Okay, this is gonna be a quick post as I am running out of time.. I reached the place bit late.. (all because the sleepless night haha).. reached at around 11.30 AM or so… was not so comfortable in the beginning as the sessions were not kind of going as they were supposed to..

No, I am not talking about the management, I am talking about the guys who were on  the center stage.. for example, someone had a session on security of the blog. Some security guy was talking about it.. when I first heard about it, I quickly rushed in the room thinking there will be “interesting” thing about security there..

The guy started off with importance of latest version software and all.. I was hoping the session to go bit more in detail about the person just played around there only and did not explain what all can be done if the blog is not secured.. I was actually hoping for some kind of live example.. but nothing of that sort was illustrated. Actually, couple of guys from backseat tried to divert the discussion somewhere else, and infact it worked too.

Okay, time for another session.. some guy spoke something about how to blog successfully. (some blog system and all that..) but he failed to be on the point, he was more into, what is required to run a successful blog instead of showing how to do it. (Yea, I know, he did say about some 3 options but that was not enough at all)

Then there was some session on Podcasting, I did not attend the whole session as I personally found it bit not my types..

Okay, then we had a lunch break.. great food.. I must say..

So after the lunch, I was hoping for some better session and actually we had couple of good sessions.

The first one was from some Sulekha.com guys (who were claiming to be normal users using Sulekha as blogging platform). They were trying to explain how blog helps to make friends on the net but I guess it did not work. They got lost in themselves and left everyone confused. haha I remember, I was looking at Tarun with that funny look, saying what is happening man.. haha

Okay, then we had a session on Hindi Blogging, it was pretty good.. liked the guy.. nice topic.. we discussed about the advantages and disadvantages of blogging in regional language and all. It was pretty good.

Then Karmveer came forward and discussed about how he makes 53K USD a month from 200 odd websites.. (Yea, the guess is right.. all those non human sites and all) That session was actually good… we had a good argument over TLA and all.

Then we had a session from Tarun, I missed half of it due to an urgent phone / hunger call.. haha Also discussed some stuff with couple of SEO guys out there..

Okay, I got back and Tarun’s session was still going on.. it was actually very interesting, he spoke about personal blogging and all. It was more of a discussion than the session.

Ok, the last session, it was by 2 SEO guys, If my memory goes in the right path, their names were Ashwin and Mani. They had a good session but again, I personally felt, the were more into what is SEO rather than explaining how to do it. But yea, we had a good discussion there too.

I guess, that’s it. Met few net friends and Blogcamp friends.. Aseem, Amit, Tarun, Hitesh, Sakshi, Meetu, Brajeshwar, Mehul and Nishit.. loved it, had a good fun. Much better than Pune Blogcamp that we had last year..

Great work and three cheers to all the organizers.

Update: Oops, just realized that, it was not a quick short post anymore…. Okay, gotta run.. wifey is waiting…

I was waiting for this for a long time and finally we have BlogCamp in Mumbai.. It’s going to be on 29th March 2008 at IIT Powai.

So, get yourself registered here: http://barcamp.org/BlogCampMumbaiStyle

See you there then..

I just returned from Blogcamp Pune. The last session was at 4.30 PM but we left an hour early as we found things going haywire.

The things started around 9.40 AM with introduction to blogcamp Pune and introduction of the visitors started later. (which according to me was not necessary) Now, this delayed the first session from 10.30 AM to 11 AM.

I am not going to talk about every session as most of them were from the sponsors and were marketing oriented. Some even tried to pitch in the product but they forgot to have a good presentation, they kept on talking about their company and blog related stuff. They did not talk much about the product for which they were marketing haha

The only good session according to me was from Mumbai based blogger Melody on negative effects of blogging. Infact I really wanted to share some stuff on that issue but there was very less time in the end and infact she also could not finish it off properly.

I also wanted to speak on starting your own blog and earning from blogs but I don’t know I did not feel like conducting a session. The unorganized things put me off basically. The wifi needed some proxy settings to be configured to access and no information regarding the server information was provided in the rooms. The rooms did not have air conditioner, so this was another negative point. And the worst part was, only couple of blogging related sessions.

But, it happens, this is how we learn. The organizers will obviously learn from this mistakes and next time they will have something much better…

Note: This post was partially written around 6.30 PM

Technorati Tags: blogcamppune

Few months back we had visited Blogcamp Chennai and this time it is in Pune. Infact it is tomorrow on 16th June.

Ashish and me are going to attend it, let’s see how it goes. I am not sure whether I am going to have any sessions or not, I will decide tomorrow itself. Let’s see..

btw anyone from Pune? If yes, then are you attending it?

Sorry guys for posting it after a long pause. I was out whole day Monday, meetings and all. And now finally I got sometime so decided to continue the post. (I had written half of it just after reaching Mumbai)

Going to Chennai for 2 days, leaving all the work… was it worth going to BlogCamp? I got these kind of questions from many people and I replied them with the single answer “You really missed it”

2 days with lots of exciting sessions and lots of messed up sessions too but I guess that’s the part of unconference and it was all fun. Some of the sessions finished one time and some even took more than 2 hours…

I had decided that I won’t be speaking on SEO but few things on the day one made me speak and I just prepared the stuff and booked the slot on day 2 morning. And this is how I landed up speaking on SEO.

Now after this I found that there are lot of people who want more info on SEO and Earning through blogs and I quickly decided to speak on “How to start earning through blogs?” I even spoke to Syed (one of the main organizers) but all the slots on that day were booked.

Okay, now enough of me speaking about myself. What else was there?

On day 1 I found technical sessions more interesting than the general ones. (May be I am more of a technical person) Ganesh spoke on Wordpress.com, how to setup a blog on it and al. Aswin spoke on Wordpress Hacks, Prassana spoke on Blogger Beta Hacks…

Day 1 part 2 was taken over by Podcast stuff by Kiruba and his friend Ram (I hope that’s the correct name) then there were couple of more sessions but I do not think so I remember them correctly.

Day 2 first part included my session and couple of others. Part 2 was kind of bad which had good session by Creative Commons guy but rest of them were not that good. Couple of them even spoke just for the sake of sessions and they ended up promoting their site rather than giving any info.

And now in that, there were few media hungry guys too who were trying their best to get attention of CNN IBN camera haha and I must say they succeeded too.

Now as all the sessions on the first floor (tech sessions area) were over, we were moved to the ground floor and I must say that was one of the best moments of BlogCamp. A healthy discussion. Very good discussion started by Dina Mehta, Peter Griffin and Kiruba Shankar. I wish it was continued for bit longer duration.

Then there was some contest going on. I could not attend it for some reason.

So that’s how things ended and in the end. I must say it was a great place to be and great experience too. Met many people. Amit Agarwal, Ganesh, Hitesh Mehta, Kiruba, Sunil, Syed and many more.

And I also learnt one thing. Never say No to Ashish when he asks you to sit on the window seat. Trust me, you won’t regret like I did. haha