I really mean it…the biggest open source conference – who said open source as a concept can only be used for software development? – rolled off to a Ferrari like start at 9 a.m..
Kiruba Shankar, who has been the inspiration behind this camp ever since the idea was mooted said the first few words.
His introduction was followed by an address by Satya of Sulekha. If one had already started forming impressions of the camp, he/she had to change it all when everybody started rolling in laughter with the next exercise. Volunteers were asked to come forward and tell how blogging changed their lives – people spoke about their bothering spouses, calls from ICICI Banks, venting anger on Managers online…you name it and there was a situation to laugh at.
This was the time there was an announced that we were running out of time and everybody had to stick to a 3 minute window. This was immediately followed by the announcement that there will be awards for the best podcaster, best live blogger on the blogcamp, best photo blogger, best mobile blogger. Though they haven`t announced the prizes yet…I can see many getting actively involved in all of the activities. I am happy for the single mobile blogger in the camp…I am sure he will be adjudged the best mobile blogger at the camp.
People are really using this opportunity to get more hits for their blogs. Blog urls are being mentioned wherever possible – even on T-shirts.
I don`t have a laptop…but will beg, borrow, steal to present a live update of whats happening. Please visit again in one hour.
Update Two @ 12.19 p.m.
As I said earlier, yes….people are using every opportunity to promote their urls. I was counting how many times Ganesh of Bothack.in mentioned the blog url…and it was three less than 450,000 times. I wonder by what percentage his blog hits will go up.
Another observation here is that, nobody is mentioning the number of users to their blogs – some kind of secrecy here. Everybody is talking in percentages…20%, 30%…so much so…when I asked Rahul, who manages Swadeshe.com, how many visitors come to his blog in a week, he said: “About 100%.”
Am at the session on Blogger Beta by Prasanna which will be followed by a session on WordPress Hacks by Ashwin.
As promised earlier, I did try to steal a laptop…but the angry blogger chased me out of the auditorium. Next post, if I lay my hands on another laptop.
Update Three @ 2.30 p.m.
The lunch break is over and now it is time to kick some real butt. While venue 1 – the Tidel park auditorium – has a session on collaborative blogging, the venue 2 (conference hall) has a session on multimedia blogging going on.
I am sitting in the conference hall and Ram Vishwanathan and Kiruba are at the helm of affairs tell the crowd – about 40 of them – the lessons learnt while podcasting.
We are discussing about Gizmo & Skype…and the former has been identified as the best online recording tool for conversations between people far off.
Podcasting is the easiest way to create original content.