On Oct. 25, NYU Shanghai hosted its third Barcamp. More than 600 people and over 60 presenters participated in the biannual university event. Started in Silicon Valley, Barcamp is a fun, user-generated unconventional conference that aims to encourage innovative idea exchanges and spark intellectual conversations. Co-sponsored by NYU Shanghai and supported by Techyizu, Barcamp at NYU Shanghai is a full-day event with multiple sessions, workshops, and presentations on topics such as startup entrepreneurship and social and technological innovation. Barcamp at NYU Shanghai is open to all NYU Shanghai students as well as the public. Everyone can attend; everyone can participate. Presenters, as well as attendees, benefit from Barcamp; it offers an open and sharing platform for people to learn about the latest tech innovations and for startup companies to potentially recruit.

Barcamp welcomes all presenters with only two rules: be nice and do not use Barcamp to ask for investment for a product or company. Barcamp might seem unorganized what with people switching rooms and moving around all the time, but it is intended to be that way. Starting from 10 AM and lasting until 5 PM, with a lunch break between 12:30 and 1:30 PM, presenters are free to choose whichever time slot and whichever room they would like to present in. They then reserve the time slot and room by writing their names on the whiteboard located in the second floor café. Each presentation generally lasts between half an hour to an hour.

Some of the highlights from this year’s Barcamp: Virtual Reality: Haunted Classroom, the most popular project at Barcamp, was presented by our own Christian Grewell from Project Management. With the Oculus Rift, Halloween is quite literally right around the corner. Turn up the Halloween spirit by creating a virtual haunted house with Oculus 3D Webpage with WebGL: WebGL is a 3D display language for browsers created by Kronos and Mozilla. 3D perspective of your 2D webpage was possible at Barcamp. Simply click and flip/drag! To find out more about it, click here.

Bodily Politics Among Pole Dancers: Yet another interesting talk concerned the role of pole dancing as the expression of female power. The presenter shared his experience pole dancing, and questioned the way that the common social perception of pole dancers has created a barrier for the free pursuit of pole dancing as a career. Barcamp is an intellectual camping site, a get-together of the creative minds. It is an event that sparks and spreads innovative ideas. It also builds bridges different fields, initiating cross-subject conversations. If you did not make it to the Fall 2015 Barcamp, there is another one in Spring 2016 as well! This article was written by Mengzhu Katie Chen. Send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Mengzhu Chen, Joanne Chun