KBM 08

Its not often that you attend an event where you get to meet people you actually want to meet. The Bloggers meet up 08 held on Dec 6th 08 was just such a place, organized very well by Badar Kushnood of google and Salaina Haroon of CIO it turned out to be a rip roaring festival of geekiness and general good will. Of note was also the grungy humor of the presenter Rabia Garib who managed to keep even the ones with lowering eyelids interested.

The invites were all via facebook, so i was kind of surprised that so many people show up, but i guess Fbook is big in these parts and i was thrilled to meet so many bloggers whom I knew before this event by their nicks or call signs only, which I later realized was a good thing in some cases.

For the first time since starting blogging it felt like you belonged to a community, that you were not alone and that the community wants to grow into something much more feasible and efficient. I know I know I have not been hibernating and i know there are millions of blogs out there but to actually meet everyone who blogged from Karachi in one place was superb guys!!

Two things have come out of this meet up for me at least, first the identity thing and having a strong networking base among this community and secondly as per my discussions with a few noteworthy bloggers perhaps a forum for our community, where the newbies can ask questions and the advanced bloggers help the rest out, in blog formation, statistical analysis and generating traffic. This will help us grow as a group rather than have just few blogs making an impression, and speaking of impressions it will also help us make a unified international one.

here is the link, its a work in progress so things will get better

Forum

Link to live blogging post from Karachi Bloggers Meetup (credit Jamash and Batool)

It would also bode well for us as a community if we were to consider the following suggestions.

• Before putting up two very well known and public figures on the stage a little disclaimer as to what their presence at this meet up meant would have been good. Some thing like here is so and so who writes blog ABC but right now is here to talk about the general spirit of the community.
• An attempt should be made to give a boost to new bloggers, via meet ups like this. I remember clearly how many times in the past year I have gone to a certain blogger for advice when i got frustrated. The forum being developed will help a lot in this effort but imagine what it would mean for a novice to have 200 blogs linking to him suddenly in their next post?
• More new bloggers should be encouraged to speak, I agree this might take away some of the glamor from events as old and experienced stage hands are just that but then it will help us flourish on the whole.
• More of an effort should be made to feed the events and the communities message to the print media, which still remains a viable part of our nations reading and can help generate more support for us. The development of the urdu font for blogging would be say perfect in an urdu daily of national coverage.
• Basic blogging techniques, and explanations of what a blog is supposed to be rather than what my blog is and how much money i make from it would be more feasible.

I think I shall shut my trap before being dis invited to the next meetup 🙂

my personal congratulations for the show of force and organization to the entire community, Blog on!!