New Wave of BarCamp Movement

All year long developer and blogger Lusine Barseghyan has been waiting impatiently for the BarCamp’s two days. This time as well she was not disappointed with the most amazing format of holding “conferences.” This year there were more friends and acquaintances, more common topics and so much confidence that Lusine decided to prepare a presentation.

This year BarCamp’s two days were June 4 and 5. Its venue was the American University of Armenia, where almost 1000 IT specialists, engineers, developers, bloggers, online journalists and social media activists gathered. They themselves were the presenters of the unconference suggesting various topics of presentations in the beginning of the event, thus developing the agenda on the spot. Open discussions and free exchange of ideas and opinions followed.

Sponsors and supporters of the BarCamp Yerevan 2011 were Internews in the framework of the Alternative Resources in Media program, supported by USAID, Beeline, Opera Software, Deem Communications and PanARMENIAN.Net.

During the event Lusine Barseghyan presented the results of her recently conducted Inventory of the Armenian Blogosphere. She spoke of statistics on using blog platforms within the local blogosphere, current situation and trends. Lusine emphasized the importance of the Armenian language content and presented techniques of increasing it in the Internet.

Presentations of European and Russian guests of BarCamp are noteworthy. They spoke of trends in the development of technologies and use of social media by media outlets, innovations of using Internet and other developments happening in the world.

“There is always a warm atmosphere during the BarCamp: the majority know one another, and smiles, hugs and handshakes are constant during the whole event. I am already thinking of the next year’s presentation,” Luisne says.