End of a big day

While in the main auditorium, right after Amit session, there was a cople more on SEO and how to bring more traffic to your blogs. That was the part where more people were interested in. That bought an end to the Day 1 of BlogCamp.in. Those of you watching us live can now give their computers some rest, while the BlogCamp gang, move on to beach house party for some rest. See ya tomorrow… good night and sleep tight.

AJAX Geek- One and only Bosky

You guessed it right. Its Bhasker V Kode with a new set of AJAX toys he had created. As this was the last session of the day at First floor, he had lot of time at his disposal and had enough time to take his eager audience right through the basics of AJAX to all the tools he had created using AJAX so far. He showed us a MIT project of archieving blogs by using a graphical representation which was really cool. Those of you who didnt attend the session really missed it.  Bhasker seems to be like Beckham…. when Beckham changes his hairstyle every match, Bhasker does it for every technical get together. Thats a good contrast between a sportsman and a geek. And believe me, Bhasker is a real geek. Himself and a few of his friends run the Techenclave forum.

Post Lunch

Post lunch session has started and Mr.Kiruba and Mr.Ram is talking about what are the things you should take care while interviewing for podcast. In between the rather interesting session, I found Mr.Nandhu Sundaram sleeping peacefully. Cant really blame him… who can say no to a good sleep after such a nice lunch. Some of them where taking his photos (may be for the best cartoon strip award). But seeing his state I didnt feel like taking the poor guys photograph. After all why to get a prize at the expense of someone else. (Thats a nice quote )

My time…. lunch time

This is my personal favourite session wherever I go … and I was not disappointed. Vegetarian food was served and it was good. Ever since I have been staying away from my parents, this was the best lunch I have had. Yummy… we had ice-creams too .

Had a very good lunch and now I am back to first floor sessions. I had a chit-chat with a few participants and to my surprise I found that one of them had worked with Microsoft US for 15years. So we had both x-Microsoft employee and a young employee, Mr. Sriram Krishnan right here at Blogcamp. When I told that I have been placed in HCL and Infosys, but is looking for product based compnies, the x-Microsoft (sorry, i really forgot his name, can update it tomorrow) said that product based companies will be dead soon. Hmmm… is it time that I rethink my decision???

Sessions Continued…

Atul Chitnis, Senior Vice-President (Product Technology & Strategy) was at his best this time too. People just love to listen him talk. After which I moved to first floor where Ganesh is giving a review of WordPress.com. He did a very good job.

Next Aswin Anand gave an introduction to WordPress hacks. That was something new and interesting to me, but unfortunately Aswin did frighten the non-techie guys by showing them some CSS and AJAX code. To make matters worse he started unzipping Instant Rails so that he can use Apache & PHP. But he started unzipping the filed directly to the pendrive and it took ages to finish. He also demoed cPanel and that was a cool thing. There was a hot and funny argument between Asiwin and Ganesh of Rupya.com as to whether cPanel is a product or its a short form for “control panel”. Aswin is very good at AJAX, Java etc and has taken care of AJAX stuff in blogcamp.in.

The first session

9:30 am and its happening at Tidel Park. Adel Anwar and few others are telecasting the event live on the web which you can watch from here.Just after the briefing by Kiruba of Sulekha.com, the CEO of Suleka, Mr. Satya himself is ready for this talk on bloggers and writers. He is very enthusiastic about his topic and talks about the rich experience gained through blogging.

Wait a minute… what is inside the huge white polythene bags that the participants are dragging around with them in the hall?? Hey, everyone seems to have the same package. Let me have a walk around and find out………….. Coooool! These are the giveaways for the event. And guess what it is??? A laptop backpack from Platinum sponser Yahoo India, a BlogCamp.in T-Shirt, a mug from Funte System, a writing pad from Zoho.com. God is strange, I have been praying for a laptop and god gave me a laptop bag. Sound like buying cycle bell before buying cycle itself. I love T-Shirts which have brandnames on it…. and… errr.. since I am staying alone now, I will get a new apparel to try on. I think I will get these goodies later on or else I may find it difficult to move around with these goodies. The first session is over. That was a very good opening.People are coming forward to talk about their personal experiences in blogging. One of them told how his blog became famous on which he used to write about how to be a good manager with reference to his irritating boss. Another talk was about how a blog started for fun became famous within the blogging community in a year. [ Hope I would have something to talk about this blog down the line ]. The most funniest experience was about how a guy wrote about his dream girl in his blog for a change and his mother found it out throgh his aunt. Guys… beware what you write in your blog. Oops! That warning applies to me too.

God! I am dead hungry. I started from home at 6:00am and didnt get time to eat breakfast. Yesrday night I had forgot to eat dinner also. Hmmm… whats that nice smell. Looks like coffee and tea is ready. . God is great! Will be right back on live blogging! Stay tuned!

BlogCamp Day 1

9:00am - Finally the day has come. The biggest blogging unconference is going to take place right here, right now at Chennai Tidel Park. There is curiosity and exitement all around on whats going to happen for the next two days, ie 9th and 10th of september 2006. Its time to rock the show!!!

The day starts with and introduction with an introduction by Kiruba Shankar, Associate Director at Sulekha.com. His face is lit up seeing the number of participants flowing in to attend BlogCamp. He knew this would be another golden feather just like BarCamp.

The whole event is filled with fun sessions like Blogging in the ’90s: A Dinosaur’s Tale by Atul Chitnis, “Multimedia blogging”, “Blogging for brands”, “Corporate blogging”, “Mobile blogging” etc. Feels like …shit, i missed it? Never mind, you can view the event live from here. Make sure you login right now before the server exceeds the user limit. If you find the servers already filled in, wait for a week and you can have the complete event DVD at your disposal. Now dont tell me you cant wait for a week, you have been waiting for Windows Vista for about four years now and maybe have to wait even more.

There are a lot of contests going on like  BlogCamp Awards,  Best Videoblogger Award, Best Photo Blogger Award, Best Live Blogger Award, Best Podcaster Award,  Best Cartoon Strip Award and not to forget, the good old quiz sqeezed in between sessions.

Tonight a beach house party has been planned at ECR scenic highway at around 9pm. Unfortunately I dont think I can make it there. Anyway, lets get on with the events. Its time to ROCK!!!