Live Blogging from Chennai!

Indiblogger – Chennai Meet 8^th June somewhere around 4 in the evening.

Agenda:

1. Welcome by Lemonade
2. Introduction to IndiBlogger
3. 1 minute of fame
4. How well do you know your readers?
5. Mingling session / Tea
6. Play by The Rebelz
7. Presentation on mobile blogging by Aravind
8. Livewriter Presentation by Sandhya
9. Wrapping up

Well, as agendas go, I am really hoping that this one is not followed to the letter. We have timelines put across the agenda, but its no fun when everything goes as planned. Already, from experience, we know that the “1 minute of fame” always takes longer than a minute. Trust a bloggers ego to take him places!!

Also, my first time at an attempt at Live blogging!! Read attempt. Cause this has not been “live” blogged but has been saved on a Word doc and will be “live” later on!!

16:00 : Ok, it’s a really slow start and people have flocked in already. Already discussions on what the sizes of the T-shirts will be are flying around. IndiBlogger Renie calms people down with a few choice words. Actually, that we’ll be starting in 10 minutes.

Ok, we’re still waiting.

And waiting….

16:30 : And we’re finally starting off. We start off with the video created by Vineet for the Pune IndiBloggers meet. Kinda hard to judge the crowds reaction but it seems to be quiet and so, hoping things have started off well. Yes, we have been all called up on stage to introduce ourselves.

Well a small presentation was shown & then the introduction of the main team of IndiBlogger. It was nice to see a bit of interaction from people of the audience. All in all, there was interaction from members in the audience & the core team.

And now, for the “1 minute of fame” where the bloggers are invited to come up on stage and talk about their blogs. Some interesting introductions from the bloggers.

One of the more interesting bloggers http://atthealtar.blogspot.com. Interesting reason why he chose this name. The altar is where you get married. It’s also where animals are sacrificed. Damn, insightful.

A Swaminathan is actually heckled by the IndiBlogger team cause he has visited the IndiBlogger site only once and his latest post is about an Indian medicine for erectile dysfunction!! All in good fun and quite hilarious!!

Another blogger – writes about things that run around!!

http://thebloggerstimes.com is another blogger is a blogger that writes about startups. I will check up on the blog and will update. Looks interesting.

http://chennairoadtraffic.blogspot.com is a very interesting blog. Only about traffic. Chennai traffic that is. I am hoping that he or someone starts off one for the Bangalore traffic also.

These blogger intros are getting damn interesting. There’s this guys who loves taking potshots at himself. http://left84.blogspot.com

http://scudie.net comes up on stage and Anwin asks why the name Scudie. He says it’s a long story and that he will tell us if given a drink. A drink is actually offered!! Blogger stumped one up for IndiBlogger!!

Captain Jack Sparrow comes up on stage. Blogs on http://dang-baby.blogspot.com and writes posts giving dating advice and even marriage counseling. Not married, ever!!

http://www.sudhirsyal.com is actually from the Hindu Metro Plus and is covering this event for the Metro Plus.

An ex-naval officer is blogging now and enjoys blogging about everything concerning marine technology and all things connected to it. http://marinebuzz.com

Blogger here to test out his voice as he is planning to start a voice blog http://taalk.com

An interesting title for a blog – Skating On A Gasoline Rainbow!! Hehe, missed the URL though. But what is Google for?

And how can we ever forget Sandhya’s blog – http://whimsicalmind.wordpress.com and her favourite commenter – Anoop of IndiBlogger fame!! (Which has been refuted and recently corrected by herself J )

Ok, seems like we are reaching the end of the ego trip but still some more shy bloggers to go.

An interesting SEO blog – http://amousia.blogspot.com

An ex-Hindu fundamentalist, now secular. All due to his blogging. Interesting. Damn, didn’t get his blog URL.

http://ofunk.blogspot.com – does a bit of travel blogging and should say – very interesting blog name.

With that, we have finally ended the “1 minute of fame” introduction session and have given everyone a chance to take a break and chit chat and mingle.

During this short break period, the IndiBlogger team is interviewed by NDTV and The Hindu and some other news agencies.

18:40 and we start off the next session. This is what’s called “How well do you know your readers”. This is where we read out comments on blogs and have the bloggers identify the comments. If identified, we have them do the “IndiBlogger jig” which is actually a patented dance form!! J And like Anoop says, the jigs are done much better in Chennai!.

18:50 and we are waiting for the Rebelz to come in. They are performing a play on blogging and on the practise session, it was really good. We’re just hoping that the bloggers take it well.

18:53 and while waiting for the Rebelz to come in, Aravind is called to give his presentation on Mobile blogging. This I like. Change of agenda suddenly.

Aravind starts off saying that he hates computers. Especially laptops. He does all his blogging with a Nokia Communicator that is some 3 years old. Rudely interrupted by a fellow blogger, who asks whether he can also visit other blogs, he continues with some technical information on how to go about doing some mobile blogging. He sides with Blogger.com saying that the updates are instantaneous. He ends on a good note saying that mobile blogging is easy and that he would be willing to help anyone set one up.

19:06 and we have a small break as the Rebelz are setting up their props and getting ready for the play.

19:08 and Blogger Hijack starts off. I would love for this whole play to be put up on Youtube or someplace. Would save me the trouble of having to type when I could happily be watching the play. J

Short version of the play: Four bloggers hijacked – each has been found to be writing a lot of masala in their blogs with fake identities – they end up finding out each other’s identities – loads of laughter follows with the dialogues – IndiBloggers all love it – the kidnapped bloggers have been told that the boss will be in soon – the kidnapped guys somehow manage to free themselves – but the boss walks in – Bijay Ballya – his instructions have been actually to kidnap the RC team – “Kidnap those buggers” he said – on finding out they are bloggers, he actually decides to finish them off – things go wrong and I missed blogging here – too hilarious – you should have been there for the meet to watch it!! J

You can catch up with the Rebelz at http://www.rebelz.in

19:35 after the Rebelz had done their play, it was the IndiBlogger team to our “Play”. Well this is basically the IndiBlogger Team’s way of just having fun J Trust me, this is something one must watch when one needs to have a good laugh. As usual, the play turns out to be a hit!!

After the play, we have a short session on RIA and some information on the Barcamp this coming Sunday. In fact, if you are from Chennai, you can attend the Barcamp and get more information from Murli meetmurli@gmail.com

19:45 The Live writer session follows from Microsoft. This is basically a session about their blogging tool that has recently been released to public beta. Or at least, that’s what I think. In fact, I don’t use it or see a need to!! Interesting tool though for newbie bloggers and bloggers who “live blog” like me a lot! J It drags on a bit and there’s a lot of technical stuff that I don’t understand or pretend to at all.

And I wait for the next session….

19:49 and I wait….

19:52 wait a minute. An interesting option that I see in Livewriter. You can actually have a map inserted on the blog post. This can be quite an interesting thing. Imagine you blog from some remote location somewhere. You can insert that map into the post there itself. Err, you need a net connection to insert that map. Interesting idea, maybe.

19:55 and I now am waiting for this session to end.

19:57 waiting…..bloggers trooping out.

Looks like another successful IndiBlogger meet. Damn, I have loved this meet the most. Its brought a sense of more belonging into the IndiBlogger idea and more participation from me. And I kinda like this idea of “live blogging”. Me needs to let off some of the pressure with a chilled one!

Naveen Roy

The IndiBlogger Team http://www.naveenroy.com/