Pune BlogCamp : And Unorganized It Was
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.
We all have a right to express our views. In many instances; it will be against ours and in some; with us. To hear them out is 'decency' but to let them get to you is 'weakness'. 
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
Trackback Address
[…] 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 […]
Pingback by To Each Its Own » Archives » Mumbai BlogCamp 3.0 — April 2, 2008 @ 8:36 am
Comments
18 comments | Leave your comment
Jun 17th, 2007 at 5:32 pm | #
Damn, you are punjabi.. I realized that now after reading some of your posts related to punjab/punjabi.
About blogcamppune, yes it seemed to be a promotional and marketing event.
Jun 17th, 2007 at 6:02 pm | #
Hey
> 3. Wi-Fi perpetually down. Thank God I had my Data Card but I am so screwed when the phone bill
> comes in.
Airtel Mobile Office is a nice choice, I pay around Rs. 450 for unlimited data transfer. You can either use your phone (Bluetooth enabled) or data-card.
I wish, there would be time when all cities of India would have WIFI connectivity. WiMax projects are going on, hopefully soon we would see.
-abdul
Jun 17th, 2007 at 8:51 pm | #
I guess the whole point of “bar” un-conferences is that there are no invited “big names” and no marketing pitches. The first bar un-conference was started and attended by the people who didn’t get invited to the Foo Camp.
Jun 18th, 2007 at 3:33 am | #
Nice arty pic!
The ‘way too corporatized’ part surprised me; I hadn’t expected them to have come here in strength (maybe they were sponsers?).
Re: Unorganized, WiFi downtime, I am not surprised. Thus far, I haven’t come across any ‘veteran’ bloggers who reside in Pune.
Maybe next time, the Mumbai and Pune bloggers should get together and meet in Lonavala.
Jun 18th, 2007 at 4:47 am | #
No doubt wi-fi was bad but technically speaking that was very obvious
The venue is a college where at the max only 10-12 students connect to one access point in any area. You can’t expect ~100 people connecting to 1-2 access points & getting a good connection
Same was the case in BarCampPune2 where the college access point were not sufficient.For BarCampPune3 I advise people to bring in there data cards if possible to reduce the load on AP & get uninterrupted access
Jun 18th, 2007 at 6:33 am | #
Super indicast studs … yeah babay !!
Jun 18th, 2007 at 6:57 am | #
Jatinder - Yup me Punju to the core.
Abdul - I did infact use my Airtel Data Card at the Camp though the speed was decent I was somehow not able to upload snaps. Plus the high bill cause of using the roaming service.
Tarun - Well it’s always good to get different groups invloved, just helps in better exchange of information. Anyway thanks for the link.
Shantanu - Well, at the Global Voices Meet the WiFi service was good so therefore I expected the same at this event. As for big names, I thought folks from other cities would make the effort but I guess not.
Rohit - Well some lessons learnt.
Aditya - You are so very welcome.
Jun 18th, 2007 at 8:24 am | #
Do you have a copy of that presentation on Blog Flames, Intrusions and Stalking uploaded somewhere? . It would have been helpful for some innocent people whom I am intruding and flaming now
Jun 18th, 2007 at 11:46 am | #
I suggest that Melody and you should try organising something on the same line in Mumbai and which shud be an event as per your expctations…
I’ve full confidence in the organising capabilities of both of you but then too if you need any sort help I’m thre…
Jun 18th, 2007 at 11:51 am | #
Hey Sakshi,
Blog camp coverage was good. I however liked the IIFA one over this :-)…. You can also check out my posts at http://shahharshal.blogspot.com
-Njoi
Jun 18th, 2007 at 12:55 pm | #
>> Less helping hands and sweaty climate.
Are you talking about Pune ? Sweaty ??
Girl, are you really from Mumbai?
I find Mumbai unbearable in terms of sweaty and stuffy climate.
I live in Pune and I find it less sweaty, but more of the stinging heat and pollution.
Jun 18th, 2007 at 1:55 pm | #
Shadows - I meant it in the sense that the campus totally lacked cooling and by the end of the evening we were actually running around for a deoderant.
Jun 18th, 2007 at 4:56 pm | #
yaar.. the GV thing was international.. so it was big..and I guess popular bloggers came because it was big.. unconferences tend to be chaotic and disappointing..
Jun 19th, 2007 at 4:47 am | #
Nice coverage. Your two bits on the “Blog Camp Pune†is very informative. I recommend your post to other web bloggers who missed the event.
Cheers
Jun 19th, 2007 at 10:07 am | #
Ya! Heard of how the event was…n yaa, i saw u on NDTV…
Jun 21st, 2007 at 2:51 am | #
I saw you at the Blog Camp and didn’t realize your fan following. Great going and will be here often. Good Luck.
Jun 22nd, 2007 at 1:34 pm | #
am gng green……….. to think all this happening in my city adn i never got to know abt it!! :((
will u let me knw next time something like this happens in mumbai/pune
cheers
Leave a comment
Comment Guidelines:
You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted.
Email addresses will never be published.