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Feb172008
IndiBlogger Blogger’s Meet at Microsoft, Bangalore
First things first, I half-expected this to be another run-of-the-mill Microsoft meet where their blogging tools like LiveWriter are promoted, and boring stuff in general. I’m glad I was so horribly wrong. I must say, I’ve never been to a more enjoyable blogger meet ever, and no, it wasn’t because of the pizzas.
It began with each blogger going up to the podium and giving a one-liner about their blogs, with the URL. While some took the liberty of dropping a one-pager instead, it didn’t really matter, because - and this is a first, also pointed out by Sangeeth towards the end - almost every blogger in that group had an amazing sense of uniqueness to their blogs and what they wrote about, and if any redundancy was ever there, it was lost in the humour. Some of the intros - especially Comrade Chakra’s - was hilarious, and a good thing too, as I was ranting away about social events and making it sound very boring, Blogathon inclusive.
In the end, it was a nice little concoction of blogs with a purpose, random sporadic ones and uber-geeky ones. It’s always a pleasing thought to see bloggers from different genres get together and just mingle about.
Once the presentations were done, there was a rather interesting session where the IndiBlogger folks showcased some of the more interesting comments/quotes from the various blogs they saw, and the bloggers were supposed to identify it, so it was a question of how well we knew our blogs. Unfortunately, it didn’t end with mere identification, we had to do a silly little jig too, and mercifully this was before dinner.
When the aforementioned pizzas were wolved down by us, there was a LiveWriter session (after all) which gave us a quick look at the rather intuitive interface. No, I’m not Microsoft’s biggest fan - but they really know how to make their UIs - and that’s where LiveWriter’s a potential winner. The IndiBlogger folks - who are, by the way, a really, really fun lot with both method and madness - came out with a little skit that talked about spam. Smart and subtly funny.
And then came the best part of the evening - for me, atleast. Social causes, blogger awakenings, and stuff that’s really close to my heart. It seeded from a LeadCap presentation Sangeeth made, which talked about instilling leadership qualities into the people of this nation, in general. I tried to narrow it down to the bloggers to address the audience, so I asked a simple question: What can bloggers do to help the common man in India? I dropped in a few suggestions of my own, but the idea really was to get people talking and drive a point home. After rudely interrupting Sangeeth’s presentation and randomly showing up on the podium, I hope I made it. As I always insist whenever I meet anyone who looks even remotely like a blogger, they must join and be part of a blogging community that we are building together, wherever they are, in whichever city they live in. In Bangalore, we have the Blogaloreans on GoogleGroups.
For me, that was the take-away from the meet today. Sure, I got about twenty new blogs to check and faces to tag them with, I looked at LiveWriter, I got a black t-shirt and pizza and all that - but the biggest take away from the meet today was that we - everyone whose rear showed up at Microsoft EGL that evening - in small steps contributed to getting together as a community, and not just for social or geeky causes, no - but to simply belong to a blogging community from which we can learn, and to which we can give back to. And also network, so crucial for those who want to start something of their own.
Oui, I loved it.
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A special word of gratitude to the IndiBlogger folks for setting this up, and to Microsoft for being kind enough to host it for us. I’m really glad all the bloggers shared their thoughts and came together, and we’re looking forward to having more such social meets where we can reach out to each other. Also, a quick mention, Mrinal Wadhwa (an RIA evangelist as he calls himself) made a real valid point about blogging ethics, something that we all are expected to know automatically but I don’t know of anyone else in that crowd who might have brought that point up. Mrinal triggered a thought process that we - as responsible bloggers - must increase the awareness in the blogosphere on how to be ethical as you blog. How not to rip photographs and content off from other websites. It’s a seriously important point and I would love to get together with like-minded folks like him and take it forward.
And that’s about it. The crowd was super, totally my-kinda like-minded folks. I guess the caption on the T-shirts pretty much summed it up. We blog, therefore we are.
The views expressed in this post are those of the writer and are not necessarily endorsed by Mutiny.in
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Mrinal Wadhwa
001
6:04 am
Hey Sandil,
Thank you for the really nice writeup on the event, it was a pleasure meeting you and all the other local bloggers .. the evening was a lot of fun !
Continuing the discussion on ethics I was thinking maybe we should have a wiki somewhere (maybe on indiblogger) … that anyone can edit and add what he/she feels is ethical .. what do you think?
_
Mrinal
Mrinal Wadhwa
002
6:44 am
Ironically, while we were on the subject, someone ripped off my post about the indiblogger meet
, with no attribution whatsoever
My original post:
http://weblog.mrinalwadhwa.com/2008/02/17/indibloggerin-meet-a-very-interesting-evening/
The ripped off version:
http://tinyurl.com/372xd2
Now as i said it feels more like an awareness problem … the guy has an interesting disclaimer on that blog that says he is just spreading some link love, but since the summary he’s posted does not state that the content is Mrinal Wadhwa’s … he’s in clear violation of my creative commons license.
It is somewhat comforting that this guy is actually linking to my content, many a times they don’t even bother to link.
_
Mrinal
Naveen Roy
003
7:23 am
Hey There Sandil and Mrinal and the rest of the Mutiny gang!..It was a pleasure being there at the Bangalore Bloggers Meet and to meet you guys…Seeing the updates on your blog, I see that you had a good time…
Hehe, the line - “The IndiBlogger folks - who are, by the way, a really, really fun lot with both method and madness - came out with a little skit that talked about spam. Smart and subtly funny.” touches my heart!!
And yes, about the Blogger ethics, we plan to come up with some suggestions of our own and also will be making a page where you people can contribute
Till later!!
Adheeth
004
11:20 am
hey nice meeting you all there!!! hey i feel the personnal introduction round is a pain! everytime we go through the same process!! why not we get to play a ppt with the blogger profiles running on the screen if it’s a meet like this!! wud save the time!
2S
005
11:33 am
@Mrinal @Naveen - same here!
Actually, after that incident that happened with me I’ve been re-working on the Mutiny posting guidelines for our authors to look at and that also includes plagiarism etc, but I like the idea of having a wiki.
But besides wiki, maybe we should get together and put a quick PPT or two that we could use at barcamps and other meets, perhaps Naveen could use it in future IndiBlogger meets at Hyderabad/Chennai, etc. It’s good to have the wiki but I still think some of the seasoned bloggers can do a two-three minute talk at the unconferences. What do you think?
2S
006
11:33 am
@Adheeth - true, but this was the first or second such meet, we can structure and focus it well in the future.
comrade chakra
007
11:58 am
Hey Sandil, good write-up.
It appears i missed a fair bit of the interesting part , towards the end of the meet. I have been checking out your site and certainly hope to read more about you guys in the coming weeks.
And again, a big thank you goes to the boys at Indibloggers for setting this meet up.
| Balu |
008
12:50 pm
Darn! The best bloggers meet to date and I miss it! Great! (sob sob)
Mrinal Wadhwa
009
1:12 pm
@Adheeth … dude i enjoyed the personal round, thats what made this meeting so engaging, but I do feel that there should be a 1min time limit on the intros.
Sivakumar
010
1:25 pm
Hey Sandil,
Though I know you guys form BCB4 and earlier bloggers meet….this was the first time I really got know you and Jerry little more. Excllent meeting you guys again…..!!! Thank you for the nice write up giving credit to all the stake holders of yesterday’s meet. Ecellent one. - Siva
2S
011
1:29 pm
@Siva - nice to meet you too, looking forward to catching up again soon at BarCamp / Blogathon and in general whenever I’m around M-palya
Renie
012
2:54 pm
Hey Sandil - great write up, and thanks to all you guys for making it so much fun. We’ll post the photos up soon. We’ve created an IndiBlogger group on Flickr for everyone who was clicking away to post their pics to. The Wiki feature on blogging ethics will be up very soon as well.
Thanks again!
dev
013
3:03 pm
Great review of the session, Sandil.
Absolutely wonderful evening spent. Although i am not a blogger, i was able to sneak in (thanks to Ravi Kumar) and peek into some brilliant minds and their blogs. I think the whole atmosphere was very casual, and yet had an overall purpose…of saying that blogging has the potential to start a small revolution.
Comrade chakra and others were just too darn humorous. I have been very tempted to blog after this meeting…
ps: i suppose the only little mutiny occurred around the time we had the discussion on leadership and when livewriter was being discussed
; otherwise, the evening seemed pretty mutiny-free.
Sanjukta
014
3:03 pm
And for those who missed my blog URL and are wondering how to reach to that initeresting lady.. here’s me
Had fun at the meet..
Mohan
015
3:15 pm
Cool review buddy
Unfortunately I missed it….. Anyway hoping to catch up next time
Any way of getting a spare t-shirt?
2S
016
3:21 pm
I don’t think you’ll like it much Mohan - it’s got the Microsoft logo on it and I know what a huge open-source fan you are.
2S
017
3:21 pm
@Renie - thanks for the link, am gonna keep peeking at it!
@Dev - always game for a mutiny or two.
Ujj
018
10:48 pm
missed it.. am extremely pissed of at myself for that. Was nice to catch up it here though
Renie
019
12:08 am
The pics of the meet have been posted. Please post your own pics on Flickr to the IndiBlogger group. Thanks!
Balaji
020
10:17 am
We would be glad to have you guys in Hyderabad meet. See if you guys can make it….
Ambatisreedhar
021
3:09 pm
Its nice getting some new ideas from all of you.
I really enjoyed this event.
Generally I dont like attending nontechnical events.
But here all went right.
Expect one thing.
I heard a comment when I am in Microsoft building lift after the end of the session.
That comment is: “Who had given oppurtunity to those LeadCap guys?”
I really felt bad.
Whatever u write in blog has to be implemented first of all atleast by you.
2S
022
6:11 pm
I don’t know who made that comment, but that was very harsh. The LeadCap presentation triggered a thought process, the only thing was, we had just had dinner and we weren’t focusing on “blogs” so I jumped in to get the focus.
I had a look at LeadaCap and the idea is very thought-provoking. I think we should recognize the intent - which is great - and see how we can apply ourselves to it, that is, if we want to of course. No force saying that all bloggers should get into social causes, that’d be silly.
P.S. I am still in Bangalore, don’t go by the flag.
Sandhya
023
6:50 pm
I had a great time as a Blogger and as an organiser on behalf of Microsoft. It was my debut as both. I loved the way the atmosphere was pepped up with excitement in the hall.. It was too good to be there..
Thank you guys for making the show a grand success
Sandhya
jeet
024
2:04 am
Sandil, nice writing giving good cover up to the event. Just to follow up on what Mrinal said, may be we can have bloggers community brain storming on the wiki Mrinal propposed to bring about a standard form of giving credit to the original editor.
2S
025
8:14 am
@jeet - we could do that, although a “standard” form might not work, I think we should agree on the “whats” and leave the “hows” to each individual blogger.
@sandhya - merci, too bad we didn’t induce much outrage to make you blog, we’ll address that in the upcoming events surely
Sandhya
026
6:45 pm
@2S: Dude! I have saved a draft yaar.. Almost done.. But I had this stupid college stuff to take care of as I am currently in CHennai.. They ve pissed me off so much that I ll blog now (After am done with my assignments
)
race
027
9:42 am
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Renie
028
4:01 pm
The next blogger meet has been announced folks - hope to see you all there!
http://www.indiblogger.in/bloggermeet.php?id=26