Oh, I was supposed to talk on Blogcamp Pune 2, OK OK.. I am back on track.. Vada Pav was pretty good at SICSR – Symbiosis (the venue), but I missed the Poha as Annkur had recommended..  Will try it definitely next time..  I loved the wind blowing on the 7th floor.. and the few babes roaming around in the girls hostel opposite of the venue.. and Yeah.. I enjoyed couple of sessions too.. The session by Ankesh and Annkur were pretty interesting.. but apart from that nothing impressed me much.. But the purpose of the post is not about criticizing Blogcamp Pune 2 but it is my bit improve the whole thing..

Following are the loopholes I found..

1. No proper management, Yeah, there were couple of guys at the registration desk but that’s it.. the white board did not have any session details for the first couple of hours (the unconference started at 10 AM)
2. The intro session ate up good amount of time..
3. No proper sync between the 2 rooms, I think most of the people were sitting in a single room and there was no proper tracking of the activities in the other room.
4. A person hijacking the sessions (Known as Thakkar from what I understand).. I know I know, everyone loved it.. he was good at what he was doing in fact.. but knowingly or unknowingly, he hijacked and pulled up all the people to listen to his comedy skills. I don’t think it was the right thing.. Come on guys it’s Blogcamp.. not any entertainment show.. there were people in the other room trying to give out the sessions.. but there was no one in the rooms, everyone was enjoying his jokes..

   Those guys might have spent hours of time to make presentation, prepare for the session and their hard work goes in vain.. The whole traffic gets attracted to something which could have been done after all the sessions were over too..I definitely did not attend Blogcamp to waste my time in the funny show.. and I am sure, others too did not come for the funny show..

So, how do we improve the whole thing? I would suggest, we should take some lessons from Blogcamp Chennai.. (the first one), it was very well organized, everything perfectly set and managed..

So, here are the pointers..

1. Cut down the intro session or just take it off. I personally don’t think it will be of any use getting 100 odd people introduce themselves one by one.. this kind of exercise just takes lot of time and yields nothing.. I think the same kind of problem we had faced in earlier blog camp Pune too..
2. Be sure to have a list of the sessions before everything starts.. Yea, I know it’s unconference and all.. but having a list of sessions is pretty much convenient for the visitors (Obviously, things can be added / taken off from it over the time)
3. Categorize the sessions in 2 types.. say, Advanced and Newbies, or whatever categorization you feel like. Or simply, divide the sessions timings based on the theme.. I am saying this because, in the 2nd half, most of the sessions were boring.. they were boring for me but it’s highly possible that certain group of people will look forward to those kind of sessions.. frankly speaking, from what I saw, most of the people were either yawning or doing some other stuff, so this might give wrong signals to the person who is taking the session.. so, I feel it’s better to categorize so only target audience will attend the specific sessions..
4. Time is money.. we have to make sure that the sessions start and end at the specified time..
5. And yeah, most important, don’t allow anyone to hijack the sessions.. Yeah, I know it’s an unconference but think from the point of view of the guy who is going to take the session, what will be his state of mind (seeing no people around), what about his hard work? Still funny sessions more important?
6. Accept sponsorships, I know few people will be against it.. accept the money from the sponsors but don’t allow them to spam around in the sessions.. use the money in getting better conference hall, get some free food, snacks, goodies etc… it helps to make the whole environment much better..

I think if things are slightly more managed, everything will go pretty much smoothly..

I hope we don’t repeat these kind of mistakes again in the 3rd Blogcamp Pune and I am sure there will be lot of improvement in it..

And finally.. thanks to Tarun and other guys for organizing the Blogcamp Pune, if you feel, I can be of any help in organizing the Blogcamp, do let me know, I will be more than happy to join in

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…

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

See you there then..

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

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?

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

I think they have recoreded the video of the session and it might be available online (or they might make it available soon)

Will keep you guys updated.

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