1:30 PM - Been sitting here for past one n half hour, disappointed. It didn't cover what I was expecting. Rather, it was too basic for me. Freezing in the full blown AC here. Lunch time now. Catch u later.

4:30 PM - First good thing about this edition of barcamp - lunch was good. Had a quick lunch, loitered around the notice board with others, then went back to the freezing L21 for bloggers' collective. This one felt like a repeat of last time. Same talk on monetizing blogs. Was getting bored. Had a sms chat with Dhivya. Then came down to the notice board area. Another couple of good surprises. Got hot coffee and mouthful snacks. That was exactly what I needed after coming out of that cold storage. :-) Then there was web quiz. And after that, the best part - tshirt distribution. So, those who had planned to come here on Sunday only to grab d tshirt, r gonna miss it tomorrow. ;-) Bad luck.
Anyway, am getting regular updates of latest sessions on my cell via sms. That's d koolest service BCB organizers have arranged. Lemme see what m i gonna attend next.

8 PM - Am back home right now. Last session I had attended was actually a fun discussion. Guys n Gals - myths n truths. Typically, a gender war kinda thing. Nonetheless, it was fun, may i say, best part of d day.

A real BARcamp was arranged after that. But it was already 6 pm and i had to head back home. That wasn't easy. I wasn't ready to pay another 80 bucks to auto. And finding bus route was a tough cookie. Had a rough ride back home. Am quite tired.Check for snaps on Tuesday.

Had gone home for Diwali. Just before leaving, we were given a huge box of crackers from office as Diwali gift. Sadly, can't take it home, as they can't be carried in flight. Indigo flight from B'lore to Calcutta was a breeze. Had plans to meet a friend there. But seems that friend wasn't that interested in meeting a 'stranger'. ;) Thereafter, reaching RPH was hell lot of a problem. The train which usually takes 4 hours to reach RPH, took 7 hours; and I reached home at 10 PM. :@

Stay at home wasn't that great though. Had nothing to do and school friends were not there at RPH at that time. So, was pretty much locked up at home. Diwali day was fun. Lighting up the Diya s felt so good, just like the childhood days. Meeting up uncles and aunties after so many days was thrilling. So much so that, I just didn't feel like coming back to B'lore. But I had to.

Return journey was another case. It's quite complicated. I took a train from RPH to Burdwan, then from there to New Delhi. Allahabad, Kanpur, Aligarh, cities I've heard of but never been to, were en route. Reached Delhi at 10PM. Now, I needed to go to domestic airport. But I was kind of scared about night life of Delhi; I mean life on road. I was told that it's quite dangerous to travel in Delhi at nights because of loots, robbery, murder et al. So, I was unsure how to reach Airport. Anyway, I took a prepaid auto. And for the first time, tested the cold in Delhi. I was shaking from head to toe in the auto. When it stopped for refilling at a gas station, I drew out some warm pull-overs from my trolley and saved myself. :D

My flight from Delhi was at 0520 hrs. So, had to wait for 6 hrs at the airport. And, the GoAir flight wasn't good either. Though their ground staff is best in the industry [ in the sense, good looking ;) ], on-board staff is total turn-off. Anyways, I took some snaps from my window. But they didn't come out well. :( Reached B'lore at 11. Headed straight to office after freshening up at home. But didn't get a warm welcome. Rather, I was thrashed by manager for not informing him of my late arrival.

Since that day, I'm in a soup; am under constant watch. Blogger, Orkut, GTalk - everything is barred for me; eventhough everyone else is using them. Anyways, I guess I need to prove myself first here. Bring it on.

This morning, I just hit upon the idea of browsing my site of interests on my mobile. So, downloaded Opera mini and hit the small highway of www. Browsed all of 'em on my w810i. Using GTalk application of ebuddy. Interface is not that good, but is working for me for the time being. Checked my own blog. It doesn't look this good there, but yep, it's not bad either. Felt good about that. Opened Orkut also. But sadly, can't read scraps there. :( When I closed my browser, my account was down by 10bucks. Hmmm. Will be careful from the next time.

And, finally - the big event is here again. BarCamp Bangalore 5 [BCB5] - winter edition. It's happening this weekend. And, I'll surely be there. Can't afford to miss it after being there on BCB4. So, see you there.

I started my session saying I want this session to be interactive. And, all the tricks that I'm gonna discuss here are breakable. Nothing can secure an online image 100%." I guess people heard just the 1st part of it but not the 2nd half. 'Coz the session was really interactive, almost every person in the room voiced his / her opinion on it; so much so that I myself didn't get much time. Before I could explain how one particular security can be bypassed, someone or the other would start exclaiming "Man, this is also breakable ..." so and so. In short, the session didn't go as I'd planned. I just wrapped it up. Anyways, I've wrote in detail about all this trick in my tech blog iWizard Prevent Image Theft : Total Guide.

Next there was a session on Mobile-Blogging by Arun. First he showcased his Photo-Blog and then introduced us to the on-the-go approach to blogging. As he stated, we can simply click a pic and post it on our blog - just in a blink. He also showed some other famous photo blogs. I must say, this did ignite a passion for mo-blogging in me. I already do have a Photo-Blog Leonardo. Posting on it from my mobile would be great.

After lunch was done with, BarCamp TShirts were being given away at the temporary reception counter. 'course there was a huge line for it. Afterall, that's gonna be the momento of this event. Got my 'M' sized TShirt [ which turned out to be a little short for me ] and headed back to the L12. Post lunch, most of the people were just idly waiting for the sessions to start. Some were having a discussion @ open spaces. That really felt like a picnic. L12 restarted with a session on 'Monetizing your blog' i.e., how to earn money using your blog. Some people did take a lot of interest in that. But gradually some people were getting bored. Some seemed extremely drowzy. Even I was on the verge of collapsing in sleep at a time. But then recovered. :D

The highlight of the day was the following discussion on "What does a blogger does better than a news paper report". This was brought about by Subbu of IndiaTogether. Several people woke-up, took notice and participated actively. They raised several issues of curbed freedom of a reporter and as such. At the end, there was this suggestion that bloggers must get a chance to have their posts published in the print medium to reach a wider audience. This was appreciated by one and all.

Slowly, the End of Day crept in and we all headed for the auditorium for the closing speech. It was already crowded as usual and Arun was giving the closing speech. Chennai Bloggers were making their presence felt being cheering on every possible context. And then, Arun announced that now on BarCamp will be held quarterly every year. My instant reaction was 'Yaayyyy...!!!' but then I quite didn't like the idea. If World Cup is held every year, then there won't be any charm in it. Same goes here. But anyway, as I've missed many a things in this edition, am eager to join the next one asap.

I was on a clicking spree then. Final shoots of BCB4. BCB4 was the 1st event where I fully utilized my newly acquired Cam-Phone. Took almost 150 snaps in these two days. And they are not as bad as I'd thought they would be. In fact, the output is quite good. After the final shoots, I headed back home. again, was too tired.
On the left is the news clip from Bangalore Mirror.

Catch all the action of BCB4 - both days at my PhotoBlog's Post B'lore BarCamp 4.

When 28th finally came, it was the 1st saturday ever when I woke up before 9 AM. Didn't quite know about the location of IIM except for that it's on Banerghatta Road. After reaching Koramangala Signal by bus, I didn't want to take a chance with it any further. So, boarded an auto instead and reached IIM comfortably. But once @ the registration counter, I was kinda lost. I was totally alone there. Every other person I saw there was with someone. Only exception being me, who was just wandering here and there. I could see Hari, Sreedhar, Ashwin, Himansu and Arun there. But they were already busy in their own schedule. Sanjukta --- where is she....??? She's kinda our team lead. :) I suddenly felt like a little boy lost in a fair, searching frantically for his parents or elder siblings. Well, being introvert has its own deficiency U know.

Anyways, after the registration, I was inside the Auditorium which was already packed. "I'm in auditorium of IIM"- this very feeling was overwhelming - complemented by the existance of hundreds of fellow bloggers under the same roof. Once the intro was over and all were out of the audi, I was again at a loss. Where do I go? The whole concept of BarCamp was a bit unclear to me. There wasn't any centralized discussion or something. The whole event consisted of 'Collectives' - different sets of related topics and participants can attend any talk that interests them. It wasn't just any other conference, but an Unconference - a space where every participant is a speaker. But can I attend anything I like, or was I supposed to be with our 'Bloggers Collective', as I still didn't know the schedule of the session I was supposed to take.

Anyways, I joined our 'Bloggers Collective' which started with the topic of 'Podcasting' by Sreedhar, followed by 'Blogging Platforms' by AJ. He covered all major platforms but eventualy was vying for Wordpress. What he forgot to consider is that when a newbee enters the bloging world, he's generally reluctant to spend any money on it. In such a case, a self-hosted Wordpress blog is never an option for him. Anyways, his session was followed by an interesting session on 'Widgets' by Krishna. His presentation is available in PDF form here.

Much time of this morning session got spoilt due to the prevailing chaos caused by people trickling in slowly. It was kinda difficult to trace what's going on in which room due to the last minute schedule and room changes. Then almost everyone had a problem getting the WiFi connection to work on their laptops. AJ walked around the room helping them setup their connection. Once the systems were up, several people started blogging live. How I wished I had a laptop too.

There I met Jerry, one of the Mutineers. A couple of days prior to that I had received an invitation to join Mutiny tech team but I just wanted to join Mutiny as a blogger. So, I discussed this with him. He said he absolutely loved my blog's UI which ofcourse delighted me. And later he introduced me to Sandil, another mutineer, which again felt great as I had never been introduced to anyone by anyone apart from my dad doing so on social ocassions and Munish [my team manager] introducing me to my team mates the day I joined Ness. But the embarrasing thing was I didn't interact with Sandy well as I was engulfed by a totally different thought at that time. I might've appeared to him as a total idiot.

By the time lunch was over, it had started raining. But as most of the campus was covered, or atleast the area which we needed to use, the rain didn't dampen our spirits. Within 3 PM, all were back in action. By this time, I had come to know that Sanjukta is from WB and my session is on 29th. So, I just headed for the Audi, where jayanth and someone [sorry I forgot his name] was taking a 'guitar' class. He explained the nitty-gritty of Guitar playing with utmost care to everybody. The way he was discussing it, it made me think that even I can play it like magic. After that was done, I was kinda tired. So, headed for home. Overall rating for the day - disappointed. My non-interaction with others contributing a great deal in it.

Read about the 2nd day of BarCamp in my next post.


The flash slideshow above is just a glimpse of the huge no. of pics clicked during the BCB4. Check all the snaps @ my PhotoBlog Leonardo.

And ya, the pic on the left is the news-bite BCB4 got in Bangalore Mirror. Mid Day has also featured it but I don't have a clip of it.