IndiBlogger at Delhi!

IndiBlogger.in braved a hot and sultry day for their sixth IndiBlogger bloggers meet in just six months! Having conducted similar such meets in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai, we were really excited to touch-base with bloggers in Delhi. We found a fair share of talented bloggers ranging from musicians, pro-bloggers, political bloggers to a fitness expert and a very shy blogger who just found out that he could orate!

We were helped by IBNMS who have been enabling bloggers in Delhi for quite a few years now. They showed a lot of enthusiasm and their participation in the meet was very well received by all the bloggers present.

We at IndiBlogger.in have always been known for our very unorthodox approach to hosting a bloggers meet. We have never hosted a presentation on SEO techniques or a “how to” on blogging. We leave that to the professionals and e-learning sites on the internet. At IndiBlogger we always try our best to bring out the “blogger” in a blogger and the “indi” in an Indian. We thought the Delhi bloggers reacted wonderfully to this ideology and fashioned a fun evening out of it.

The evening started with us finding our way to the venue, Chitranjan Memorial Hall
C-405a, C R Park, Delhi – 110019 with a taxi driver who had questionable driving skills. We started the bloggers meet with about 35 bloggers. This we found was quite strange as there were close to 70 registrations on the site. Still, there was no lack of enthusiasm when we played the presentation by Vineet who also hosted the Pune bloggers meet. The agenda for this meet was similar to all the other bloggers meet. We started with the IndiBlogger team giving everyone a look into our thoughts behind the IndiBlogger.in initiative which of course involved a bottle of Old monk and selective amnesia as we pondered over the question “Who really made IndiBlogger?”. The answer – “We don’t know!”. The mystery however will be solved… Soon!

IBNMS then took the opportunity to introduce themselves and talk about their initiatives in the Delhi blogosphere. We then moved on to “1 minute of fame”. This particular section was very interactive and gave the bloggers a minute to showcase their blogs and also reveal their interests and the blogs that they visit. As always we found this to be an integral part of our agenda as this gave bloggers a chance to connect with like minded bloggers and also effectively use the networking feature in indiblogger.in to build up their community. Bloggers like Rahi Vidya who was relatively unknown in the blogosphere generated interest through this section. This is in line with one of the indibloggers’ primary objectives to provide more exposure to blogs that deserve attention but for some reason remain estranged.

It was time for the “IndiBlogger JIG”. This was our way of demonstrating to bloggers the importance of knowing every visitor who took valuable time to visit. In many cases, the number of readers/comments on a blog or blog post is a benchmark to determine the popularity of a blog, its originality and a promise of reader satisfaction. We read through some of the comments on chosen blogs and the “JIG” was done by the blogger who either posted the comment or the one who was commented on. After getting Jiggy with it, we moved on to grabbing ourselves a few slices of Pizza and some soft drinks sponsored by Microsoft. Many bloggers grabbed this opportunity to socialize with all the other bloggers. We also had a number of bloggers interested in IndiBlogger’s road map and why we were investing time and money on these engagements. To tell everyone the truth – We honestly don’t know! Our current objectives have been trying to build up the offline and online blogging community, instill a sense of responsibility, promote blogging in general and see where it takes us. We expect only the bloggers participation and nothing more!

Once the mingling session was over we got down to some serious business. Internally IndIblogger has been flogging the idea of a code of ethics document for Indian bloggers. The Delhi bloggers meet was the first time that this idea was taken public and quite seriously by any blogging association. Our objective for such a document was to give Indian bloggers guidelines, etiquette and best practices for bloggers to communicate. In an internet where plagiarism, spam, lack of communication etiquette is an everyday affair, we found it very important for us to ensure that IndiBloggers followed some ethics.

The discussion was very open and the Delhi bloggers understood what we meant and what we were trying to achieve. Their interaction helped us understand the blogging community a little better and what they stood for. For example,while some experienced bloggers knew the importance of giving a link back to the original post that they had copied, others did not. This discussion helped us realize that the code of ethics document was all the more important to bring in a higher standard and ensure that every blogger old or new understood how non adherence to such ethics would impact a fast growing blogging community. When the concept finally sunk in everyone had experiences on the lack of such ethics either as a victim or an unknowing offender.

At this point, the discussion was heating up. Alas! the day had come to a close and we promised the bloggers to take the discussion online. Even though the crowd didn’t number up to capacity, it was a meet where the indiblogger team took home a lot! And I’m sure the bloggers did too. We can’t wait to be back in Delhi! For now it’s off to Kolkata for us. What we have found out though is that Indian bloggers are certainly unified in diversity. Everyone seems to know bloggers in different states, languages etc and we’d like to think that we had something to do with it ;).