I have no clue from where to start it off and how to wind it up. But for present, I’m more concerned in explaining the exhilarating experience that me and my companions: Rahul Bharadwaj, Khushboo Nangalia, Shikha Kedia, Anurag Ahuja and Yogesh Goel (better identified by the populace at the meet as ygoel.com) had at the Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009 on 8th August, 2009 at Café Coffee Day, Salt Lake (Sector V), Near Adlabs Cinemas, Kolkata.

I couldn’t perceive how 5 hours flew like few minutes, and the programme was over. I only did when the Prize Distribution (which was supposed to be the last on the agenda) commenced and FOURDY Wlog (led by my brother Rahul) won the ‘Best Elevator Pitch Award’.

Returned home happy, relaxed and obviously very proud. All the way back to home late at 11o’clock, we all were in a joyous mood evaluating the event and sharing our thoughts; when I actually sat back in the car recalling every incident that happened to occur before the event. I remembered the message of Yogesh Bhaiya about the KBM’09 which I deleted instantly as I read and didn’t even give it a second thought (just in an assumption that it was a meet for the bloggers as the name suggested). Just after two days what I found that Rahul had already seen through the message, surfed the webreps.in site, have gathered all the knowledge about the organizing group, the meet, their history, the scheduled plan of the programme and has already punched in an idea at their site, posted an article at FOURDY Wlog and the best of all — Registered all of us for the event. He personally took me on a brief ride through his discoveries and in turn ignited within me a yearning to be a part of Kolkata Blogger’s Meet. We kept in touch with Kamanashish Roy (one of the organizers) for details of the event.

Only when a day was left for the event, Rahul and me found each other writing on our Facebook Wall: “Bloggers Meet this Saturday… looking forward to it eagerly” (this was my update). Although we both were very excited for the thing but were not able to pull in time to discuss about it further due to the work pressure and approaching project deadlines. Coincidently, on the morning of 8th August (evening KBM was scheduled) at around 5o’clock we broke in to a conversation (similarly to this fine morning, we usually sit back discussing about different issues coming our way on daily basis at this time when we are relaxing) where after a concurrent suggestions and planning we finally darted on our ‘strategy’ for the meet.

Just as decided I moved out early in the morning at 10 o’clock executing all the tasks set aside for me and back at the base Rahul worked further on the idea, gathered everyone, accomplished some itinerary works and set forth for the meet. All set they moved out at 3 o’clock and picked me on the way from the ‘Poddar Court’. Before we could have tasted the thrill of the evening at the CCD, we had to go through an unpleasant adventure — mind it I choose calling it adventure (on a sarcastic note) while the tyre of our car got ruptured in the midst of Salt Lake (on the road taking you to Nicco Park: just few kilometers away from our destination) and incidentally stephanie (an extra tyre) has experienced the same a day before. Nothing but ‘Justdial’ comes to your mind at such a situation. We were so off the city and had thin chances of having any car servicing garage nearby. Nevertheless, from the list of many contacts forwarded to us by Justdial, like a god-sent Arihant Enterprise has a tons of gratitude to be expressed from our end. We left our car at Nicco Parking area and somehow managed to reach the destination on time with the help of a taxi.

We rushed and reached the venue almost on time. As we entered and had our seats, we had Kamanashish (part of an organizing team and personally my favorite host who had the power to rise the lethargic audience in his persona) officially announcing the beginning of the Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009. Soham Pal (the youngest blogger present in the show) inaugurated the show by cutting the cake. Later during the programme when Soham and I had a talk then we happen to know each other. In fact, he had also commented on one of my post at FOURDY Wlog.

Next, we had Elevator Pitch event, where 1 minute was scheduled for a blogger to describe their blog. A lot of bloggers participated amongst which one of them was Rahul Bharadwaj, who just took 45 seconds to place his thoughts on FOURDY Wlog (he was on a hunt of good authors for a blog as he wanted them to blog under one roof — FOURDY Wlog) . The event followed by a chain of superb presentations covering various topics on internet by Abhishek Rungta, CEO of Indus Net Technologies, Arun Agarwal of Ebizindia, Aji Issac Mathew of SEO for Clients and Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury of SEO Kolkata. If you ask me what I enjoyed most in the entire programme, Abhishek Rungta’s presentation on the Blog Monetization would be my answer.

Between the event a survey to test the blogging trends in Kolkata was conducted by Indus Net Technologies. The result of the same has been published on their website. Though none of the pens supplied by them worked, yet the enthusiastic bloggers filled up the form and returned back to the Help Desk. Indus Net also presented a T-shirts & ELearning CD to all the participants. (God! We almost had a CD over all the topics…)

In the Launch a Product event, FusionCharts (represented by Sanket and Saptarshi) presented FusionCharts Google Gadget. Their style was unique — they prepared some really good looking banners apart from the slides. Mitesh Ashar, presented his app – twit discuss, which did not work at that time, but the concept was good. It allows one to monitor conversations on twitter based on the hash tags.

Followed by a dinner arrangement, we had the definite chance of conversing with people there and we did it very well. Tasting the de-facto café coffee day coffee and snacks Rahul, Khushboo, Anurag, Yogesh and I essentially went on explaining our perception of FOURDY Wlog to the populace. What surprised me most were Khushboo and Ekta becoming friends the very night at Facebook just after the meet and consequently the mails for authorship rights in our email addresses just the following day. Had a wonderful response from the interested people, either calling directly or mailing us.

The Prize Distribution event was really fun-filled (may be the reason is that we bagged one). Anirudh Lohia (a webrepper) got the Best Idea Award. Though we didn’t win the award here still I’m satisfied by now with scores of people who have shown interest in our idea and joined their hands to make it realism. The Best Elevator Pitcher Award went to Rahul Bharadwaj of FOURDY Wlog & the Best Marketer Award went to Devanand Agarwala from Bima World.

Kolkata Blogger’s Meet has finished and is over but what I carry forward as a legacy is a huge number of – online and offline friends. Had a brilliant opportunity to make friends with Anirban Saha, Saikat Sengupta, Kamanashish Roy, Bijay Rungta, Rajesh Rana, Shirsendu Sengupta, Pallavi Banerjee, Ekta Khetan and many more.
Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009 got over on a blissful note and left an indelible mark on us, especially me. In the end all the bloggers decided to share the stage again to have ‘India Internet Summit in Kolkata’ soon. Just looking forward to the event with an equivalent enthusiasm!

Best wishes forever to the organizers (Webreps) and gold sponsorer (Indus Net Technologies). Wishing to have more turn-ups in the next meet! I’m definitely in…