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BLOGCAMP INDIA AT CHENNAI: BEST THING TO HAPPEN ON A WEEKEND

On 9th & 10th September, I was Blogcamp India and went through an amazing experience. Large hall, almost 200 or participants, and a spirited coalition of organisers led by Kiruba Shankar, a leading blogger himself.A hall that was WI-FI litup courtesy SIFY, and presence of celebs ( more on that later) and people from all over India, indeed from US and UK as well. It was billed as Unconference, meaning, very flat format, choose-your-own-role type.

I met Amit Agarwal, India's most famous blogger ( His business card reads: Go to Google.com , Type Amit Agarwal, Click I am feeling lucky) who flew in from Agra, the city of Taj Mahal.Unassuming and very accessible, Amit was seen to be as eager to meet others as others were to catch up with him.

I met some other bloggers, and discovered we worked for the same company! Among them was Jammy, who writes amazing humour with a straight face.
Then there was Atul Chitnis, the senior daddy of blogging, who has been at it since the nineties. . By way of sharing URLs, people proved that the time tested custom of exchanging business cards can sometimes appear so passe and unfashionable. "Everything's there", said a guy, as he mailed his blog URL to me, meaning, his contact details are on his blog and available at a click!


On Day Two, we had Sunil Gavaskar delighting the crowd with the effortless ease with which he connected to the medium. Sunil does podcasts on cricket for Yahoo, which incidentally was the lead sponsor for the event.

Blogging had its own set of converts. Mrs Geeta Padmanabhan, who wrote a beautiful piece in The Hindu Metro Plus a few days after the Blogcamp, is herself a convert to blogging. She has started her blog titled Grandma's Tales which kicked off with great elan.

SIFY had WI-FI litup the venue, thank you SIFY, since that enabled Bloggers with laptop to make online postings. Those not having a machine of their own, had the option of using one of the machines SIFY had helpfully arranged.

Overall, a very good experience.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thanks Rajesh. I'm glad you liked the piece. I was at the Blogcamp on both the days and had a great time.
Geeta.
Amit Agarwal said…
Hi Rajesh (aka Innoncent Animal :))

Was a pleasure meeting you and got to learn a lot of things from you especially the akshargram thing.

I was trying out Microsoft Phonetic Input tool and though you might be interested in it. (available from bhashaindia.com)

Cheers,
Amit.
Hi thank you for that post on blog camp. Though I was not there, I was able to understand the spirit with which the programme was conducted. It's realy encouraging the blogging community in India Thank you once again!