Date: Jan 31, 2005
Venue: Barista, St Marks Road

And so finally, we decided to have a Bangalore bloggers meet. It’s been pending for a while. The idea had come up when we met Suman at Madman’s restaurant last month. What about a few more of us meeting, we had asked each other then.

It was possibly a pretty significant date – last day of the first month of 2005! We sent out a few invites. Nearly everyone accepted, except 2-3 bloggers we couldn’t get a response from/or couldn’t make it.

Some of us already knew each other. A couple of bloggers found out they worked together. And a few others were new to us and to each other. Like it’s usually the case with bloggers, it didn’t take too much time to break the ice. In attendance (in alphabetical order):
– Adel
– Anurag
– Arun
– Deepak
– Madman
– Meenaks
– Muthu
– Sandeep
– Suman (He also runs Tsunami Help India)

From left to right: Muthu, Adel, Arun, Deepak, Suman, me, Sandeep, Madman, Meenaks

While it was an opportunity to meet up with a few bloggers, we also wanted to get together and find out how we as a community can take up the cause of the tsunami affected areas, a little more seriously. A few of us had already travelled to Cuddalore district last month, and after seeing with our own eyes, the devastation caused, we decided that we could do much more.

As bloggers, we also create our own networks, and I believe these are quite powerful and can be use effectively to reach out to a wider cross section of people. Adopting a village and interacting directly to help them is one idea we are exploring currently. We got some valuable suggestions on how to take it forward, and besides setting up a site, we will be coming up with the actual plan in the next few days. We’re hoping more bloggers (outside of Bangalore too, and especially in Chennai) can join in the cause and use their unique personal networks (blogging and otherwise) to spread the word around in India, and overseas.

Coffee and conversation: Muthu, Adel, Deepak, Suman and Madman

The conversation veered from blogs, hosting, and naturally turned to the topic of plagiarism, which has been quite a debated one of late. Deepak had a few tales to tell and pictures to show from his recent Hampi trip. Adel gave us some inputs from his side about his visit to AID India in Chennai and his meeting with Nanda. Muthu was pretty silent (apparently, he’s abstaining, so I am presuming it also includes conversation :). Meenaks joined in a little late and was pretty silent too (he might be following Muthu’s lead, methinks). Madman, as usual, proved how he got his first and middle name – i.e. Madman Sceptic Menon. Suman gave us a background of some of our upcoming plans.

It was an enjoyable 2 hours and finally at about 9.30 pm, when we were down to a body count of 4, we decided to grab a quick bite. Madman, Arun, Muthu and I walked over to Koshy’s for dinner. After smileys (round deep-fried banana somethings), crum-fried and roast chicken, organic mushrooms, lots of orange juice, and a couple of drinks, we decided to call it an evening at about 10.30 pm.

Till we meet again 🙂

Meet the Bloggers (Pics courtesy: Madman)