It has been well over a week since BarCamp Mumbai 3 concluded and apart from a few photos, I have not blogged about the event — which is a bit of a contrast to the amount I wrote about it prior to the event. I did do a post-event analysis, but in the magazine which constitutes my day job and well, it was a mostly critical piece — read it here. Reason: I came away quite disappointed with BCM3 — lots of young, enthusiastic people and loads of networking, but that was about it. Very little that I saw in terms of entrepreneurial buzz. Not too many great ideas at the demos, mostly aimless exchanges of business cards, bad infrastructure and a good measure of corporate product pitching. Maybe part of the overall disappointment stemmed from the fact that this was my first full-fledged BarCamp and the expectations were inordinately high.

Anyhow, going by the negative sentiment that my magazine piece elicited — nobody can take criticism, especially from a journalist — I thought I would run a little contest here. Earlier today on Twitter I invited people to write in on ‘Do BarCamps help entrepreneurs turn ideas into real businesses?’. If you are an entrepreneur who has started a company or is on the verge of starting one, write in a 300-word piece on the above mentioned theme and send it to snigdha (dot) startupcentral (at) gmail.com. I will publish the best piece here and pay the author as well — a modest Rs 1.50 per word. You probably don’t need the money but any effort should be rewarded. Look forward.

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