Myanmar: Barcamp Yangon 2011 · Global Voices
Mong Palatino

Barcamp Yangon 2011 took place last weekend at Myanmar Info-Tech, Hlaing in Yangon. More than 4,000 Barcampers attended the two-day event. News updates, photos, and videos are available on twitter, facebook, and picasa.
From the official twitter account of the event:
BarCamp Yangon 2011 was successfully finished. We made new record with over 4000 attendees.
Official count: 3,137 people. 1,532 online registrants got t-shirts.
dawn_1o9, a participant of the Barcamp, blogged about her brief speech during the open forum
Then I joined in Panel Discussion for “Threats to Myanmar Blogosphere” at Conference Hall along with other Myanmar bloggers. The biggest threat and the only threat I could think of was the unfair banning of blog platforms such as Blogger, WordPress and even Tumbler. So some invested a lot of their own money and bought their own web servers and domain names, when they could have been blogging away without having to pay anything. And what does the ISP do? They also banned some of those own-domain websites, and those websites doesn't even have any political contents in it. I spoke about the unfairness of that in front of hundreds of people, and they all clapped. Hahaha
Since her speech, the website Xanga is now banned in Myanmar
dawn1o9 Xanga is now banned. A result of my little speech at “Threat to Blogosphere” at #bcy2011? :P
UPDATE: The website Xanga has been unblocked in Myanmar. The temporary shutdown was blamed on proxy server error.
Based on the twitter hashtag #bcy2011, here are some tweet reports
tayzar44 I'm happy to participated @ BarCamp Yangon 2011 with Adobe Photoshop tips, Myanmar Blogosphere topics #bcy2011 Wooo
EyeOfDragonLi miss #bcy2011 so much … looking forward to barcamp yangon 2012 …..
worldofj0rd From what I heard #barcampyangon had access to 13%+ (8mbps of 60 or 42 depend on who you ask) of backbone for entire country. #bcy2011
frozencity I just had the most amazing day at BarCamp and at BeerCamp. =D #bcy2011
dawn1o9 #bcy2011 Please don't leave trash behind you. Think of the environment! Too many coffee cups lying around -_-
Sajal Kayan also attended the event and reported about the internet connectivity in Myanmar
It probably had an attendance of > 4k participants… Probably one of the largest BarCamps ever, despite the fact that the internet connectivity in Myanmar sucks big time…. Really unusable…
I used internet at the free “wifi” internet at the hotel and the wifi arranged by the organizers. Both places, the speeds I’ve seen range from 0 kbps to ~50 kbps…. most of the time around 0 kbps
He also mentioned the websites that are blocked in Myanmar
Twitter – Blocked normally, but works using https or apps.
Gmail – works on browser but IMAP doesn’t work at all… The most surprising aspect of it is that 99% of ppl there use gmail.
Based on a simple survey, everyone uses Firefox. Very few people use Linux. Windows is very popular due to rampant piracy
Related article: Barcamp Yangon 2010