Wednesday, October 25, 2006

The Minutes of DBM XIV

Minutes of XIV Delhi Blogger's Meet

The meeting was held at the same time and place as
announced. It was attended by 12 members with 5-6 of the old and regular ones and rest new faces. Compared to last couple of meetings this time the attendance was low but the discussion was much more constructive than before. Let's see where do we go from here.

The agenda was of course to discuss a blog camp or somthing of that sort event here in delhi. As we started our planning we were posed with few basic questions

(a) What kind of event are we looking at? Is it going to be a huge affair with lots of sponsors and propoganda or do we want to keep it simple like our meets are. I guess we all agreed to make it big (attendees correct me if I am wrong)

(b) What do we call it a seminar / blog camp / a workshop / a meet etc.? Most of us don't want to call it blog camp and its not just about the nomenclature we don't want to repeat the chennai thing....we've got to do something different and new. something that hasn't already been dealt with.

(c) what kind of audience/participation are we expecting? We can either try to reach out to people who are not into blogging by doing some thing very basic..what's a blog..its uses, handyness and effectiveness, or we can keep it amongst the circle of those who are already blogging but focus more on issues they still would want to know bout. We understand that the two groups are mutually exclusive and we can't expect a event to be atteded by both kinds..so we have to promote the event accordingly. We haven't really reached to a conclusion on this.

(d) What are we going to do in the event? After a lot of brainstorming we have more or less catagorised two kinds of activiities.. som sort of research papers on topics which are very very off track this will give new perspectives and round table discussions where we would debate some of the exisiting notions and trends on blogging.

Topics for Research, anybody can volunteer to take part of conduct these researches.

1. Personality of the blogger v. the blogger [suggested by Lijo , Prashant, Sanjukta] a more flashy name for this is Indentity Management through Blog or the Psychology of the blog. A case study on this cannot be done unless a guineapig has volunteered for it.

2. Education, Abroad studies and blogging - A students perspective. [Mayank]

3. Shall we censor | Darker side of blogging [Sanjukta] I want to know how reliable is the information on the blog, given the fact that blog owner can control and tamper everything..date of publishing the post, comments on it etc. Should we then really have absolutely free flow of all kinds of contents. Shall we allow inflammatory blogs in the name of freedom of speech.

4. Blogging trends accross nations - interaction / comparison with Indian Blogsphere. [Twilight Fairy] country for case study Pakistan. We are similar so are we really similar. We can find that out though there is doubt as to how much a blog reflect the country and its people. I guess at least we can compare two similarly placed bloggers...say journalists or software engnrs or activiists etc. Fairy can explain this more.

Topics for Round table discussion.

1. Raveena Tandon - why are you not blogging? [Harneet, Yogesh] I think they are trying to say something about celebrity bloggers....or may be they were just kidding....guys pls explain

2. Blogs, a threat to certain Industries [Prashant] job of travel consultant being replaced by travel blogs, and somthing about banking also he said. Prashant can explain this more.

3. Horizontal Blog [Prashant] where one person is blogging about everything under the sun.

4. Frequency of Posting - effects on quality of blog [Prashant]

5. Blogging Syndication and their impact on freedom of expression [Nikhil] Its like this, a jaana maana blogger express is PoV on something and everybody else in his group tends to agree and only agree..let us ask ourselves are we really exercising our Freedom of Expression. I personally find it interesting though I think it goes for other media also. After all most of us are taught to conform to notions and ideology preached by our peers.

6. Sun V. Microsoft - The technical art of Blogsphere [Yogesh] He would have to explain this.

Topic on which guest speakers can speak and also discussion

1. Business Blogging [Lijo] this I think have been discussed quite a few times before. However one can speak on any breakthrough changes in it.

2. Blogging in Regional languages - Support and technology [Lijo] He knows farmers in Kerela who blog in regional language. It might be interesting to find out about all the available technical and other support for regional blogging.

3. Ways of improving aggregation of blogs to better reflect quality content. [Nikhil] He would have to explain this.

4. Usability issues with mobile blogging [Nikhil] as its gonna come up big time in the next couple of years this is the right time to start talking bout it.

Besides these topics there's general expectation from the event, common between me, Harneet, Fairy Mayank, Lijo (pls add ur name if am leaving u out), to reach out to those sections of people who are part of the same frame and yet unaware of blogs.

- Media that reports on blogs
- Govt. agencies, they have access to internet, power to regulate but don't understand blogs.
- Students
- Creative minds at home..the home makers, retired persons etc. got access to net but not utilising
- social activists, i know so many of them who have faintly heard bout it and wanna know more about it.
- Basically Anybody and everybody...as Chota Amit said anybody can blog.

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So we really had a fruitful discussion yesterday. Now the next step. As of now we have all promised to blog exhaustively about the topics we have suggested. Let's first have a reality check, how easy it is to conduct these research. I suggest we set up a community blog (on blogspot Beta) for this purpose and have a Wiki also.

Time now for the group to speak.

List of Attendees

Lijo Isac - http://lijoz.blogspot.com
Amit Gupta2 - www.amitgupta. in
Prashant - http://www.knowprashant.blogspot.com/
Rohit Malik - www.delhievents.com/
Roopak - http://03.indiatimes.com/wallflowers
yogesh - ?
Nikhil - http://mixedbag.blogspot.com/
Harneet - http://harneet.blogspot.com/
Twilight Fairy - http://twilightfairy.rediffblogs.com/
AmitKen - http://amitken.wordpress.com/
Sanjukta - http://sanjukta.wordpress.com/ (I have shifted to Wordpress..actually am at both the places..i keep cross posting)
Mayank -
http://mayankchauhan.blogspot.com

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