Passion

That is the one word that a BlogCamp can be captured in – passion. Bloggers, the serious ones, are very passionate about their blogging. And usually, the more successful blogs tend to be about a few specific topics that the blogger is very interested in, and puts a lot of time and effort into. And there is nothing like learning about a topic from somebody who has put years of effort into learning about and writing about that topic.

And you get about 20 such people in a blogcamp.

First, though, I need to clarify what a blog is, according to my definition. Far too many people thing of a blog as a “Dear Diary” where someone writes about every little episode of his or her life, and what they had for lunch, and how much they hate their boss, and how Pune’s traffic sucks. Those are not the blogs I am talking about. Those are pretty boring, and other than a few close friends and family of the blogger, nobody really reads those blogs.

I am talking about those who use blogging either to write about interesting insights they have related to their field of work, or who use it to explore an interesting hobby, or a topic that they are very interested in. In general, these are blogs by people who put some serious thought into what they write, and write things that their readers are interested in.

In the first category – those writing about topics from their work – are people like Dhananjay Nene, who writes long and insightful posts on software programming, design and architecture, some of which take is weeks if not months to think about and write. And for anybody interested in being great at software, it is a must read; and like Suvrat Kher, a geologist who writes on geology, evolution, and the changing earth. In the second category are people like SandyGautam who is really a software engineer, but  writes the Mouse Trap, a blog about psychology and neuroscience, that is considered amongst one of the best science blogs in the world (those technically minded should note that his blog has a Google PageRank of 6). Or meetu, who in spite of being a CA and an MBA in finance, gave up the corporate life for writing about movies at wogma.com. Arun Prabhudesai is interested in the Indian Business scene, and his blog trak.in has over 5000 subscribers (and god knows how many more daily readers). And Tarun Chandel, who in addition to “regular blogging“, also posts his experiments in photography to his photoblog.

You’ll meet Rohit Khirapate who writes at Aamhi Marathi, Nitin Brahme and Vishal Gangawane who are reporters with Pune Mirror, Sahil Khan, who started The Tossed Salad, a life style magazine, while still a student, Debashish Chakrabarty, who amongst other things, is also very active in Hindi blogging circles, Nikhil Kaushal of Rang De, which is a micro-finance organization, trying to make a difference in the lives of poorest people for whom a loan of a few thousand rupees can make a difference, and people from OLPC Pune, who are trying to put laptops in the hands of poorest kids – the stated goal of the project being achieving one laptop per child.

Register, and attend. This will be your chance to find some of the most interesting people you’ve ever met. This will be your chance to possibly find people who share the same weird interests as you. This will be your chance to inspire a bunch of college kids, who will all be there because of their individual and varied interests. This will be your chance to be inspired to do something interesting and different with your life.

BlogCampPune2 – come to inspire and be inspired.