Monday, March 3, 2008

Bloggers Meet in Hyderabad

On Saturday, March 1, 2008, I had the opportunity to enter the MICROSOFT Campus, Hyderabad at Gachibowli, to attend the Bloggers Meet organised by IndiBlogger.in and sponsored by Microsoft. It was the first time I actually went around Gachibowli, which houses the University of Hyderabad, TCS, WIPRO, INFOSYS, CMC, Indian Business School (IBS), and many more offices. We took a MMTS from Begumpet to Lingampalli and then an auto ride to Microsoft campus and reached the venue on dot, at 4.00 pm. My hubby accompanied me and we were the first attendees. And then our fellow bloggers trickled in at the Hyderabadi Standard Time. But it was a good gathering of over 80 guys.

To begin with I was the only female blogger, other then the Microsoft student partner Ms. Sandhya Rajan and later a female student from IIIT, Hyderabad joined in with a group of nearly 15 student bloggers from the same Institution. Wow! and it was interesting to hear that most of the bloggers started to blog because their friends did it. And I thought, this trend was healthier, better and productive than hearing 'I smoke because my friend does'.

The meet was great fun with the ice breaker "One minute of fame" where each blogger got to introduce one's self and Blog. The IndiBlogger Jig was fun and I got to do one, as a comment from my blog was read out. The Skit by the IndiBlogger team was short and sweet. Microsoft's treat, the Pizazz and introduction to Live Writer was OK. And I got to meet some interesting bloggers which was wonderful. To sum it all, the meet was a huge success! Cheers to the IndiBlogger Team, Balaji (who coordinated this event) and Microsoft. Awaiting the T-Shirt and more such meets !

Our return journey was also fun as we hitch-hiked a car ride till Begumpet from a fellow blogger Sudeep and chatted non-stop. We were joined by two other bloggers Srikanth and Ashwin.

Deccan Chronicle, featured an article about bloggers and the meet in the March 3, 2008, Monday edition of the Hyderabad Chronicle. Excerpts of my interview appeared in it along with a few other bloggers. A good beginning for the Hyderabad Bloggers' community.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Awesome! But, it is pretty strange that there weren't many female bloggers (or maybe there are many female bloggers, but they didn't attend that event?)

By the way, my ex-company's new campus is located beside Microsoft's. But, I guess CA is far from being a household name yet :)

-Kaustubh.

Manjula said...

Sorry Kaustubh for missing out on CA, actually one of the bloggers - Balaji, is an employee of CA.

SA said...

Great work Manjula ji....


sanjay
Busy Blog

Anonymous said...

Great experience for you. Thanks to you
I too am getting the latest in different fields. Lakshmi