Geeks around Bangalore sporting logos and T-shirts stormed ThoughtWorks office on February 9. Hold on, this is not a violent protest that we are talking about, but DevCamp 2008 - an unconference for alpha geeks, or techies, to be more accurate. The organizers of the BarCamp conducted the one-day camp to bring together geeks to share hardcore technology thoughts.

Armed with coffee and laptops, the geeks had an opportunity to either conduct a technology session or attend one. With more than 40 sessions and four parallel tracks the camp was a developer’s haven. Some of the topics discussed were Nintendo DS, Homebrew Hackery, Aakraman, a Ruby based war game, and Android Plugin Internals and many more.

Like icing to the cake, the presence of the renowned author Martin Fowler, software consultant, speaker and Chief Scientist of ThoughtWorks, added thrill to the event. Fowler spoke about the spirit of unconferences and how these discussion oriented sessions help in adding maximum value. “One of the best unconferences which I have attended was the Foo Camp in America which had a few of the techies discuss Open Source initiatives. The law of two feet is the best aspect of these events as it allows participants to walk in and out of sessions at any given point of time,” said Fowler.

Apart from learning from each other, such unconferences also provide techies an opportunity to grow as an agile community and keep up with updates in technology. Though the event saw more than 600 people register, the doors were closed due to lack of space once the number of entrants crossed 250. Events like DevCamp and BarCamp differ a lot from the usual company-led technology meets, but they have gained reputation platforms where ideas and discussions have taken shape into entrepreneurial ventures such as the startup company Picsquare which evolved during one of the BarCamps in late 2006.