ThoughtfulChaos

I did not have any expectations when I went to the 11th Delhi Bloggers' Meet. I just wanted to get out of the home-office-home routine and go someplace else for a change. I not only got to go see nice places (IHC and TC) I also made a few new friends.

The late-latif-blogger award of course goes to me for blogging on Tuesday evening something that happened on Saturday evening. I can only parrot out the usual excuses of me being a bit lazy and being very busy.

As I said I did not have agenda when I went to the meet. I didn't know what to expect, what I would be doing, how long I would be there... nothing. I reached IHC a few minutes before time and went to the amphitheatre. The IHC is a very fundu place. It reminded me of IIM Ahmedabad. Simple architecture but at the same time very impressive. Large open spaces, hardly any direct sunlight and lots of plants made it a visual treat. There was a blogger there, an engineering student, who took many pics of IHC itself. I do not recall his name but I sure hope he puts some of those pics online. The amphitheatre was double-booked and for some time we were searching for alternate venues. Finally we just decided to assemble on some steps some distance away.

There were around 30 people for the meet. And boy what a diverse bunch it was... bloggers and non-bloggers, serious bloggers and totally casual ones, technology bloggers and bloggers blogging for social causes, young bloggers and middle-aged bloggers, dudes in jeans and dudes in kurtas... you get the picture. The special guests for the evening were Bill Thompson, Julian and Gareth from BBC were on an India tour to know more about technology and India. Nidhi from WebChutney had also come to spread the word about the to-be-launched online reality show called OK Tata Bye Bye.

The meet kicked off with everybody introducing themselves. The introduction obviously consisted of the blogger's name, blog's name and the URI. Julian was poking a microphone in everybody's face because he wanted to record some material for his show... I found it very funny that many people forgot that they were speaking all of us who were listening and not just into the mike :-) Anyways Sanjukta has the complete list of bloggers and their URIs and I am sure she will post it to her blog some time as soon as she gets some time. Most of the blog(ger)s were new to me and I want to check out what each person blogs about.

Bill initiated a discussion about various topics related to blogging. His first question to us was about what the common thread among all of us was. Obviously almost everybody was a blogger but was that all? Why would bloggers want to meet in the real world when blogging is predominantly a solo and virtual world activity? I guess I went to the meet (and would go to future meets) to kill some time, meet up with a few people, talk about something interesting and also associate a face with a blog.

We also discussed a few other things such as blogosphere vs. MSM, how blogging would evolve, censorship on the Net, what makes blogs different than traditional journalism etc. It was a nice discussion... best part was that we didn't stick to a single topic for long and were just kind of floating between various topics.

The 'formal' meeting part of the meet was soon over. Julian and Gareth conducted a few interviews for their show. Many people left and the rest of us moved to the Eatopia. Over coffee I met AmitKen, Diya, Prasoon, Ruby, Akshat (this guy has a photo blog but I could not find out the URI) and Abhishek. After some discussion and after going in and coming out of the All American Diner we decided to go to Turquoise Cottage or TC as it is commonly called.

TC is a nice place... we waited in the restaurant on the ground floor for some time. Somehow I cannot recall what we were doing in the restaurant when we actually wanted to head for the pub in the basement... Gareth, Julian and Bill were with us till this point in time but I think they finally got bored of the pub's bizarre door policy (Bill's words not mine) but they had lot of work to do the next day so they said goodbye to us. We shelled out the (hefty) cover charges for entry to the pub and headed downstairs. I enjoyed the music (rock), ambience, the drinks and of course best of all the company. Unfortunately nobody got drunk so I didn't enjoy as much as I usually do on such occasions. The food was great too. Only thing missing was a dance floor... actually the place had a dance floor but it was too crowded to shake a leg. AmitKen and I left TC a bit earlier than the others and Amit generously gave me a lift home and saved me from being at the mercy of Delhi's autowaalas at almost midnight.

However the biggest disappointment of the day was the absence of Ranjan Yumnam. We missed all the fun of a covert operation to uncover the workings of our nefarious group. Sanjuktaaaaaa! How could you forget to invite him? Sheeesh.

Special mentions (in random order)

• Anouradha Bakshi/Project WHY - An innovative grassroots endeavour to (I quote) create a model whereby quality education support in underprivileged areas, could be spearheaded by parents even if they were illiterate.
• Sanjay - He quit his job last year to do what he loves to do - photography! He has some very interesting shots in his Flickr collection.
• Bill Thompson - A journalist, commentator and technology critic based in Cambridge, England. That's what his 'about' page says.
• OK Tata Bye Bye - A contest where a person will be given Rs. 50,000, a laptop (and Internet connection) and will have to go to 7 destinations in 15 days continuously blogging about his adventures and misadventures. Sounds nice. I have filled up the contest form... I hope I get selected.
• Digital Inspiration - The only India problogger I know of. I never knew this breed existed in India. He blogs about technology and blogging is his sole source of income. Way to go man!

Lotsa people have blogged about the meet. Here are the ones (in random order) I know of. The ones in bold have pics...

• Amit Verma
• Paavani
• Bill Thompson
• Amit Agrawal
• Twilight Fairy
• Shantanu Godbole
• Mayank
• Asit Ranjan Mishra
• Sanjukta Basu
• Ashish’s World!
• Delhi Bloggers Photo Blog (sort of)
• Prasoon K

These are just the posts I came across of. I am sure there are many more out there. Will keep updating this list when I come across more... In particular if you blogged about it please let me know in the comments.

Here are some groups that might be of interest to Delhi Bloggers

• Orkut - Delhi Bloggers
• Yahoo Groups - Delhi Bloggers
• Flickr - Delhi Bloggers
• Blog - DELHI BLOGGER'S MEET

All in all I had a great time and am looking forward to the next DBM.

Hmmmm... this has already been a very long post. My apologies if I missed somebody or something out. Please leave a link in the comments if you know of any more posts, pics or groups. Bye!

[EDIT (12-05-2006): Added links to some more relevant posts and mentioned Bill's clarification]
[EDIT (17-05-2006): Linked to Prasoon's post about this DBM]