My First Weblog Ever!

 First of all, little of bit of the history of the event. BarCamp itself, as the event, was held all over the world and finally appears in the CIS. BarCamp was founded by Tim O’Reilly, who was organizing the event just for his friends, as an interest group. The first official BarCamp was help in Europe in California in 2005 year. A lot of people liked the style of the BarCamp event as a free opportunity to find interesting people and create some connections. Finally about 350 BarCamp events have already held all over the world. The event was called as an (un)conference so that it creates the view of the unofficial environment during the conferences.

The purpose of the Kazakhstan event is not really understandable… is it the money making event or the charity and may be something connected to the civil society, but what exactly?

The main question, which is the most important for me is the connection between BarCamp, the event, which posses itself as educational and non-commercial project, which has its sponsors and my course, which is about the New Information Technologies, which helps to create the new surface of the societies in Internet.

I have never heard about such event, and I am so sad not to have the opportunity to be there. I listened to different people, who attended different conferences on BarCamp, and have very different opinions about it.

 Some of the conferences were about the products that different companies provide. Were it all connected to the development of the civil societies or the promotion of the products, no one, who were there did not understood that.

One of the representatives of the companies, who gave the speech to the audience, was from the Opera software company. The person was talking about the different tools, which Opera Software provides, and in this case it is easy to understand that it would help people, users or the potential users, who would be attracted by the presentation, to create new online communities and different societies within it – the creation of the civil society.

Also, people from the different ethnic groups and groups of interest were presented on the BarCamp event, for example the people, who did not wanted to fill in the questioners, which actually were done to gather the information about the BarCamp event, where they were kindly invited to be, on Russian or English language, not because of the misunderstanding of the languages but because of the some personal reasons.

The Audience of the event was broken into 3 parts: people, who like the event a lot, and found a lot of useful and interesting information for themselves. The second part of the audience were the people, who did not liked the event at all, they think it was unstructured and too unofficial. And the third part of the BarCamp audience, as I think, were the people, who were promoting their own view on everything, people, who actually created a barriers – people, who denied to speak, listen or read any other languages except Kazakh….

Is the BarCamp the event of the civil societies? As John Naughton in his writing “contested space” writes that the civil societies gives the opportunity to people to lower the barriers to publication and enables groups and individuals to bypass traditional gatekeepers in media and publishing, facilitates rapid communication on a global scale and facilitates the sharing of information resources, after that the question rises – is the BarCamp part of the creation of the civil society? Are those kinds of people on non-commercial and educational events developing a better community by creating barriers between nations? Is it one of the reasons, why different groups of people want to take a part of such events?

On the other hand the BarCamp is the event, which gives the opportunities to people from different parts of the Kazakhstan to came and see Almaty, to meet different people with the same wishes and goals in the life. It creates the opportunity to speak out and tell people what you think. The BarCamp itself looks like the creation of the civil society all the people, who are coming to the event knows the Internet well, doing the work there or just like to serve the Internet, all of them has the connection to the World Web.

Civil society includes different groups of the people such as association, different types of groups, NGOs and of course, it includes democracy, but it does not mean that the groups should force people around do what they want, BarCamp the event, which lows the barriers between nations, languages and different professions, it is the event, which creates the opportunity to communicate in any way the person can do it, listen, learn, read, write or speak.

The main idea of the BarCamp 2010 in Kazakhstan was to let people know more about the cyber space, World Web and to create a new societies, groups, associations in the Internet. The problem is that the Kazakhstan citizens do not use Internet a lot, not because of the specifics of the nation but because of the first of all, the opportunity, which thousands of the Kazakhstan citizens do not have and also the governmental rules, which restrict the users to create in the Internet what ever they want, as the example of the LiveJournal, which was closed because of the governmental wish.

According to the date of the BarCamp website about 686 people all over the Kazakhstan were registered to the event. Also, Bar Camp has given 34 grants for travelers from different parts of Kazakhstan, in order to give them the opportunity to be presented on the event.

 I have asked several students of the KIMEP, who attendant the conferences about there feelings and understanding of the connection of civil society to the BarCamp, both of them started to talk about the presentation of the 21 Century Literacy. The presentation was interesting and was done in a professional way, so that everyone was listening to them, also the topic, of course, was interesting for the students as all of them are in someway connected to the Internet and as a consequence to the civil societies.

The people, who have attended the conferences, could learn a lot of interesting things about new programs and companies, such as Mobile Internet, Ovi store, Internet Explorer 8 and The Soros Foundation.

Actually, the BarCamp was created because of the World Web, and all of the organizers of the event were closely connected to the Internet. In fact the event is very beneficial for the different kinds of journalists, bloggers, photo-journalists, writers, also, for marketers, PR managers for any kind of professionals in the sphere of media and public.

Participatory audience has the opportunity to talk about different things openly and discuses any issues they are interested in. BarCamp gives the opportunity to people to feel free in the journalism sphere, so that everyone could ask the questions, it does not matter is he/she the student or instructor.

To conclude, I would to say that actually such kinds of the events show the involvement of the government to the common problems. No any support of the officials to such kind of events, even though I thinks that the government even against the event, which collaborates such amount of the journalists in one place…It is sad because the government plays the main role of the people’s opportunity to use Internet and as a consequence to create a civil societies….