine you have this neat little idea in your mind, but can’t seem to find a thought partner to bounce it back and forth, nor an audience to whom the thought it relevant. And getting invited into a conference (as a speaker) is really hard. You can be a nobody, or the conference you need hasn’t existed yet, or both. It can be quite depressing. An unconference like Barcamp provides anyone with an idea to share a platform to do exactly that. And I find that idea empowering.

Organizing Barcamp has gotten a bit more challenging, coming back after a hiatus. We, the organizer team, wish to keep the engagement with our existing audience, while reaching out to the folks who haven’t heard of Barcamp before, and above all sail through the event smoothly. We do have a plan for 2020, but we can’t disclose it just yet. It gonna be an open topic we want to collect feedback from the community during the closing session. But putting it shortly, we would like to take a page from Blockchain’s book and decentralize Barcamp Saigon a bit.