Just back from the Blogcamp Unconference in Chennai - it was such a good experience meeting so many bloggers, entrepreneurs, journalists and tech enthusiasts from all across India. The mood was full of excitement and energy as you would have guessed from the various blog posts. [Incase you like to know about the photograph on the right, he is my 17 month old son Google in the BlogCamp T-shirt]
I did a small Q&A style session on Professional blogging [no Powerpoint slides]. The questions were generally related to site stats, web earnings, blog traffic, content plagiarism, turning visitors into subscribers, etc.
When someone in the audience wanted to know my exact adsense revenue, conversion ratio, CPM, I had to decline answering that in public because that's against Google policies. I did ask the gentleman to have the discussion offline but unfortunately, that didn't happen.
My most memorable moment was when Rajesh Setty presented me a signed copy of his popular book - Beyond Code. Rajesh had 9 well-thought and carefully-researched suggestions for bloggers including this evergreen tip - "when somone reads your blog post 3 years later, it should still make some sense to him."Abhinav attended BlogCamp with his wife Sharmishta - they are newly married, made a great pair and one of the few "Blogging Couples" in India.
Got to interact with the Zoho leads a lot during these two days. These guys are so full of ideas and they are really taking on the world with their innovative Zoho tools. Infact, Forbes even called Zoho Writer superior to MS Word in some respects.
Sagaro and team, the most enthusiastic tech-geeks of Chennai, are upto something really big. They have created a group blog for technology, DIY, How-to's, productivity tips, etc. These guys have a passion for learning new things and I am sure BotHack.in would become a popular destination for most of us very soon. Good luck team.
While at the beach, I got to meet new media enthusiast Rahul Razdan from Delhi. He is such an interesting personality - you can talk to him for hours together and would enjoy every bit of the conversation. Rahul maintains a very innovative blog where you have figure out the name of the personality based on a partial photograph. Wish I had discovered his blog much earlier - it's so addictive and creative.
I shared the beach house room with VeerChand Bothra and Thiyagarajan - popular mobile enthusiasts and seem to know almost bit about telecom and mobile area. Rajan introduced me to mobile podcasting with Nokia N70 while Veer gave a live demo of photo-blogging. If I ever develop an interest in the mobile sector, they should be held responsible.
Mohit Pawar and Rajat Gupta were another interesting duo that I met at the blogcamp. They were the main organizers of the BarCamp Hyderabad event and are now actively involved in the upcoming TiE ISB conference.
Nikhil Kulkarni with PlanetRead, a Google Sponsored project, was on a mission - to spread the word about their Same Language Subtitling project that aims to spread literacy via the Bollywood Movies. I have always been a fan of PlanetRead and it was so exciting to hear about it in detail from Nikhil.
GigaOm was represented by Shailaja Neelakantan who flew in from Delhi for the conference. While Shailaja was very disappointed with my session, nevertheless for me it was great meeting a writer who works with Forbes and GigaOm. But I am a bit surprised to see a comment with my name in her post. It's so easy to post blog comments with someone else's identity unless you have email verification like Weblogs Inc.
Jamshed (aka Jammy) dreams either about cricket or his lovely wife Rekha - the pair shares such a wonderful chemistry that can make anyone feel jealous. While Jammy has a big L pasted on his Swift's front screen, you are still safe while he is driving as he waits for a bicycle also to overtake him. Thanks for all the hospitality and lovely breakfast Jammy.
Aparna Ray, who also contributes for GVO and Desipundit, has a very unique style of blogging that makes her so popular among her loyal readers. Though I missed her session, did manage to catch up with her at the Chennai airport lounge while waiting for our return flights .
I came in touch with Kiran (aka Jace) during the infamous Blog Ban in India but now I am big fan of his photographs. Some of the most awesome moments at Blogcamp are stored in Kiran's reel. [Photo Credits: 1, 2, 3]