One cannot doubt one's own existence as a thinking being-cogito ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am') this famous supposition of Rene Descartes,  French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer, metamorphosed into 'I blog therefore I am'! These words were flaunted on the  T-shirt of one of the participants at the bloggers' meet held on Saturday at Brew Haha, Koramangala.

This was a precursor meet to the main event, a quarterly event — BarCamp — to be held on July 28 and 29 at IIM Bangalore.

It was an informal and vibrant gathering of people, ranging from individuals who are avid bloggers married to several blogs to novice bloggers to master bloggers to occasional blog readers, with the common denominator being blogging.

'Mutinyindia, justascrap, dayswork, thoughtsprevail … was how participants got introduced by their blog creations, which has become their indispensable identities, more readily recognisable than their names!
A slice of bloggers

"In my blog I pen on feminist angst, though am not a feminist in the typical sense of the term. I love arranging bloggers' meets", said Sanjugtha, a lawyer at a real estate firm.

Tanay's remainconnected.blogspot.com is about travel, general stuff and personal rantings, while Sridhar's srimix.wordpress.com is a tech driven blog.

"My blog dayswork.wordpress.com is a refuge from my work. I write about anything and everything other than technology", says Kishore, a software engineer.

"I am a journalist from Cologne and I blog for newspapers, wherein I write about my experiences in India and also about the multifarious cultural aspects of India and Germany", observed Mike, Germany.

What is BarCamp?
BarCamp a global phenomenon is an international network of unconferences—open participatory workshop events, whose content is provided by participants focusing on related open source technologies and social protocols.

The name "BarCamp" is a playful allusion to the event's origins, with reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off of Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only unconference hosted by open source publishing luminary, Tim O'Reilly.

The first BarCamp was held in Palo Alto, California, from August 19-21, 2005, in the offices of socialtext.

BarCamp venues typically provide basic services. Free network access, usually Wifi, is crucial. BarCampers literally camp overnight. Thus, BarCamps rely on securing sponsorship, ranging from the venue and network access to beverages and food.

So far four BarCamps have been held in Bangalore. The first focused mainly on internet and mobile technology, second on possibilities in technology and its impact on everyday lives, while the third focused on society and technology and the fourth BarCamp, which is to be held now will be on collectives, wherein people who are passionate about certain ideas be it technology or photography talk, discuss, participate and share on a common web platform, informed Arun Ramarathnam, an avid blogger and one of the organising teams.

The 'collective' is all about the power of connecting to people, who are passionate about similar ideas, so as to validate their own thoughts, observed Arun. However, the agenda of the meet was narrowed down to two broad categories: First, deciding on the topics to be discussed at the BarCamp and second being, what after the BarCamp?


At a fun filled brain-storming session at Brew Haha, some of the topics that were decided for the forthcoming BarCamp included:

Techie tips to non-techie bloggers, how to create a blog, and blog effectively
What to write about?
Sessions on pod casting.
Photo blogging/mobile blogging and others.
 For details contact: 99455-69335/ 98860-38459