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The different nationalities/perspectives add something unique to Bizcamp, so keep the English as language of communication.

Few suggestions for Bizcamp 5

1. Promote people to collaborate before and after the event

2. Is it really necessary to have talks back-back-back for the whole day? Would some open slots in between not be better for networking (which I presume is the objective of a good % of people attending)

Raghu

[1] “11 Commandments for hiring people” by @TjorvenD: funny because it’s true.
[2] “Double Bill” by @bruno1970 (yours truly): no comment
[3] “Intellectual Property — Know what you own” by Joren De Wachter: very interesting because I already had to do the IP exercise more than once. A must-know for start-ups.
[4] “iRail Summer of Code” by @tuinslak: must remember to contact @PieterColpaert to hear if and how we can join the project.
[5] “How to get 50K subsidies” by @den_arnout: I’m sorry, I fear I hijacked the talk because I have strong opinions about subsidies. I don’t like to see my tax money going down the drain. I don’t like the fact that those who bend the truth to fit the rules get subsidizied instead of those who really deserve help but don’t get it because “filling out forms” and “meeting academic criteria” isn’t part of their core business.
[6] “Lean Startups” by @sarbogast: this is how business is really done. Good talk! (This guy should get subsidies!)
[7] “Market Research” by @PieterDuboisFI: This guy received subsidies. Interesting conclusions, more or less proving my point about subsidies
[8] “Marketing your online prelaunch startup for free” by @davykestens: excellent talk, excellent tips. I forwarded a link to Davy’s slides to many people yesterday.
[10] “Brainstorming about starting up a new company” by @cubus: it’s a pity that half of the audience (myself included) totally missed the point during the first ten minutes of the brainstorm session. By the time the goal of the new company was clear, the time was almost over. Can we start over again now that we understand the question? (Deserves a second chance.)
[11] “Travelling with your Business” by @matuvu: Amazing. I didn’t actively follow Ine on her trip, but once in a while I read her blog when I heard echoes about their year abroad. It was interesting to hear her conclusions.
[12] “Why we should start paying for free software” by @blueclock: Finally somebody who discovered that Free Software Developers aren’t machines but real people, confronted with the same problems as “normal” software developers. Question from @blueclock: What would happen if we started paying for free software? Answer from the audience: We would go bankrupt! My interpretation: Do I hear a call to reintroduce slavery? @blueclock explained the danger of taking without ever giving back: it’s like sawing off the branch you sit on. Dangerous!
[13] “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas” by @bruno1970: no comment

I really enjoyed the talks; moreover I’ve met plenty of interesting people, some of which I hope I’ll meet again soon.

Eventbrite has probably many advantages, but also disadvantages:

- it doesn’t allow interaction between participants in the runup to the event
- it is actually not visible at a glance how many people already subscribed

(actually, Twikilist does both of those really well, but lacks sponsoring options and doesn’t let you collect email addresses… – Fikket might be a good alternative)

Because there were so many free tickets still available, the eventbrite page _actually gave me the impression that a lot less people subscribed than expected_ … (in fact, about 80 subscribed, which is a really good number… – but that was not obvious from the page unless you count manually).

(BTW: I did come to the event anyway to reconnect with .be peeps and was pleasantly surprised there were that many…)

Pieter

Pieter