TheAnand

Its a creative world outside!!! I know Joseph Thomas as a blogger and met him through the BlogCamp Kerala in August. What really caught my attention was a recent newspaper article about him in a national newspaper. He is the founder of Blogswara, which is a interesting mix of audio-blogging.

What is blogswara?

Blogswara is an internet music community which acts as a common platform for musicians (a majority of whom are amateurs) to showcase their talent before the world by producing original music and share it over the internet.

BlogCamp Kerala 2008

It was an amazing day last Saturday, the 16th of August 2008. People from diverse backgrounds, when I say diverse, It goes everyone from a school student, a farmer, a cartoonist, a researcher and even a food lover! The day started off at Allapuzha with bloggers coming together at about 9. Though we had a small problem with the delay of the houseboat arrival, it actually helped people to start socializing and get to know each other.

Last week BlogCamp Kerala was on news again, this time on ‘The Hindu’. What started as a small unconference took a life of its own teaching me the fact that ideas take a life of their own once initiated. With less than 2 weeks to go for the Kerala’s first unconference blogging event, things are shaping out really well. We had a trip to the venue last weekend and the pictures are now live at the official site.

Also, in case you are an outstation bloggers and are looking for a place to stay overnight or the night before the event, do get in touch with me so that we can see if its possible to arrange accomodation for you.

The blog is finally up and running. I was having a hectic time tweaking the plugins and design to get that perfect look that I missed the posting for a few days. Presenting, TheAnand 2008!

Also, I will be putting up my old theme for public download soon since some people seemed to like it better. And wordpress themes have my fancy that I will be putting up a few of my themes for download asap.

The other day I working on a document for BlogCamp Kerala 2008 when I found that I needed to convert a document into pdf as soon as possible. There were many available pdf to word/doc convertors online, but most of them had watermarks added to the file which was something I could not with since it was a professional document.

Coming back from a short blogcation(a brief period of vacation from blogging), I am getting back to the groove of things. If you remember, I was thinking of a BlogCamp in Kerala with a few fellow bloggers in Kerala. Things got on track and it is now a reality. BlogCamp Kerala is coming this August 16th at a Houseboat in Alleppey, Kerala.

I am really amazed at what has come out of a small discussion and the idea took a life of its own and we even managed to rope in Kerala Tourism (Kerala Govt.) as a platinum sponsor for the Keralas’ first “Blog Unconference”. Goes a long way to say what willpower can do.

BlogCamps are fun! Not that I have been to any. Judging from how the recent barcamp went, it seems that BlogCamp will be hell lot of fun!

The concept of barcamps, meetups and unconferences are slowly catching pace in Kerala judging the crowd at the past 3 barcamps and junior barcamps. Funnily enough, my spell checker says barcamps, meetups and unconferences are not dictionary words. Heck, even blog is not a word in my spell checker!

I was wondering how to reach all the bloggers and to inform them about the event. One list acclaimed by many is the Kerala Blog Roll. Anyone knows any other directories where bloggers can be reached?