Campus Party Brazil 2009

The geek's paradise in a still non-technological country

After 12 editions in Spain, the largest event of technology stuff finally arrived in Brazil - and this year it happened for the second time in the city of Săo Paulo. As pointed out by the event organizers, "during a week the Campus Party had transformed itself in the house of everybody"


By Jandré BATISTA
from Pelotas, BRAZIL


Technology as the extension of life: imagine an entire world where everyone and everything would be connected despite economic differences and through the World Wide Web, a global network of mutual care and collaborative sense that could serve as the most emergent application of knowledge. Judging from the dimension of Campus Party Brazil (http://www.campus-party.com.br), a major event that gathered more than 6,6 thousands web surfers during the last week of January in Săo Paulo city, the contrast with the social reality of the country was explicit: only less than 15% of Brazilian residences in Brazil have Internet connection according to The Center of Studies about Technologies of Communication and Information (CTIC). However, those technological ideal perspectives, at least in a small scale - a pavilion of 38 thousand square meters in Săo Paulo - could be experienced with a large and varied schedule as a prognostic of the aggregator potential, not exactly virtual, of the bits and bytes world.

After 12 editions in Spain, the largest event of technology stuff finally arrived in Brazil - and this year it happened for the second time in the city of Săo Paulo. As pointed out by the event organizers, "during a week the Campus Party had transformed itself in the house of everybody". Literally camping at Campus Party, with tents and laptops, the "campuseiros" (how attendees were called in Portuguese) could enroll in parties, happy hours, keynotes, workshops, interact with the geek world, and with all that, be 100% connected to the world of technology. Among all the infrastructure available (security, food, hostage), the highlight was, of course, the free internet connection with a speed of 10Gb. All participants were asked to bring along their own computers in order to enjoy the party to the fullest.

The week tribute to the network knowledge diffusion had more than 400 activities, in 11 areas of content (on topics such as open source software, games, music, robotics, blogs, modding and astronomy), and counted with the presence of world famous names in the world of technology - among them, there was the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, who gave a lecture on the so called "Web 3.0", and Jon "Maddog" Hall, famous around the world for his actions toward open source software.

It's not all good, though

Although considered the largest technology event in Brazil, the Campus Party Brazil 2009 had received, in compensation, several critics from the ones responsible for making it an huge event: the blogosphere. The main focus of manifestations against the event were about the biggest support source: The Telefonica Celular, a company pointed as the monopolizer and leader of customer complains in the state of Săo Paulo. The largest sponsor of Campus Party, according to the manifestants, would contrast with the main flag of the event - the defense of freedom of expression and free software.

Another aspect that generated disillusionment among participants was the not accomplishment of the promise of planting 3 thousand trees, in order to compensate the environmental impact of such a large event. Even though they had first announced that they were going to do that, event organizers had passed the responsibility away to a third part company, and no one saw the trees being planted, which generated even more manifestations through blogs on the Internet.


(Published: 10.02.2009.)