Blogger Meets

I finally got to meet some bloggers, now that I am back in India. The last time there was such a meet, I really felt bad that I could not attend it. We had an Indiblogger Bangalore meet yesterday and more than 250 people attended it. There were more men than women who attended it. But I had lot of fun meeting so many bloggers. What was more fun was meeting people whom I already knew through their blogs, people whose blogs I have been following from more than a year. Nethra and Leo were the only Bangalore bloggers that I knew would be attending the meet. I was not aware of others who had also registered for it until I looked up on the Indiblogger site yesterday before leaving. Leo had arrived first and then I came. After few minutes, saw Nethra sitting at the back. Tavish‘s arrival was a bit of a surprise since he came all the way from Hyderabad for the meet. We even got to meet Rachana and her hubby. We met Hitesh too and the first thing he asked me was “Aren’t you the one who wrote the Karna post?” 😀 His post highlighted the good qualities of Karna and mine had all the bad qualities. We searched for Mohan and found him volunteering. It was nice meeting him too.

After the welcome and introduction of partners by the Indiblogger team, it was time for 30 seconds of fame, where each blogger got hold of the microphone for 30 secs to introduce him/herself. What was little ridiculous was that people were speaking about their professional and personal life, and literally nothing about their blogging or their blog. Most of them were talking about their twitter accounts and other nonsense, which had nothing to do with Indi”blogger” meet. People would start off with “I work for xyz company as abc engineer and I love/hate my job. My hobbies are blah blah blah”. It got boring because of this after sometime. What I and many others were interested in was knowing what they like to blog about, what pseudoname they blog with or what their blog url was. I blog as Avada Kedavra. If I come in front of you and just blabber about my work life and tell you my real name, would you recognize me? No! Never! Because people know me as Avada and that is how they will recognize me. There were so many people who did not even mention their name or blog url. So how do they expect us to identify them? I might have already read their blog but how do I recognize that this is the same person?! Pujitha was there too and as soon as she told her blog url, I recognized her. It was really so nice to meet her. I got to meet Srikanta too and I recognized him as soon as he said “Parallel Thoughts”. Hemal was there too, even though he was doubtful about attending the meet and since I had seen his photo before on his blog, it was not difficult to recognize him. Our headmaster of GingerChai (LR) was there too! “Lakshmi Sir” is how everyone addressed him 🙂 Harsha won a printer for giving one of the best (funniest) introductions. He is going to throw a party soon for all of us, who vouched for him and made him win..right Harsha? 😉 Also got to meet Nethra’s classmate who even blogs. Need to check his blog soon.

The only people I had expected to meet, other than all those whom I met were Dhiman and Pixie. I searched for Dhiman’s name in the arrival list and expected to find him during 30 seconds of fame, but looks like he could not make it to the meet. Hope to meet you next time Dhiman!

Some people said they have been blogging from their childhood and that got us thinking. Internet and all the blogging platforms just came into existence some yrs back (maybe maximum 10 years and not before that). So do we blog to write or write to blog? In my case, it is blog to write. I have written poetry and short stories ever since I learnt how to write (when I was about 5-6 years old) and even before that. There was a time when I would dictate and mom wrote them for me, since her handwriting was good 🙂

After 30 seconds of fame, there was a representative from HP who gave a talk on their new line of printers. Once it was over, it was time to get comments from others on a cardboard sheet which we were supposed to hang on our back. This was pretty fun since whenever someone commented, I got the same pleasure that I get when someone comments on my blog 🙂 I made sure I got comments from all those people whose blogs I already follow and then also took comments and urls of some new bloggers like Aparna that I got a chance to meet. What made my day was when someone told me “you look like a pretty famous blogger. Can you give me your url?” 😀 And few people told me that they have already read couple of posts on my blog. I am pretty sure I have already read some of their blogs too but couldn’t recollect. Probably the next task for me is to check their blogs and try to remember if I have already read them or have them on my reader already. It was really fun meeting so many new faces and so many people passionate about one single thing – blogging 🙂 What was more fun was chatting nonstop with Nethra. Someone actually asked us “are you people from same college or something?” and we just cracked up saying, “no, we met only through blogging” 🙂 We were that comfortable talking and laughing together. Nethra complimented me saying “You are so cool, I thought you were a serious person”. 😀 Thanks girlie and I never knew you were so much fun to be with. The meet would have been boring if not for all these people I already knew.

After that it was time to hog some hot samosas and coffee. Leo hardly ate so I am assuming that he is on serious diet 😉 We later had some people coming on the stage and talking about various topics like blogging through your mobile phone, blogging on some social causes and indiforum discussions. They also announced results for a contest called “Spirit of Bangalore“, which was a photography contest. I had no idea about this contest else I would have taken part in it. But the entries for the contest were good, except that not many highlighted the good aspects of Bangalore. We sat right in front of a speaker and kept shouting at each other since we went deaf with the sound 🙂 Once everything was done, it was time to collect our tshirt that said “Indian by birth and blogger by choice”. We went home drenched since it rained very heavily yesterday 😦 My dad said “for you, it should have been blogger by birth and Indian by choice”.. hehe. He felt bad that so many people read my blog, but he never ever opened my site 😛 Hope this guilt atleast makes him read my blog.

Before this, we had another mini-meet in Bangalore when Kanagu visited Bangalore a few weeks back. It was fun meeting him and Pixie. It was a short meet but had lot of fun talking (or gossiping :D) about other bloggers that we know. Hope to attend many more such meets in future.