June 16, 2008

Indiblogger Chennai Meet

Finally I am posting on the Indiblogger meet last weekend which even got me my 15 seconds of fame :)
Call it luck, call it destiny, I, coincidentally, registered on the site a mere 4 days before the event. Having registered for the meet, my site traffic shot up like 5 times (meaning, 5 people visited my page in 4 days vis-à-vis zilch in the past 3 months). It was a good omen; I had to attend the event. Being new to the city, I did’nt have an iota of clue as to how to get to the venue. Thanks to Lemonade, I managed to find the venue easily and be on time. I was ‘oh-so-hesitant’ to enter the hotel. I had fleeting thoughts of taking an auto and returning home. But site traffic and total abhorrence for bargaining with auto guys made me take the big step forward.
There were about 20 odd people when I entered and I tried to walk-in without being noticed. If you have seen me you will know that is totally impossible. I was spotted and greeted by some of the Indiblogger team and led to a seat near a couple of people. I sat, stared and smiled which is my usual ‘first 15 minutes’ persona. I got to know Shoonyata and Ashwini who were seated next to me. I spotted Pseudonym (one of the brave ones who visited and commented on my site) on the other side. There was a very relaxed atmosphere with people spotting the ones they knew and getting to know the faces of those in their comment section. The commencement was delayed by half hour to accommodate the latecomers. (That’s not fair! Why did the rest of us be on time?)
The intro was to be by Lemonade and when she walked up to face the rest of us I realized no chilled glass would be offered as welcome. The Indiblogger team intro was exactly what I had read in the previous blog meet reviews. Guys, don’t you think you should find a new story? And if that Old Monk story is true, do you have a vacancy?? Then began the one minute of fame when you get to introduce yourself and your blog. There was also this sweet guy from the Indiblogger team (am not too good with names L) who would display your site on the projector. Neat concept! I was elated to see that people came in random order and I could easily give this thing a miss. But as it moved on, I thought, what the heck! Lemme scare them good! So I gave a few lines, got the usual question as to the meaning of my blog title. The minute I returned to my seat I realized that the answer should have been –‘leave a comment on my blog’.
Then came the main agenda –food. I met this Poddi Ponnu Nithya who had a blog on, hold your breath, T Rajendran. That guy must be going over the moon. We chatted up, ate and got back to our seats. Then we had a session called Know your readers where comments were read from different blogs and we had to identify the one on ours and do a jig. I am still to find the comment that was attributed to my blog but I enjoyed doing the jig nevertheless. If you wanna see me doing that jig, ask him.
Then we had a play by the Rebelz Group, a funny take on bloggers intermingled with the recent T20 series. Was fun J Then came the session on Mobile Blogging by Pseudonym. I call myself tech-savvy but this I was completely unaware of. That was my learning for the day and I should be exploring this blogging option very soon. Then there was a session on Windows Live Write by Sandhya, a Microsoft Student representative. Quite interesting! And while all this was going on I realized that there was someone at home awaiting his dinner. I picked my memoir, a t-shirt and ran.
All in all it was a fun time. Thanks you guys at Indiblogger. Some more meets like this would be awesome. To end with your tagline –‘I blog therefore I am’

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice review ;-)

The Pseudonym said...

Hey Finally... Did you realise that you are on youtube?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOdNBhkD88g

Wonderful Writeup... Cheers!!!

Sowmya :) said...

@Anwin
Thanks a lot!

@Pseudonym
Will check the video once i get home...else will be kicked out of office. Thx for posting the video finally!

The Pseudonym said...

Nopeeeeee I am not a person who you should say thanks to. I am such a lazy fella and should be sent to prison for being lazy and doing things slowly... Cheers!!!

lefty84 said...

Nice account of the event. It was fun being there and it was my first meet too

Sowmya :) said...

hey lefty thx a lot for leavin a comment. And if i am able to post this one right then i'll have learnt mobile commenting from arvind. Yippee!

Sowmya :) said...

hey lefty thx a lot for leavin a comment. And if i am able to post this one right then i'll have learnt mobile commenting from arvind. Yippee!