Is my blog a personal journal ? Partly yes and partly it isnt !

Yes because i write mostly about my passion and about my personal initiatives in serving my time at earth. That involves in writing a lot about group initiatives of TKF and event updates on Momo, howtocamp, proto, blogcamp. wikicamp so on. This has created a lot of readership audience who look for updates on all these front from us here. Thanks to vijay that PROTO has a mouthpeice and separate platform where updates can be followed but for other events we are yet to create a separate site where we can aggregate all that data and provide our enthusiasts.

At the same time to bore such readers about my other passion like investments and other pursuits in the same space dilutes the seriousness of the blog. So here are two separate blogs that will be exclusively on that front.     

Paisa Bachao !

This blog will explore smart investment strategies and how to survive incurrent financial times. This blog would also explore realty trends in chennai market with assessment about Stocks, mutual funds, bullion market, and related industry news. To ensure that there is freshness in the blog I would care to avoid installation of pipes thus making it one more content aggregation destination Instead we would like to throw open new ideas that have succeeded in other markets that can be followed. I would be interested to invite Experts with their opinions and views to join in coauthoring this blog

Bollynews

Bollynews blog will be about popular movies as well as rare movie reviews , Industry news and tidbits. We welcome bloggers who are interested to coauthor this blog on the category about Kollywood in this space .

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Blog Camp 2008 is at the horizon and we are planning an usual 2 day event but with added scope of content and audience from regional language bloggers in tamil, hindi also to converge in this event. Mainstream media today has a great recognition for citizen journalism and blogging. For such bloggers we aim to create a networking opportunity to mingle with the techies to know better ways to commercialise their blogs and manage analytics and related areas.  On personal space mobile blogging has arrived in India with availability of cheaper bandwidth and mobile gadgets that facilitate blogging easily. These are some of the added features and scope of content that will be discussed apart from the regular blogging and blog related content during blog Camp 2008. So Gear up folks Blog Camp 2008 will be here and the venue will be Tidel Park and the dates will be confirmed very soon.

There might be a surprise 3 rd day in Blog camp which might be a new formula that we plan to test in Indian ethos. The contents of that day will sure be a blockbuster and a first of its kind in India and provided that we are able to pull it off well then this by itself will evolve as a separate event. We will get into the specifics of this as soon as we finalise on dates and budgets for BlogCamp 2008. Currently The knowledge foundation lends the support of past volunteers of Blog Camp 2006 to pitch in and also welcomes spirited young people to volunteer and make this event a greater success than Blog Camp 2006. Mail us at blogcamp@googlegroups.com for participation. Good day !

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Following the Blog Camp 2006 the core team has been flooded with offers to avail expertise on Various projects and we jumped the gun on the N-Logue project teaming up with TeNet (IIT Chennai) as many of us related it to a high priority task and need of the hour for Rural India. But we do have initiatives on the offers that have come our way and we would like to take them up as and when we could avail sizable resource to it. Outline here are 3 offers that we received apart from N-logue. And Kiruba has also received his share of offers on Barcamp Chennai 2007 and FOSS Chennai. We will Keep you all updated. It cannot get better than this!

1.

srikondoji@ebulawa.com
URL : http://www.enewss.com

Hi syed,

I have received very positive and encouraging feedback from anand (who represented enewss) at blogcamp chennai. We really appreciate giving us the oppurtunity to be associate sponsor.

Also one more aspect that arise out of my discussion with anand was to kick start the same euphoria witnessed at chennai in Hyderabad.

We would like to start in a small way in hyderabad. Could you help us in this effort?

Please let us know, if anyone else has already started this effort in Hyderabad, if not we will be more than happy to do there.

Any help/transfer_of_knowldedge will be highly appreciated and duly recognized.
Please email us at srikondoji@ebulawa.com

Thanks
sri

2.

Sir,

Im Azhar on behalf of Malaysian students who love blogging everyday.

Congrats, to all BlogCamp India committees. I found your website after the unconference finish. What a wrong time… Anyway, i go through your programmed website, and i cant find any paper or article on conference session. Can i get the soft copies? Love to read all knowledge.

Another things, in Malaysia, we also have a club similar like India. It is Geng Jurnal or in English, The Journal Gang. http://www.jurnal.biz. I like to know more how to organize similar blog camp here. Could you give some advise?

Hope to hear from you soon.
Bye.
Regards,

Nor Azhar Bin Ahmad
Master Student’s In Bioinformatics
d/a PM Abd Manan Ahmad
Faculty of Computer Science and Information System
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
81310 UTM Skudai
Johor Darul Takzim, MALAYSIA
Office Tel : +6075532359/32360
Office Fax : +6075532201/65044
Internet Fax : 00-1-775-860-8040
Mobile : +60177562052
Website : http://azharahmad.com
Blog : http://azharahmad.com/blog/

3. We have receive offers to present in the OnMedia Conference at New York

Hello Friend of AlwaysOn,

We wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to provide us with your program input for OnMedia, AlwaysOn’s new executive event focusing on the disruption of marketing, advertising, branding, and PR! The event will be held on January 29th-31st at the Mandarin Hotel in New York City.

Check out our program plans below and let me know what you think. Our goal is to make OnMedia the most powerful executive event of its kind in the heart of the media capital of the world.

OnMedia is where cutting-edge technology CEOs from companies such as YouTube, Technorati, MySpace and Quigo meet the advertising and media establishment. This two-and-a-half day industry insider event features high-level debates on which forces are disrupting and creating new opportunities in marketing, branding, advertising, and public relations. OnMedia also showcases 50 "top innovator demos" from CEOs who are revolutionizing the way media is being created, distributed, and consumed.

Here’s Who We’re Inviting:

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

8:30 am � 9:30 am
Are There Chinks in Google’s Advertising Armor?
•  Iggy Fanlo, CEO, AdBrite
•  Larry Braitman, CEO, Adify
•  Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO, Blue Lithium
•  Mike Yavonditte, CEO, Quigo
•  Lance Podell, CEO, Seevast

9:30 am � 10:15 am
Track A—Top Innovator Demos: Mobile Marketing & Advertising
Demo Review by Industry Experts

Track B—Workshop: Become a Power Blogger
Power bloggers share their recipe for building reputation and audience. Learn the strategies and tactics that worked for them, and could help you build your power base.
•  Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine
•  Steve Rubel, MicroPersuasion
•  Michael Aringtonm, TechCrunch

10:15 am � 10:30 am—Break

10:30 am � 11:15 am
Track A—Top Innovator Demos: Online Advertising Service Providers
Demo Review by Industry Experts

Track B—Workshop: Manage Your Online Media Buy
There’s more to buying ads online than choosing which adwords to buy. Join the CEOs of startups with successful new buying approaches for publishers and advertisers.

11:15 am � Noon
Top Innovator Demos: Public Relations Firm Pitch Competition
Demo Review by Industry Experts

Noon � 1:45 pm—Lunch
Lunch Panel: What is Consumer-Generated Media Worth?
•  Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook
•  Tom McInerney, CEO, Guba
•  Chris de Wolfe, founder, MySpace

1:45 pm � 2:30 pm
What are the Blogosphere Numbers Telling Us?
•  Pete Blackshaw, CMO, Nielsen BuzzMetrics
•  Dave Sifry, CEO, Technorati
•  Joe Davis, CEO, Coremetrics
•  Joshua James, CEO, Omniture

2:30 pm – 3:15 pm
Track A—Top Innovator Demos:
In-Content (Gaming, Audio, Video) Advertising
Demo Review by Industry Experts

Track B—Workshop: Learn What’s GoingOn
GoingOn is a network of networks. Learn how this new open web publishing and community management platform can benefit your company.

3:15 pm – 4:00 pm
Track A—Top Innovator Demos: Technology Enablers
Demo Review by Industry Experts

4:00 pm � 4:15 pm—Break

4:15 pm � 5:00 pm
Track A—Top Innovator Demos: Community Platforms
Demo Review by Industry Experts

5:00 pm � 6:00 pm
Can Brands Get Away with "Buzz Marketing" in the Blogosphere?
•  Steve Rubel, SVP, Edelman PR
•  Buzzer
•  Pitchfolks
•  Ogilvy PR

6:00 pm � 9:00 pm
Reception: Top of the Rock
Featured Entertainment/Presentation TBA—Big Name

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

8:30 am � 9:30 am
How Can Advertisers Go Mobile?
Featuring: Endemol, Weather.com, and a leading mobile handset maker.

9:30 am � 10:15 am
Track A—Top Innovator Demos: Web & Blog Analytics & Research
Demo Review by Industry Experts

Track B—Workshop: Engage Contagious Behavior
Engaging contagious behavior is something of value to all tech companies, not just the few like MySpace, YouTube, and FireFox. This workshop will jump-start your efforts.

10:15 am � 10:30 am—Break

10:30 am � 11:15 am
Track A—Top Innovator Demos:
Demo Review by Industry Experts

Track B—Workshop: Harness Web Analytics to Your Advantage
Are you confident that you’re making the most out of your web analytics? Do you know what analytics can drive your business advantage? This workshop will show you how.

11:15 am � Noon
Top Innovator Demos: Advertising Agency Pitch Competition
Demo Review by Industry Experts

Noon � 1:30 pm—Lunch
Lunch Panel: Is It Possible to Achieve "Brand
Engagement" in a One-to-One Online Environment?
Featuring: Brandimensions, AOL, McCann, and Daimler Chrysler

1:30 pm � 2:30 pm
How Long Will Search Keyword-Based Advertising Dominate?
Featuring: Ask.com, Yahoo, and Google

2:30 pm – 3:15 pm
Top Innovator Demos: Next Generation Search
Demo Review by Industry Experts

3:15 pm � 4:00 pm
How Much is the New Dotcom Worth?
Featuring: Battery Venture, Venrock, Deliva & Phillips, and Veronis Suhler

POSSIBLE PANEL: What is the Best Strategy to Get Your Brand in the Game?
Featuring: Massive, Electronic Arts, IGN Network, OMD, and Shockwave.com

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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 !

Tags: IIT, tenet, rural empowerment, blogging, bloggers meet, india, rural, the knowledge foundation, digital divide

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Last weekend at the Blog camp 2006 conference i chanced upon meeting Mr. Lakshman a top executive of a leading Fashion House in India and we immediately hit it off talking about fashion. What followed was an interesting dialogue between me, sunil and Mr.Lakshman which i fortunately recorded as a podcast and will be made available here as soon as i have compile and edited it into usable form. For the benefit of all those who would like to read about here is an excerpt from the discussion…

“Fashion trends today is a top down approach globally whereby most of the trends are driven to the masses by only handful of people like Designer, design houses, celebrities & artist, manufacturing houses so on. This traditional topdown approach can be redefined by blogging about fashion.

Today youth come about defining trends in the fashion world and with the web evolving so fast this kind of inputs as blogs can drive the industry to redifine trends with a bottoms up approach “

That is what FashionIQ Blogs aims to pursue with a visionary zeal. Pls hear this interesting transcript / walk the talk in entiriety here. Is this what we can define as Web 2.0 in Fashion.

Tags: Fashion, arvind, syed, nazir, razik, web 2.0, trend Tags: sunil, apollon.in

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Last evening the Blog Camp Admin group had convened at Anokhi to wrap up the various outstanding issues of the event and do a post mortem of the same. We also wanted to recapitulate the lessons learnt from the event. Some key points that were discussed encompassed freezing on the following features:

1. Blog camp.in will become a common site hereafter and this chennai event will be a part of www.blogcamp.in/chennai .
2. Any takers who would like to spread the word or host another blog camp in their city of choice could always contact us and the blog camp admin is all willing to help and volunteer all the pitfalls and measures to be taken.
3. The current blog admin group would like to carry forward their team spirit and hold focussed workshops targetting niche areas and bringing in experts to address those niches starting this weekend at sunil’s place
4. All the more a compelling reason to fast track The knowledge Foundation
5. In a month we might hit upon the next big thing and start working on it…
6. As for now more on celebration and new networking will be the agenda for the day.

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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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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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Last night on an online discussion just me and kiruba were discussing on the future plans for Blog Camp and we fell into the rut of how things were easy for us because we had the venue as chennai and slowly the comfort feel started creeping in to the extent that we decided lets leave it to the crowd and see if anyone else comes with better suggestions and bigger team from other cities to pursue this initiative in 2007.

For today we found the following as very advantageous because the venue is chennai…

1. The Blog camp admin team is more than 60 + bloggers strong and 80% of that committed crowd is based at chennai. Getting that kind of synergy to help organize an event of this magnitude was easy.

2. Most of the sponsor companies have vested interest on the Target population (yuppie IT crowd) and chennai happens to be one of the happening IT capital in india.

3. We had some gracious support from the press like New indian express, CNN-IBN, Deccan Chronicle, Enewss and we had some good connections and access to them from our own circles. Without the makings of the press we wouldnt have got this visibility.

4. Accessibility : Since the event falls in sync with Connect 2006 we expect a lot of footfalls in the event and at the same time its totally a event done by a group of individuals who have taken to blogging as passion but getting the same kind of space as to a governement sponsored event is also a major plus.

There are a multitude of other reasons why chennai is the happening place in the world of technology.

But for now things are toning down and we look forward to the great event itself.

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Online marketing has evolved around so many areas like site hits, page visits, page ranking, and sticky eyes. Today with the advent of internet pervasiveness and the expansion of bandwidth at varous levels newer forms of marketing using compelling media like audio recordings that are converted into podcast and home grown videos are converted into optimised videos on youtube or google videos. Thus taking content to the world is now easy and doesnt need you to move mountains but the next challenge will be in attracting the target audience to the context relevant content. Thats a big challenge where a lot of marketers are adopting traditional methods to gather the relevant momentum. Today PR is easy but reach the right audience to translate all this PR into effective sales and bottom lines is where a lot of us are working on. For the moment pls listen to this intertesting podcast from Robert Scoble which revolves around how corporates are using blooging to do marketing online effectively. 

http://www.podtech.net/audio/marketing_voices/090406_Marketing_Voices_Robert_Scoble_PodTech.mp3

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Finally the dust is settling down after all the pressure to conclude all our efforts to close sponsors for Blog Camp 2006. We have Yahoo, Nokia, Apple, Sify , Fashion IQ , Fuente system, Fresh and honest and a few more to add. As of this evening we froze on all the efforts as taking things beyond tomorro will be too late for other work.
Now that i have a breather i would like to share some good news that this confeence has brought to me. I was able to tag with one of my college mate Navin and that has opened access to a string of friends who i lost touch once i was at malaysia for the previous 3 yrs. I would like to quote that earlier in a similar blogadmin meet i came across one more classmate kennedi who is an astrologer and who blogs . As the event is nearing its D day the core team is practically breathing Blog camp and the activtiy is so viral.
Now we are left with building strategies, games, contest covered by Ganesh , T Shirt design by Jacob,  adel and also to ensure the hospitality desk taken care by Sunil , Varun and Vicky. Then food and catering is covered by Ganesh . Then there is Kiruba, Nandhu and me working getting some interviews with interested bloggers who would like to be a part of the Blog Camp yet cannot make it to chennai in person. Such people have volunteered to  share their thoughts with us online. Last we have Dina and Neha from Global Voices Online working on getting the content for the conference to the latest trends and ensuring that its all fresh and great. Hats off to all these guys! And we have miles to go….