Naturally my idea of fun is taking a 10 hour bus ride up to remote Ratanakiri province, where Banlung is the tiny Khmer speaking oasis in the midst of 12 different ethnic groups. Forest everywhere, sprouting from red earth. I landed at Tree Tops guest house (above), which would be a fortune in hardwood and stone anywhere else on the planet.
Here’s what the local market looks like.
While the locals insist that nothing ever happens in Banlung, I happened upon an impromptu engagement celebration…
…which led to a little Karaoke.
After 10 hours on the bus Ratanakiri delivered with scenery, songs and silliness. No complaints.
After arriving early at BarCamp Phnom Penh and jockeying for a decent slot for my two presentations, I returned from lunch to find myself speaking against … yours truly.
Since both of my talks required a projector, after some discussion this was quickly bumped to the next day. For Sunday I’d planned a follow-up presentation on ‘Digital Comics’ and a fun one on ‘KhmEnglish’ but FOUR presentations would be pretty exhausting. (Plus squeeze out other aspiring speakers.)
At Cambodian universities, to ensure lecture halls are at capacity when a founder or donor comes, classes may be canceled to fill seats. It seems an impromptu scheduling of a panel presentation by varied large scale sponsors has created a quite similar situation, and resulted in the rejigging of the schedule.
BarCamps are generally fluid unconference environments, but given the overall topics on day one, it strikes me as pretty heavily weighted on coding or business. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times; 2010 is the year BarCampPP became BusinessCamp. It’s probably a good sign that there’s such enthusiasm and professionalization in the IT industry here, that means more of my friends are getting paid.
I don’t envy the event staff who have to balance this out; during Cambodia’s first BarCamp Microsoft insisted on a static speaking slot in exchange for their participation.
When all is said and done, I think most will concur BarCamp Phnom Penh is still more dynamic and interesting than most tech gatherings in developed countries, with the biggest turnout yet. For a more uplifting overview, check out Thomas Wanhoff‘s enthusiastic audio summation. (He’ll be speaking tomorrow, he was rescheduled as well.)
Java Arts’ new exhibition ‘QuickDraw’ is exactly that: a collection of short comic art vignettes by ‘Jinja’ (AKA John Weeks) in English and Khmer. You’ll see observations on daily life as well as musings on larger issues of living in the Kingdom, garnered over a period of 10 years. Copies of a 30 page color comic (also bilingual) will be available for sale and signing by the author. The opening is Wednesday the 18th, 6:30 pm.
In addition to the exhibition, an artist talk on Cambodian comics history (’50 Years of Cambodian Comics’) will take place on the 24th (in English) with emcee John Berkavitch. All are welcome to learn about this little known chapter of Cambodian art history.
