Failcamp, A camp that succeeded on many counts!

To say something in writing takes an effort, especially if the writing pertains to ones’ own failures. But it does takes really ’something’ to be able to come out of the closet and speak about it in front of people.

There were quite a few people in Failcamp @Chennai who spoke openly about their failures and what took them from failure to success. Gladly the people in the audience were equally in the same boat or at least had the mind and heart to learn from people who have walked the path. Hopefully everyone learned something or the other from what they heard.

While I termed ‘failure’ as nothing, probably being as blatant as one can be, it was refreshing to get to hear different interpretations of the word. The "Failcamp" has the apt tag line of ‘Learn, Share, Succeed’. Today’s failcamp @ Tenth Planet Technologies, Chennai was very refreshing. The camp was about failures, and it succeeded by all means.

Suresh, founder of orangescape was full of experiences and insights. To me, he sounded like a reservoir of information, and put forth a lot his thought in very simple terms that people could understand. Kalyaan from Quads Group and Deepak Gupta from Ensemble Technologies covered the gamut of what one can learn from their failures with their experiences. All the three were bombarded with enough questions that they would have expected and the next 30 mins had a variety of ideas and suggestions thrown out in the middle.

Manish, the lone guy from the North (noida) was solid in what he communicated and I really appreciate him coming down to Chennai. There were a lot of people who followed him and I don’t think there were many who did not speak up(truly unconference style).

The afternoon session was purposely directed towards how does an individual tackles failures while the morning session was centered around entrepreneurs. Nice blend!

Also, its always great to hear Mr. Srinivasan from Prime Point Foundation talk about his numerous experiences. The man calls himself as a user of technology, but I say he probably is the best technologist around!

I am sure I will not be able to quote everyone by name, so my sincere apologies for that. Hopefully my memory will be better for the next such event

Check out flickr for pictures from the event!

Had some good and long conversation with Kalyaan and Satya and the guys are doing something pretty solid with their venture. Check out their website to know more about them and I must say their website has less content but really speaks/conveys a lot about them!(Confused? check them out!)

Interesting snippet from Kiruba was that although the concept of failcamp was envisaged by the barcamp creators a few years ago, he is not aware of that many failcamps. He was sure that it was the second if not the first failcamp! Kudos to his perseverance ).

A few words about Tenth Planet Technologies:

If  folks from Tenth Planet see this, I want to convey that "you folks ROCKED" by all means. Starting from the flower arrangement, to the clean office, to the Break and Lunch and to the entire hospitality with a smile, you guys really made this a memorable day. Kudos to the entire team.

A few words about Kumaran, CEO, Tenth Planet Technologies:

He sat through the entire event speaking very little. Like a good host, he took as around the office including the ‘Heaven-like Meditation Room’ in the basement. He surely has the taste for interior decoration that I have not seen before. The pillars and rooms had a lot of ethnic paintings and when asked about it, he said he wants the office to look like a palace. But quickly added that there is a long way to go. Just look at the pictures, even the current look is worth a big applause. I really liked Dr. APJ Kalam’s painting in his room.

(Meditation Room in the basement)

But  the highlight pertaining to Kumaran is that at the end, what I thought was just a vote of thanks, Kumaran started speaking and STOLE THE SHOW. The next 20 minutes was truly and sincerely from his heart and what seemed like years of experience packed and delivered at the right moment. I have taken a video and will try to do the needed processing to get it on Youtube. The man is just 34 but what he spoke looked like decades of experience.

Tenth planet is in to Open Source and the reception hall’s wall greets you with "Open Up to Open Source". Truly these folks are ahead of time in India and I hope everyone jumps on to the Open Source bandwagon!

Hats of to Kiruba(and his inspiration), people at Tenth Planet technologies for hosting the event and Kalyan/Co for sponsoring the event.