Barcamper exchange program
prateekdayal.net
prateekdayal.net
Although I really hate product pitches, the last BarCampLA I attended had a pitch/presentation that I thought did a good job keeping it appropriate to BarCamp: one of the awe.sm founders was presenting his service and the audience-driven conversation was a lot more about analytics for short urls and how to deal with issues that may arise from the general idea, rather than about awe.sm itself.
Anyway, back on the actual topic of the link: I hate the idea. Mostly because all the fun in presentations about startups (in my opinion) is about being able to chat with the founder(s) about growing pains and experiences and more that other people merely demoing your product wouldn't be able to discuss. And also in my opinion, it's that extra bit that's way more appropriate to a BarCamp than a demo.
If this person is so interested in doing demos in such a manner, he should just go create DemoCamp Bangalore. Or maybe sponsor the next BarCamp in his area and similar events.
As the original blog post says I am a bootstrapper and I think its really hard for bootstrappers to sponsor event.
That said, I do understand/appreciate the other points you mentioned.
Yeah, I had that in mind when I was writing that sentence, and wasn't sure how to approach it because "sponsor" usually tends to imply money and there'd be an obvious shortage of that - I'm well aware, I'm trying to bootstrap my startup too :) But I don't mean you should necessarily be contributing money to the event, but rather that there are things that can be done without spending extra money that could still help a lot towards organizing a BarCamp that can help spread the word about your product. (Did I use enough "that"s in that sentence? hah.)
Anyway, I still think you should fork and start a DemoCamp or StartupCamp in your area if there are enough interested people. It not only means you can set the rules (like, oh, 10 minute slots for demos) but also would attract more people that weren't interested in the free-for-all-ness of BarCamps but have an interest in one that is startup-specific: investors, other founders, you get the idea. And of course, you could use a BarCamp to get things started in a myriad of ways and to let people know that there is such an event and oh look, here's some demos of products you might be interested in. Or maybe it could be a sub-camp within the BarCamp where you can just have a dedicated area with shorter sessions for people to demo their stuff.
May be the idea is not specific to barcamp but in general can be used to spread your service in areas you can't go to personally. May be if not a pitch a tshirt exchange. It can something like http://girl.inyourshirt.tv/ but at a peer level.
Btw, I wrote that original post.