Hello Friends,

A fortnight back, I was having some communication with Kamanashish Roy (@doubts) and he told me about his interest in organizing a Kolkata Bloggers' Meet. The idea struck a chord in my mind as I always wanted to organize an "Internet Strategy Summit" in Kolkata. So I thought let us start with the Bloggers' Meet and check out if there is sufficient demand for the mega show that I was dreaming of! And I chipped in with the required funds to organize the event.

The discussion started off on twitter and soon the idea picked up steam with a steady flow of people showing interest. The list of attendees kept on growing and soon it crossed 160+ registered blog addicts who showed interest to turn up! The interesting thing was use of twitter for spreading the word and coordinating the entire event. We hardly exchanged emails!

The event was organized at Cafe Coffee Day in Sector V, Salt Lake. 125+ blog enthusiasts turned up to share their passion and ideas about blogging. It had talks by Arun, Saptarshi, Aji, Vikas (via video conferencing) and yours truly.

There was energy in the air as the most vocal and active Kolkata + Web2.0 citizens gathered to learn, make friends and speak up! It started with a cake-cutting ceremony by the youngest blogger who turned up for the event – definitely a great way to encourage someone. Participants were given an opportunity to do a one minute elevator pitch. Very few could actually do a 'real elevator pitch' and hardly anybody maintained the one-minute deadline. But nobody complained. Everyone was enjoying the experience. This was followed by presentation by speakers and ended with product demo of FusionChart (by Sanket Nadhani) and HeadStart (by Mitesh Ashar). Throughout the event, networking was ON.

We all got to taste the de-facto Cafe Coffee Day cold / hot coffees and snacks. When we thought all is over, we were surprised by the dinner (surprised – since we were so engaged in the event, we felt that 'we are full'). This was topped up with t-shirts and an ELearning CD (from Indus Net Academy) as a parting gift.

The success of the event is evident from the fact that even after 10 pm, participants were in no mood to return home

My small presentation was on blog monetization. I tried to cover both the audience – i.e. a blogger who blogs for a company and as an individual. Here are the slides for you!

The four people behind the success of this event (in my opinion) are the guys who represent a virtual organization called Webreps.in. In fact I was amused to know that there is no structure, format, legal existence of the organization. But then I realized – who cares! I have myself flouted the 'conventions' so many time. And this is cool. There guys are Anirudh Lohia, Kamanashish Roy, Shimul Aich and Saikat Sengupta.

Photographs of the event are at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/album.php?aid=128692&id=129612851702&ref=nf

Can someone share the video links to all the presentations?