Okay so here are my two bits on the Pune BlogCamp which was held yesterday at the Symbiosis Campus, where else but in Pune.
Frankly speaking the ONLY reason I attend or am motivated to attend such conferences (or un-conferences) is with the sole purpose of meeting new people and in more technical term “networking”. And in between the extra effort of introducing myself and more importantly my blog, if I get to learn something new about the blogging community well than that’s a bonus.
So if you ask me if I was disappointed with the Pune BlogCamp because it didn’t deliver blogging facets (as promised), my reply would be a NO simply because I never went there with the intentions of learning.
Though the day started off really dull, I actually did end up having a decent time – met new bloggers, met guys from the technical side of the virtual world, one-on-one interaction with the media, got introduced to couple of cyber cell folks, was used as a case-study by my enterprising friend Melody who gave an excellent presentation on Blog Flames, Intrusions and Stalking and this I say not because she is a friend but because she really did a good job. And then there was this moment during the start-up session where some guys asked the host to check up if the Rakhi Sawant blogger was in the room.
After the initial sessions, I had a fantastic time interacting with these guys. Its pretty amazing when you think about the size and depth of the virtual world.
Ekalavya and Gautam – WATConsult.com
Rohit Srivastwa – DATA 64
Sudhir Syal – Sulekha.com
Sheece, Harish and Abhishek – SMS GUPSHUP
Puja, Tarun Dua and the very argumentative Abdul Qabiz
And then it’s always great to be around friends and the never-ending sidey taunts – Melody, Akshay, Neha and the super Indicast Studs, Aditya and Abhishek.
Talking about the downside, here are some of them.
1. The un-conference term was rather taken too literally, resulting in confusion and mix-ups.
2. Way too corporatized and less participation from actual bloggers.
3. Wi-Fi perpetually down. Thank God I had my Data Card but I am so screwed when the phone bill comes in.
4. Absence of popular bloggers. Unlike the Global Voices Meet where I was surrounded by the whos-n- who of the Blogging scene, here there were actually none.
5. The lunch sucked. Call me fussy but I need my meat and vanilla ice-cream just doesn’t work for me. They might as well would have charged us for food than serving what they did free of cost.
6. Less helping hands and sweaty climate.
Well I do understand that it’s never too easy to organize such events, so I will give some credit to the hosts of the Pune BlogCamp and I am sure they did their best.
For final thoughts, overall I had a good tiring day but was a little disappointed with the lack of big names.
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[...] frankly speaking, rate too high on my priority list. I guess the previous experience of the Pune BlogCamp had much to do with that (terrible weather, excessive product pitching, severely damaged online [...]
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