TheAnand

Its here. The biggest unconference in Kerala is back with the 8th edition. BarCamp Kerala(8) is at MACFAST, Thiruvala on March 28th, 2010.

For those of you who don’t know what a BarCamp is…

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences – open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants – often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.
Wikipedia

It is one of those conferences where you see youngsters, geeks, technophiles and everyone else come together in a single stage to share their views on pretty much everything! If you plan to come to the event, let me know and lets catch up!

I recently became a fan of TED Talk Videos and I am glad I was introduced to it very aptly by this video of ZeFrank by Arun Basil. For the unaware,

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds:  Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

In this video, Ze Frank delivers a humours and smooth talk on the web.

For more Videos of TED, Visit TED.com

I have been a lazy blogger for most part of this year for some reason. While initially it was due to work and getting the basics up at ayruz, these days its more like a loss of purpose in blogging life. The traffic to this blog has been fairly stable at 40,000 pageviews a month and revenue from adsense being a little over 5$ a day making it the dream no-maintenance blog in my network.

But at TheAnand, I do want to blog! Just that I am lost at about what to blog. As the traffic is stable, I cannot guess which type of posts interest you the regular readers of this blog.

The biggest unconference in Kerala is back! The 6th edition of BarCampKerala was announced last week and this time, the event is scheduled in Cochin, Kerala.

Date: 11th October 2009

Venue: Rajagiri College of Engineering, Cochin

The venue is sponsored by the Computer Club of the College. Thanks guys!

Register for the BarCamp | Take a Session | Venue

BarCampKerala 5 was perhaps the biggest of the barcamps we had in Kerala with about 250 people turning up from across the state and this being in the middle of the state will allow for more attendees. The hall is around 170 seats strong, so do register early! Read Shwetanks review of the meetup to get an idea about the event.

I was supposed to take this session in the 5th edition of BarcampKerala, but unfortunately I was not able to due to many reasons. I started using Tudumo some months back and it has literally changed the way I think of work and its pressures. Wait a minute, pressure? what pressure!

How would you feel to have no reminders in your head and when you sit down in front of your desktop, have a list of things you have to do. It makes life so easy! Just complete the task and press “done”!

I really have to get over this! Since the year I started on geocities, I would keep redesigning my web home every year. This year, I decided to get on a final makeover for at leastthe next 2-3 years.

That is when I found the talent in this awesome designer – Ben Jacob. Of only 18, this barely legal designer has done magic with my concept of a dream home. Now, my homepage and this blog has a single integrated design with all the elements I had wanted.

I am a internet junkie if not anything else! Spending hours reading blogs (about 250 of them) lurking around forums and not to mention Social Networks and the links shared on Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon. This has led to serious time management issues ever since I started working on my startup. I finally decided to fine tune the time spent online and this is my set of times for time management for the social media enthusiast.

I do not have words (being a blogger, its ironic!), but am really really thankful to each of you 2500 subscribers of my Blog. Its an emotional feeling to have been blogging for about 4 years now and being able to make a ton of friends online and meeting up offline through barcamps, blogcamps and smaller events like the CochinBloggers meetup and tweetups.

If you are a part of our community, please do get in touch with me at Yahoo!/MSN (getanand321) or by email and I will be happy to be your friend and support your initiatives online.You can also find me online at the following places, add me up and lets get aquainted!

The biggest democrazy(not a typo), India goes to poll starting tomorrow. Elections have always been a cause of celebrations, ugly mud slinging and great entertainment in our country and specially in my state of Kerala. From parties whose manifesto contains assurances that they will stop people from talking english and protest the usage of technology and internet(I know, LAME!) to parties who use it a bit too much by spending 2500 Million Rupees ($50 Million) of  money on online adwords campaigns(Mr. L.K Advani, or as we bloggers call Mr. “Ad”Vani), its a total carnival here in the sub-continent.

Its not justified to call it an Article-19 experience as we were not able to attend any of the sessions or anything fun in Manipal. We were having our own experience in Manipal.

Its a long story and I am exhausted mentally, physically and probably financially by this month. Someday I may laugh at how crazy this was, but not today.  Till then, make your own guesses about the great Manipal experience.