Mood Indigo – BlogCamp Dec 2010

Sunday morning my parents were shocked to see me up at 7am. The question they asked me was “Are you OK ?”  and i just smiled and said “NO today is blogcam”. After missing the blogcamp for last couple of  years i was very excited to attend it,  meet the fellow blogger and learn a lot from them. I started my first blog “My Point Of You” around 2 and half yrs back and then “Ragda Patties” (Marathi blog) around 9 months back but don’t call me a blogger cos i am still learning “how to blog”.

The blogcamp was scheduled to start at 10 am, i knew that it wont start on time but still i tried to reach on time and i reached well before 10 am, i reached at 9.55 am :). The venue was IIT Powai, Mumbai and the best part of having a event on Sunday morning is lack of traffic. Annkur, Idea Smity ,meetu , poonam Sharma both all the way from Pune and few more guys were reached before other blogger. I was actually scared and could see some scary and panicked face including annkur‘s as only 20 – 25 people turned up till 10.30. Few IIT guys were struggling very hard to setup the wifi and yes they were successful (IITian can do anything). They had already setup the projector and the white board. I should mention this that the guys were from the team of mood indigo

At 11 the introduction of the attendees (prefer attendees over blogger cos 2-3 guys were not blogger includes Sampath Iyengar ) .  Just before the first session Moksh appealed to all the speakers not to talk about how to promote blog, SEO , Marketing, Revenue generation through blogs ,etc. which i thought was that very nice as i was expecting some speakers to surly talk about (and i was least interested to listen their crabs).

Meetu was the very first speaker with an excellet topic “Writing Reviews Online“. Her topic was related to the reviews she gives to a movie and in return what comments she gets on that review. Meetu runs a well know movie review blog Wogma. She gave examples about the comments she’s getting on her review and how some people comment without giving any justification to their reviews. The funniest part was when she told that some people actually take some comments personally. By the mean time few more people had enter the hall and we happy that number of attended was increasing.

Then came Harpreet Singh with a very different presentation “Sketching Experiences“. What he shared was something unique never ever happened on blogcamp and it was expressing things in the form of diagrams and Sketches. That was some very innovative and creative way of expressing his feeling. As we say thoughts of person are his reflection , i would say the sketches are the refection of Harpreet. His presentation was highly appreciated by everyone in the hall.

John Matthew, very experienced blogger shared his view blogging. He asked bloggers to write a post daily and even gave few tips on how to increase page rank and shared his knowledge of SEO. Few  even questioned him that wont Quantity affect the quality of the blog. He also shared his blogging experience.

Tarun Chandel didn’t seemed happy about what John Matthew views on writing a post daily. He preferred Quality over Quantity, he suggested not make the blog a dumping ground and not to waste the time of Google users. By his snaps he tried explain patience is also a key to a successful content.

An avid traveler Srinivas Kulkarni was next up explaining about his upcoming tour to South. He told how he plans to live-blog the journey, share pics on twitter on his tour. (Guys get ready he’s gonna spam the timeline while on his journey). He even got few tips from the few attendees and few rely on his tour so that they can even plan such back packing tour.

Sonesh Prakesh talked about his two comic characters SoBo Chick and Suburban Guy. Sobo chick was from high society and Suburban Guy belongs to a middle class family.   He showed some of their conversation which always ends with WTF.  At one point of time he was totally diverted from his comic strip and did showed some snaps of  Kerala, Sikkim and other few places had been which were totally not related to the two characters. He was even thinking of making both the characters his patent (so anyone have any info about how to make cartoon characters patent pls get in touch with him)

Aniket Thakkar explained about the multi author site and even what made him start his own multi author site Flash Fiction. He gave mantra of being polite while commenting and how that helped him to get good blogger friend. He even shared a polite way of expressing our oppose or disagreeing on any point. He said instead of directly disagreeing on anyone’s point write something good and then use “but” and then what u disagree and end again with a happy note.

Next session was of Sampath Iyenger who basically asked few serious question to the blogger community. He handles a corporate blog and his question was whether to have a separate personal blog ? He even asked to choose between wordpress and blogger where WordPress won the race. He was even asked to used plugins to fetch the content from his blog to social networking sites.

Harish Iyer talk was surprise package. He shared his views on how writing has help him to convey message to dear once, on how he and Chandni Parekh make use of Postorous blog and Facebook for social purpose.

Manoj Kewalramani explaiened how they are helping the society by providing them with complete information which govt doesnt provide. He even shared his travelogues experience.

It was great to see attendees stick to their chairs and even didn’t went out or asked for a lunch break until few guys arranged sandwich (that too spending from their own pocket, hats off to all those guys and gals).

Those who couldn’t attend blogcamp were reading the twitter feeds as many were live tweeting the event. The hash tag was #blcm .

Later i left for an another event but the blogcamp was called off at 5 pm. I personally thing even with a crowd of 30-40 people blogcamp was a huge success. To be frank i actually like this as compare to other blogcamp as people were not running here and there to attend some other talk in different room. No free stuffs collectors were present as no free stuffs were distributed, only blogger , wanna be blogger and real enthu people made the last blogcamp of 2010 a huge success.

Can view the photo’s of blogcamp

Vishal Gadkari : Facebook photos

Ramya Pandyan: Idea Smithy Facebook

Rohit Sane: Rohit Sane

Pradeep Mohandas: Flickr

Sampath Iyengar: Facebook Photos

Aditya Trivedi: Facebook Photos