Barcamp Bangalore 5 was a pretty interesting experience. I met literally hundreds of interesting people, attended a few interesting sessions and organised a session on “Challenges in building an online community”. On the second day of barcamp, there was a blogging session that Nithya attended. The day before, a few of us (Nithya, I and a friend) were talking over coffee about why for a startup like Muziboo its so tough to get blog mentions whereas for sites like Shelfari even their cheap tricks can get them publicity (negative or positive, as the proverb goes, it is publicity). Nithya raised this point in the session and a big debate followed.
I had the misfortune of missing the debate because a lot of bloggers from the Blogaloreans group were there and they have lots of strong opinions about blogging and I would have loved to discuss it with them. From what I read on some blogs, Nithya’s point was that if we claim to build a network or entrepreneurial ecosystem (we met most of these bloggers at networking events), asking them to review the website and write about it should come only naturally. However most bloggers feel that they want to write about something that “has something for them”. An example I believe was writing about Om Shanti Om v/s Sawariya by about almost all major bloggers and Nithya’s point was that most bloggers claim that they are blogging for a social cause, in which case writing about mundane stuff such as which movie wins the rat race (I add this word) really isn’t a social responsibility. I have a few points to make myself
1. Organizers of Barcamp Bangalore work for no money, no credit as someone said and no real benefits, but they still do it. Hats off to them. Asking a “Whats in it for me” there would not have helped. They do it because they feel our country or our ecosystem needs it and if they don’t do it, it won’t get done. I have had a similar experience volunteering for SPICMACAY and Techniche in IITG and I can relate to that feeling.
2. Open Source people do this all the time. They stick to their cause even when most people use (abuse?) their software and the license and these guys get almost no money back. They wanna do it and they do it and have fun …
3. Services such as blogger were run for years by a guy who went almost broke, had to ask for donations and even break up with his girlfriend on the way. He had a vision and he stuck with it. Sometime, the returns don’t come anytime soon.
Lots of us talk about how so many social networks are mushrooming up with the same functionality and are even getting funded but when there is a new webservice that tries to do something different, the same people never take notice because the scale is too small or the media buzz is not there. I feel we write about what we hear everywhere … not what someone tells us .. thats too small to be mentioned most times.
My disappointment is not that bloggers don’t write about Muziboo, it is that most bloggers write about how great things are not happening or whats wrong with things but sometimes fail to take notice of things at smaller scale trying to do something right or different. Shelfari invites sucked but our invites were always neat, but we never got any press coverage coz of that. Can only a controversy get you publicity?
I don’t say that you have to do anything as charity (you can if you want) or as a favour (never do that). I am not doing Muziboo for free so I don’t expect anyone do do me a favour. However are we all really gonna be doing stuff that can pay us back in terms of money or traffic in the next two days?
Just wanna end this post saying that people who have been talked about in this post are people I know really well and I am taking the liberty of quoting some of them. I am writing this post more to say what I feel than to personally comment on anyone. In the end its a free world and it is our skills too that can compel (in a +ve way) someone to help us.
Thanks to all the Barcamp Organizers … had there been no barcamp .. there would have been no debates :)
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