I take pride in having arranged the XIth Delhi Blogger's Meet with Bill, Gareth and Julian all the way from BBC UK. The event was a gala event, one of the most significant in Delhi Blogger's community. I think for the first time The indian blogging community got such a projection at the world level. Post my interview with bbc they have linked the Delhi Bribe Rates Blog on the main BBC page. Since then the blog has been getting a tremendous traffic inflow from US and UK. I can't ever fully thank Ankur enough for associating me with this Birbe delhi Blog. I owe it to him. When I said that to him he said but had you not arranged and attended the meet it wouldn't have got the hype it got. True. We both kinda have complimented each other.
Mean while the BBC Radio show Digital Planet went on air today with Me, Twilight Fairy, the professional Blogger Amit Agarwal, Snigdha aka Encounter Specialist, Mayabhushan and Monica talking to Gareth the presenter of the show. The event was attended by around 30 Bloggers in Delhi.
The entire edition of Tuesday's Digital Planet show can be downloaded as a MP3 File of 11MB size from here
The highlight of both the event and the show was this culture of blogger's meeting up in person. A culture very unique amongst internet users in the Indian Metro and also amongst bloggers accross the globe. As Gareth said the blogger's were trapped in their respective homes and then one fine day they decided to meet and actually quite like it.
Next highlight is Bill's understanding of the Indian Blogging community. Inspite of being the blogging expert of UK he wansn't here as an expert, rather he was here to have some cultural exchange with young and vibrant people in indian blogging community and this is what he says after he met us, "It’s too easy to have a western technocratic view of the world, and having to defend my views in front of this articulate, argumentative and skilled group of practitioners was great exercise." One of the major difference that emerged out of the discussion was that we, Indian bloggers, don't, as of now use the blog as a medium for net activism, as much as they do in US or UK. We have much more variety of bloggers writing about hundreds of things from being personal to public. One of the reason behind this could be (a) that we have other effective media to exercise our freedom of expression, (b) We are other wise also talking about politics and rights issues so blogging need not be the only medium to inititate movement.
Amit Agarwal was undoubtedly another interesting part in the meet. He is a an IITian who quit his job to take up full time blogging. Makes some couple of thousands of dollars per month, "more than what he could have earned in an MNC", he says, just by bloggin.
The show digital planet also featured, the election commission of India whihc has been since long using electronic voting machines.
More later......
Mean while the BBC Radio show Digital Planet went on air today with Me, Twilight Fairy, the professional Blogger Amit Agarwal, Snigdha aka Encounter Specialist, Mayabhushan and Monica talking to Gareth the presenter of the show. The event was attended by around 30 Bloggers in Delhi.
The entire edition of Tuesday's Digital Planet show can be downloaded as a MP3 File of 11MB size from here
The highlight of both the event and the show was this culture of blogger's meeting up in person. A culture very unique amongst internet users in the Indian Metro and also amongst bloggers accross the globe. As Gareth said the blogger's were trapped in their respective homes and then one fine day they decided to meet and actually quite like it.
Next highlight is Bill's understanding of the Indian Blogging community. Inspite of being the blogging expert of UK he wansn't here as an expert, rather he was here to have some cultural exchange with young and vibrant people in indian blogging community and this is what he says after he met us, "It’s too easy to have a western technocratic view of the world, and having to defend my views in front of this articulate, argumentative and skilled group of practitioners was great exercise." One of the major difference that emerged out of the discussion was that we, Indian bloggers, don't, as of now use the blog as a medium for net activism, as much as they do in US or UK. We have much more variety of bloggers writing about hundreds of things from being personal to public. One of the reason behind this could be (a) that we have other effective media to exercise our freedom of expression, (b) We are other wise also talking about politics and rights issues so blogging need not be the only medium to inititate movement.
Amit Agarwal was undoubtedly another interesting part in the meet. He is a an IITian who quit his job to take up full time blogging. Makes some couple of thousands of dollars per month, "more than what he could have earned in an MNC", he says, just by bloggin.
The show digital planet also featured, the election commission of India whihc has been since long using electronic voting machines.
More later......
7 comments:
Hey nice to have BBC guys meeting up with you bloggers..But the hype created in your blog and by other bloggers as well somehow makes me feel that the Indian mentality of playing second fiddle to britishers is never going to change. Thats very disappointing!!!
Hows life otherwise???
Good! Heard the show and it was good, thanks for the very thoughful blogs, and thanks again for those still more to come.
seema, get out of the second fiddle psyche,,,too outdated now a days..
HT and TOI had covered past meets and they were big affairs also.
Easy to say about the psyche Ankur..Experience some degree of racism in the western world and then we can talk!!! You would then come to the conclusion as to what is outdated...
Did I hear TOI..What an irony..guess who owned and controlled it before 1950's..The Britishers...I am sure sanjukta would agree on this..
Seema ji, i have experienced racism in the US, it is where I M currently. But i have also seen racism in India, between the northerners and sotherners. I have also seen the opposite in US, where the Top posts in the Financial companies are held by Indians. Here the indians are treated well in the IT field. It is an ignorant few who still see the indians here as IT coolies.
hey, I think you can't generalise these things... Not all firangs are guilty of Racism... And I really don't see why it is a matter of ego for us to accept that they (US and UK) are actually smarter than us on few things.. BBC is after all BBC yaar... How can we deny that..
Hey hold it guys..I am not in for a blog war..Sure you must have experienced racism in North America..So did I. And being a SouthIndian I experienced that in
India too. Wonder why u called it outdated then? To tell you the reality IT guys are treated well as that is a result of something you call "brain drain". They need you big time. By the way you got me wrong..I am not against BBC. I was only pointing out the hype each one of you created for these guys who came to meet you. You had meets before also..Never saw this much enthusiasm and discussions being posted.
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