Born of mind

I had earlier mentioned on my blog about the event called BarCamp 5.. Well, I did attend the same yesterday and I must say, this was an event of its kind. It had superb presentations made by some of the eminent professional Indian bloggers and the CEO’s, founders of some websites and start-up IT companies. As a blogger, I couldn’t have asked for anything more than that. It also had few entrepreneurs giving talks on few other topics. The theme was Social Web and Beyond.

I was looking forward for this one as I was wanting to get the first hand information from those pro-bloggers as to what it is like to have blogging as a full time profession. Just imagine.. Sit for few hours, write something and publish it on a blog. All you need is a decent laptop, a broadband connection and of course.. a chunk of your daily time. Pro-blogging is as simple as that.. right ?? No.. it is NOT. I realized it soon after I spoke to a person there, who is arguably India’s first professional blogger – Mr. Amit Agarwal. He told me about the challenges that pro bloggers face. And its a constant battle they have to win and overcome in terms of maintaining and increasing the blog subscribers (i.e. blog RSS feeds), the quality of blog posts (originality n creativity) that has to come out every time one writes on his blog and also fighting with other issues like plagiarism (and some legal issues). To make a living out of this profession is no joke. I was surprised to know that Amit works for 15-17 hours a day. Oh Mannn.. thats like 3/4th of a day goes for this. No wonder, its been four years he started as a pro blogger and now he has 20,000 plus RSS subscribers to his website (after the initial struggle). 20K is quite a number [For my blog it is only 7 ] !!

I met few other guys and interacted with them too.. . They were like founders and co-founders of some websites and IT start-up companies. What does it take to start one’s own company ?? dedication and determination.. Well, these are mandatory but there are also so many other factors that one has to take into account (like funds, marketing etc..) while starting a new company or launching a new website.. and during the course of the interaction with these professionals, I was told these things. It was inspiring enough (I even got an idea of starting a new company, after listening to them . I keep getting some weird thoughts anywayz). Just to name a few of those whom I met.. Co-founder Compassites- Mr. Ramesh Rajamani, Founder of a social networking site for telugu people – Mr. Nandagopal, A blogger – Mr. Moksh Junaja and many others including some of the IT professionals who work for some reputed IT companies. There was also an excellent presentation made by one of my friends, Sumanth Krishna on “Ruby on Rails and its relevance to start-ups“. Cheers brother.. !!

I have to mention here something about Google. I used to wonder.. whats so special about them, that so much hype is created about anything that involves this word ‘Google’.. and yesterday’s event made it clear to me that the hype isn’t hype at all. I was quite amazed to see their hospitality. It was admirable indeed. Later I came to know that some guys had come for this event only because the Google Hyderabad was hosting this event.. Wow. that tells you the whole story. Anywayz.. it felt good to be a “Google guest” for a day. They sponsored the whole event and they had made every possible arrangements for the guests (to the extent that I could even play a TT game there ). and because my blog was registered with Hydblogs, they gave me some goodies . All in all, it was a great event. I would say these are the kind of events that give us a nice exposure to different areas and I think I have gained quite a lot from this one. BarCamp… Zindabaad !!

(All Photographs by Manoj)

The Event : BarCamp 5, Hyderabad

From BarCamp 5

The Blogging Guru, Amit Agarwal and the blogger-Manoj

The TT Man (-Oj)

The Venue – Google Omega, Hyderabad

Hydbadi-techies and bloggers have every reason to celebrate as the fifth in the series of BarCamps (an event of its kind..) being organized @ Google, Hyderabad ( I am damn excited about it ). It will give me (I am registered btw..) an opportunity to meet some “bright”, interesting tech-geeks (hope so it will..) !! If you are interested in participating in some of the tech discussions or give a talk in the related topic(s).. all you need to do is, go to http://barcamp.org/BarCampHyderabad5 and register yourself in the wiki (Registration is free of course).

And last but not the least.. Don’t forget to spread the word, (if you can..) let everyone know about this event.

Theme : Social Web / Entrepreneurship / Open Source and Emerging Technologies
Venue : Google Hyderabad (Map to Venue)
Date : 16th Feb 2008 (Saturday)
Time : 1.00 pm onwards

See you there ..