Posts in Category: Desicritics

Posts on and about Desicritics

Barcamp Bangalore 4 – Day 1

On July 28, 2007 by Anant With 3 Comments - Blogging, Desicritics, Internet, Yours Truly

I attended my first BarCamp today held in Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
It was scheduled to start at 9 AM but I overslept and reached there only by 10. But as IST (Indian Stretchable time) goes, I wasn’t late and the registrations and the introduction session was still going on. So I did not miss much :D

I wanted to be a part mainly of the Bloggers collective and the Photo(graphers) Collective, hoping to learn, mostly in the latter and more to give a talk in the former. The bloggers collective started of fairly decently but was delayed as people trickled in fairly slowly and almost everyone had a problem getting the WiFi to work on their laptops.

But once that was done, the first talk on Podcasting took place. I was not interested much in that so I went around helping people configure their laptops to connect to the WLan.

The next talk by Kishore Krishna (aka Kpowerinfinity) was on Widgets but due to some conflicts, it was delayed. So my talk on Blogging Platforms and setting up your own blog was advanced and his postponed to after mine.

My talk started on a fairly positive note with lot of discussion and interaction but once I got on to the setting up a self hosted blog using wordpress, people lost track. The topic got far too technical for most of them so I decided to stop and instead move that to a demo after the talk for those who were interested by making it more basic and easy to follow(the demo did not happen eventually)

After my talk, I moved out from the bloggers collective to check out the other collective. I entered the Internet collective where a talk on MS Silverlight was just about to start. Not much interest there so I moved on to the Startups collective. That was in the fag end with the speak just starting to take questions so I left there too and went back to the bloggers collective. Kishore’s talk was just about over when I reached there and soon we all went for lunch.

Immediately after lunch, the bloggers collective seemed to have disappeared with only a few visible from the earlier 40-50. So I held a discussion on micro-blogging (Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku) with a few of the interested attendees. After that, I discussed the various blogging platforms and what would be a good choice for a non-techie beginner blogger and set up an Livejournal account for her.

That was the end of all blogging topics as the photography collective was having it’s first (and only meet for the day) where a lot of discussion went on and Amoghavarsha and Jace and few others. Learnt lots of basic tips and got a lot of information.

There was a band jam happening later in the evening but having tired myself out earlier, I decided to skip that. Day two of the un-conference is tomorrow. Watch for a report about it tomorrow.

Oh and I got a chance to meet Aaman and Deepti Lamba, the chief editors of Desicritics. That was really great. We discussed the upcoming changes to DC, the current happenings and how it is really growing as a community. That was really great.

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Is there a fate worse than loneliness?

On February 28, 2007 by Anant With 7 Comments - Desicritics, Life, Rants, Thoughts

My sister gave birth to baby girl last Friday. That in combination with it being my birthday on the sunday (25th) was a cause for big celebration. My mom and I decided to go and distribute home made sweets to an old age home near our house. While there, we also decided to sponsor the lunch there yesterday.

While the papers were being readied, the manager there showed me around the old age home (it was my first visit, a fact that I now regret since I think I should have gone there much earlier) and introduced me to a some of those who stay in the old age home.

One of the ladies who we spoke to (with the manager as a translator) was very happy to have company. Every smile of the lady was tinged with sadness. Why? Because while we were talking, she revealed that she had a son and two grandsons, all three of who were working in the IT industry.

I was shocked. Rather, disgusted. Here was this lady who has earning sons and grandsons but who is likely considered a burden by them. How can someone take the decision to send their mother to a place where she does not know anyone, where there isn’t anyone to love and take care of her. Why is she even considered a burden?

I felt sad when we came out of the room and left for home again. The only thought in my mind was, what had that lady done to deserve this? Was her fault to have cared for and brought up her children?

During my visit, as we walked, I met a few of the people staying there. And all of them had a smile on their face which showed happiness on seeing me. And this was simply because they had some company, that some one had come to meet them. And seeing those smiles made my day. And it was there that I decided that I must and will do something more to see those smiles again. And I think everyone else should try it too.

Update: Many people have asked me for the address of the old age home. Here it is:

Anandashram,
No. 53/7, Bannerghatta Road,
Bangalore – 560 029
Phone: 26784621

(Landmark: Just past Boyancee, opposite BP petrol Bunk)

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Desicritic

On February 23, 2007 by Anant With 4 Comments - Blogging, Desicritics, Internet, Yours Truly

So I recently joined the highly prolific team of Desicritics and my first article was published there last night. I am really excited because by joining there, I not only get a wider audience but also a larger platform to write about topics and subjects I do not write about here since this is mostly for stuff about my life and daily happenings. (Although I might start cross posting here with a slight delay)

I am honored to be in such good company :)