Phnom Penh, Oct. 24-25: Close to 3,500 enthusiastic participants swamped the two-day, IT-based Barcamp Phnom Penh held at the Institute of Technology of Cambodia.

A partnership between Barcamp Cambodia and Cellcard, the event was attended by IT professionals, business leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, educators and students eager to listen to over a hundred individual speakers and group sessions that combined fun, learning and hands-on experience.

Barcamp Phnom Penh’s theme this year, fittingly titled “Get Ready for ASEAN Integration”, aimed to prepare Cambodian youth for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) initiative scheduled for the end of the year as well as open up further IT opportunities and allow budding techies to gain knowledge from experts in the field.

Among the numerous topics that drew in the crowd included “The future of eCommerce in Cambodia”, “How to become a young manager”, “Tips on going abroad without spending your own money” and “Innovation@Google”. In total, Barcamp Phnom Penh featured 136 speakers and 82 sessions comprising two panel discussions, four talks and 76 presentations.

The event also included 40 exhibitor booths. Speakers and exhibitors comprised some of the region’s most respected and knowledgeable IT professionals and organizations, including EZECOM, Google Developer Group, IT STEP Academy, Fedora, FireFox, Development Innovations, ITC, Web Essentials, Nokor Group, Yoolk, ThemeCountry, BarCamp Singapore and BarCamp Bangkok. Also making his appearance at the event was Cellcard’s Director of Marketing Niek Van Veen, who was a panelist at “The future of eCommerce in Cambodia” discussion.

“We are extremely delighted with the turnout for Barcamp Phnom Penh, which augurs well for the development of technology and innovation in the country,” said Van Veen. “Cellcard is happy to be a supporter of the Barcamp initiative because we believe that it offers our youth the right amount of guidance and experience that will enable them to not only build future careers in the field, but also take IT as a whole to a much higher level to benefit society.”

Barcamp Phnom Penh follows in the footsteps of camps held earlier this year in Ratanakiri, Kampot, Battambang and Takeo, which were all well-attended and supported by a large number of participants.

For more information on Barcamp, visit www.2015.barcampcambodia.org