My (first) experience at the Indiblogger meet in Chennai

Its better to be Mr.Late than to be Late.Mr – This line is often associated with safe driving. Well I am borrowing if for a review-oopss..My view of the Indiblogger meet that I attended in Chennai.

This is my first blogger’s meet. Thanks to the message sent by Renie to Chennai Bloggers community in orkut, I came to know of Indiblogger and this meet only a week a before the event.

I had reached the place (Hotel Cee Dee Manor) 10 mins before the scheduled start of the event. The moment I entered I shook hands with Renie and asked him if he was Lemonade. He welcomed me, gave no as an answer and told that Lemonade was in fact a girl and would be turning up shortly (Bulb no: 1 for the day :-))

I quietly found a seat for myself in the 5^th row. I happened to get introduced to a person who happened to be my college senior (Sorry senior forgot your name) and we had a nice discussion. He had booked for Indiana Jones movie for the same day but wanted to be a part of the event as long as he could.

The event kick started around 4:20 with a short video played by the indiblogger team followed by a brief welcome note by Lemonade. Then came the ‘1 minute of fame’ where all the fellow bloggers were asked to give a short account of their blog with Lemonade playing the role of time-keeper (I don’t think she really did that though except for a couple of occasions.)

I was suddenly wondering on how I am going to present about my blog. Most of what I write is funny situations from my life, interspersed with stories or short poems every now and then. (And a few pics have also found its place ever since I got a K790i)

I took a personal dig at myself by singing once I got the mike. Just hummed two lines of a song from the movie Rhythm (Could have rendered a couple more lines as I was sure there would be no rotten tomatoes or eggs present anywhere in the close vicinity but didn’t wanna take any chance). I can’t really remember the rest of the crap I uttered.

A few other people whose description caught my attention during this 1 min of fame:

Old sailor who writes all about marine stuff

A person who writes on Chennai Traffic

Biotechnology blogger (Ravishankar.A.K)–Had a chat with him over the break.

Ramanujam who earns a 6 digit INR sum through his blogs (I must give a serious thought of changing jobs J)

Another person who writes about relationships, marriage though he was still a bachelor

Pseudonym – His blogspace name atthealtar got a lot of attention and his description too was funny. He also took on a session on mobile blogging towards the end.

Sudir Sayal – from Hindu Metro Plus. Liked the way he was making notes during the entire course of the event. Even during the end when live writer session was handled by Sandhya, he was quizzing about the tool to another MS student representative.

Kiruba – Well he’s a well-known person in Chennai and I got a chance to speak to him over the break. More on the conversation will follow later.

Following this we had a short snack break during which I bid adieu to my senior who was rushing to Sathyam. Then had a quite chat with another person (Sorry dude forgot your name too L) who had just put his papers and was about to join Manipal Univ for his MBA.

I wanted to know about Podcasting and I caught up with Kiruba to know about the same. He gave me a brief and asked me if I would be coming for the bar camp at Wipro. Then he gave me his Visiting card, which was very unique. (It had a google search bar with ‘Kiruba’ typed in it on the front side and his e-mail id and phone no at the back)
The funny part came when I gave my visiting card back to him. He had a surprised look but he took it with a smile. I am no celebrity but I felt it was proper manners to do so.
Once all were settled after the break, we had an interesting game in store. The Indiblogger team would read the comments received by various bloggers on their posts and the owner of the blog should stand up and perform a jig.

This was followed by a theater play by Rebelz group. The theme was hijacking of a few bloggers in place of the T20 team of Mallya. It had blogging as its theme with digs at Royal Challengers T20 team. The play was thoroughly entertaining and funny.

I had managed to catch up with the Rebelz team just before packing and was surprised to know that a few were of my breed (Software Engineers working for an MNC).

Pseudonym then gave a short session on Mobile blogging and Sandhya followed it up with a session on Live Writer. I could not get much from both the sessions as it came towards the fade end of the day.

Finally got myself the Indiblogger mementos (T-Shirt and a Pen) and took them back home long with pleasant memories of the day.

A special thanks to Indiblogger team and to Lemonade for organizing this event in Chennai.

P.S: I wanted to come up with this post a lot earlier but Murphy’s Law played its part, as all of a sudden work got more hectic.