Kindergardener meets the Graduates - (Karachi Bloggers Meetup 2008)

Date - 6th Dec 2008

Venue - Royal Rodale

Key Speakers:

Dr.Awab Alvi
http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog
Sabeen Mahmud
http://www.t2f.biz/
Haris
http://www.sizzledcore.com/

Saad
Sorry lost his URL

Badar Khushnood
Google Pakistan

Experts:

Dr.Awab Alvi

Shazia Hasan
http://shaziahasan.blogspot.com/
Ramla Akhtar
http://tinyurl.com/ramlaakhtar
Khalid Omer
http://www.offroadpakistan.com/
Haris

Saad

Aamar
http://www.teabreak.pk/

Hosts:

Badar Khushnood

Rabia Garib
CIO Pakistan

Organizer:

Google Pakistan

Disclaimer:

The content of below is entirely writer's opinion.

Some comments are in humorous aspect and no disregard meant to anyone.

I haven't read anyone else's review so any similarity is entirely coincidental.

While surfing though facebook one night I came across the event of Karachi blogger's meetup. I had an idea of what blog is and have been writing for quite a while now. Normally I write to express whatever is going in my head and mainly to "calm down". I never felt a need to have my own blog but use to read my friends' blogs and for my own stuff always saved it on my facebook notes or msn space.When I went through the event page I came across a couple of my friends too in the confirmed guest list. (Tough none of them made it there) The idea kinda excited me so I too registered for that.Now I don’t really know what was in the whole thing but I was very much looking forward to it and was checking the event homepage a couple of times a day for any updates. After registering for the event I even registered myself on blogger.com and copied some of my old stuff there to show off (I was living in my own fool's paradise and didn't know what kinda people I was to run into. lol)

Finally the event day comes and I find myself at Royal Rodale 15 mins before time. First interaction after the registration was with Badar (very nice and polite gentleman) and I got a seat next to Umair Mohsin of Media Idee (if someone can influence Umair's boss then please ask him for next event to let Umair stay till the event ends). Neways, Umair too was a very friendly guy and within mins we were having good conversation.
Later Aamar (teabreak.pk), Shahjahan (myoffstreet.com) and Sabeen (t2f.biz) also joined the same table. Now is the time when I started feeling like a kindergartener among the graduates. The way they greeted each other gave me an impression that they all are old friends and meet each other frequently. Later I found out that they all have known each other online and now they're just connecting names with faces.I seriously learned a lot on that table... Aamar said people blog and they don't even know they're blogging... Like if you post under a thread or update your facebook status... That's blogging, even I didn't see that side of the picture before.Neways... Initially I felt alien among all the blog gurus and thought I've landed on mars or something... Seriously speaking, had someone asked me before this meet if I know about teeth.com.pk? I would have thought the guy's referring to some online "manjan" shop :-)

Rabia started the formal event and she turned out to be someone with a good sense of humor. First to go on stage were Dr.Awab & Sabeen, one of them being a dentist and other IT tech and businesswomen, but both considered "God" in the Pakistani bloggers world. That's when I found that this is THE Sabeen of T2F... I went like "hey! I'm back on earth as now since I also know 1 person who I've heard of before"

Followed was Badar's presentation on "how to make money" (there were other things in the presentation too but lets just stick to the most important thing. lol)

After Badar came the turn of Haris and Saad who came from Islamabad and Lahore respectively... These two are running their own IT & Gaming based blogs and mending money out of it at such young ages. Hats off to you guys...

In the end was a question and answer session with a panel of experts. What impressed me the most was Shazia who irrespective of being blind is an active reader and blogger... She truly lives on the saying "when there's a will there's a way" hats off to you too...

Rabia kept coming up with questions with giveaway goodie bags, I also got one and since it was on a question related to t2f and Sabeen was also present there, I was hoping if not a macbook or an iphone, there must be an ipod in the bag but guess that's not how they do it on mars :-)

The program formally started at 15:00 and ended around 18.30 followed by tea. It was a great opportunity provided by Google Pakistan for Kindergarteners like me to learn about blogging and for the Graduates to share their experiencesIn the end what I'd like to say is the whole thing encouraged me A LOT to read and write more often and I'll definitely be looking forward to similar events in future and hopefully get an apple product in the goodie bag the next time (guess I’m still living in my own fool's paradise)