Category Archives: bloggers freedom of expression

Forthcoming Blog Camp Admin meeting – N-logue !

This morning i was scheduled for a meeting with Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, professor IIT Chennai on a project related to TeNeT (Telecom and Networks Group) thanx to our common friend Dr. Osama Manzar. As scheduled i arrived at the pristine IIT campus to meet Dr. Ashok. The meeting was attended by Mr. Falguni , Ms Saloni and Ms Aarthi . What ensued for the next 2 hrs was an interesting outline of a project on how we bloggers can make a big difference in the digital divide of india and measures we could take and contribute to empower rural india to bring to the global platform.

This project will be discussed in more detail in the forthcoming Blogcamp admin meeting and we need to evolve with our creative inputs so i suggest all to be there and not miss it.

Whenever there is a crisis or emergency we bloggers have been doing so much of good work in our field to facilitate better communication. Here is a requirement of a similar sort where we get our bit in the nation building process. We are not neta’s (politicians) but nations are built by people like us who would like to make a difference. So be there if you are interested to chip in your ideas and for other after the meeting the plans will be posted in my blog to know more about it. Have a nice day !

Just serving my time at Earth !

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Tremendous success of Blog Camp 2006 at Chennai !

Since the beginning of the blog camp my blogging had taken a big hit as i was more involved in coordinating things and also moderating sessions for the two days. And i havent slept the entire two days as we had to take care of small incident at Beach house party me and raghavan being the only sober guys had to take care of things and by the time me wrapped things up it was 4.30 in the morning and i alongwith Sunil was scheduled for and interview with Osama Manzar about exploring common grounds to take up empowerment of the rural poor in india at Tidel park followed by another detailed interaction with Lakshmanan of Arvind Mills direct marketing on the launch of Fashion Blogging in relation to the global launch of Fashion Blogs of Fashion IQ .com . Subsequent to that i alongwith Andy had to moderate a session with Sujatha of Podbazaar.com. Totally hectic day and so many things happening.

We do have some totally lighter moments from the Blogcamp courtesy some pics taken unaware about serious and seasoned bloggers like Nandhu, shyam and ganesh, other bloggers but then never let your guards down in front of bloggers. They will totally bomb you! Excellent reference will be to the tagline of Blog Camp ” How do you feel Now ? ” what say you blogcamp admin group.

Surprise of the Sponsors !

The two days of blog camp 2006 was a great boon for the related sponsors Yahoo, Nokia, Ford, Intel, Merinews, enewss and other sponsors. Yahoo received a lot of foot fall for all their services and Nokia was conducting a workshop on hot to do moblogging using the N Series of mobile phones from Nokia, Ford had conducted an ipod contest for best live blogger and podcaster. The footfall in the camp exceeded to 350 people.

Live from Tidel those 2 days!

One week before the event i was hunting for a solution to address the rising needs of the Virtual attendees of Blog Camp. One of the advantages of coming from an IT background and from good networked company was that i was able to narrow down on the solutions that are available in hand to enable live videocasting/streaming and also to keep in mind the bandwidth effeciency. I got in touch with Clickstream and the response was so swift from them that i had Abhijit from calcutta representing Clipstream calling me offering to help me officially . Abhijit was so enterprising that on the first day of the Blog Camp before 11 we were hitting maximum viewership in his software and we were getting the feedback on the quality of the feed was excellent Then again we started asking him to increase the licence. We subsequently raised the level to 200 viewers and by the second day we were hitting max levels. Clipstream software is built with a feature that whenever the load of the viewers is more than maximum it alerts you and by second day during the discussions of Sharad Haskar and Sunil Gavaskar the viewership was at maximum levels. We had additional feeds from Skype as skype casts and there was the most useful IRC too. We had some great planning ad hoc by the techie goups of the BlogCamp Admin . Callers and viewers as far away as Orange county, thailand, Australia, and UK not to forget many places from india.

Post Blog Camp 2006!

For all of those who would like to view the different facets of the twod days and a more detailed account of individual sessions i would suggest that you can click on the following link and get to know the extensiveness with which the blog camp at chennai was blogged about. Pls click on the following link as the coverage on it is great.! Hats off to enewss.

http://www.enewss.com/index.php?search=blogcamp

The photos of the event are available at

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=blog+camp

http://technorati.com/tag/BlogCamp

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Blog Camp is rolling !

Hi guys first cut views of the Blog camp are here. Its 8 am and the Admin crowd is already there and we are busy setting our systems up. All excited to rock! Will keep posting as and when things happen

Pls check flickr with tags " Blog camp live chennai "

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dreampics/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joesat/

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Blogging to Alleviate poor masses of rural India

This morning as every morning of this week was cluttered with stream of callers / fellow bloggers and patiently answering all queries about various issues related to the forthcoming event Blog Camp 2006. Interestingly i got a call and the called told me he is Osama and suddenly all my antenna’s were up but the subsequent conversation that ensued followed immediately by his mail was one of interesting events of the day. Here is a transcipt of the mail of Mr. Osama Manzar and his very enlightening views

" I am extremely glad to come to know this entire new phenomenon of Bloggers camping and discussing the larger issues og Blogging. There is no doubt that Blogging is a typical Bottom Up phenomenon, where you get to know information directly from the source and the source get a chance to disseminate the information which is not subjected to various layers of so-called cleaning processes.

Anyway, as discussed, I am extremely keen to be a part of the BlogCamp scheduled on 9th and 10th of September in Chennai. I was going through your website and realised that there is no topic discussing the the real India which is hidden in its hinterland, across the country side, and among the 70 percent of Indians who speak local languages and whose knowledge lies in their oral conversation. If Blogging can include the Rural India, or rather if we initiate a dialogue of how Rural Blogging can be done, in no-time, we will see the cyberspace enriched with "GlocaL" content (Local Content for Global Reach). India is among the poorest country in the world if you look at how much india-related content present on the virtual world. And, ironically, Internet is the only true Universal Medium for unlimited access and dissemination of content and information. How do India in this case of being the poorest on cyberspace, can take advantage of the global economy? For the economica prosperity to trickle down to the bottom of the pyramid, India needs to reach out to the Internet through all possible means and tools about its immense local content and assets. And this is possible with only bottom up approach, meaning blogging can paint the cyberspace with the colours of India hidden into its 650,000 villages and among more than 3/4th of a billion population of our country. "

Mr. Osama Manzar runs an organisation called Digital Empowerment Foundation, that works in the areas of empowering masses through ICT and related tools. We have perhaps the largest database of case studies, where ICT tools are being used for rural empowerment in its various senses. They also run the award called The Manthan Award for Best e-Content & Creativity in India.

He holds the following posts Chairman: The Manthan Award, Founder & Director – Digital Empowerment Foundation, Jury Member: Dataquest eGov Champions Award 2006, Board of Director: World Summit Award, Austria, Vice Chairperson: Global Alliance for Bridging Digital Divide, Author: e-Content: Voices from the Ground – The Sequel 2.0 [2006]

Sir, I look forward to the great opportunity of hearing you in person on your favorite topic, your passion and responsibility to the rural masses in India. Welcome to Blog Camp 2006 

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Bloggers RFI (Right for information)

I just returned back from a business trip of 5 days totally occupied on things that i had missed one of the red calls of the blogging community. Banning and blocking of blogs in a democratic society and measures taken were so absurd. All the govt. had to do was block a couple of websites and a couple of blogs. We are against terrorism and propoganda supporting such unjust cause. But to treat all blogs in generality to the same treatment and blame it in the name of Terrorism is taking things too far…This is India and we are celebrating democracy for the last 5 decades

Splinter groups and misguided youth taking advantage of technology is not new to the world. Back in 70′s didnt the same happen in USA when every person in the street was on a peak for the right to carry a fire arm and the subsequent ATF. There are a lot of bloggers who do pitch in some good viewpoints and it might be anti establishment or rhetoric but that doesnt give the right to censor such views.

The forthcoming blog camp is also going to have this as one hot topic of discussion and debate. Hope we all find some neutral ground on the same such that even the blogger can take the responsibility to curb activitues like terrorism and come out with ideas on the same .

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