BarCamp in the UAE

Those of you who complain that in Dubai people do not get together to have meaningful conversations, stop complaining and make sure you go to BarCamp.

Yes, one’s happening in the UAE! For those who are not familiar with the concept, it’s an informal gathering of people at an event where the substance of the event is created by the participants.  It’s the definition of “open-source”  in practice and anyone can initiate one by using the BarCamp Wiki.

The idea to do this is Dubai came up when some of us Tweeters were eating cheese manaeesh at Souk Al Baher. Two of the key organisers of Dubai’s first BarCamp are Twitter handles @floater @floatr, @disruptiveplay — well done guys and thanks for pushing this forward.

Being Dubai, the discussion topics need to be watched a bit,  so a free to all online topic list was created at: http://discuss.barcampuae.org/

Some of the topics are:

– Social media for social change

– Story telling in a digitally connected world

-The open education project

Here you can read descriptions of the ideas, vote for them, and if none of them tickles your ribs, suggest your own!

So, event details are:

When: Saturday, May 9.

Where: DELL building at DIC

What time: 10am onwards; 9:30 am if you want brekky 🙂

Follow the guys on Twitter for updates at @BarCampUAE.

I think it’s going be a great morning. I will be there, come!