A few days back while scrolling
through Facebook wall, I received a message from a blogger friend informing me
about a Blogger meet. In a fraction of a second I found myself on IndiBlogger
Meets page and I was more than happy to see BigRock WordUp Blogger Meet link
there. I didn’t wasted time reading about the meet, as I observed that there
were limited seats available and they were fast-filling. I registered for it
immediately and after doing all the tough job, I once again went to the Meets
page and started reading about the meet. I was happy to see that this time
IndiBlogger and BigRock are inviting some Pro-Bloggers, Internet personalities
and other famous guys as speakers and I got really excited to see Harsh Agarwal
and Amit Agarwal in the list, these guys were my biggest inspiration and I didn’t
want to lose this opportunity. The meet was scheduled for September 20, which
was about two weeks later.
BigRock #WordUp IndiBlogger Meet
Date: September 20, 2014
Venue: Blue Frog, Lower Parel,
Mumbai
Time: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
I was quite surprised to see 9 AM start
time, usually IndiBlogger meets start after 11 AM but this time it was way
early, that’s not a problem. The problem is, since I live in Borivali area, it
takes around an hour for me to reach Lower Parel, and you guys must be aware of
morning crowd in Mumbai Local trains.
Meeting
Finally the day came when the
history was about to be written, I made my plans with blogger friends and we
all decided to meet at Lower Parel station. I woke up at 6:30 AM in morning,
even after sleeping at 3:00 AM. I started getting ready for the meet and around
7:30 AM I left my house and reached Borivali Station. I had a hard time getting
ticket, as the queue was quite long but somehow I managed it. After that I had
a hard time getting on a Train, most of the trains available at that time were
either Fast trains, which doesn’t halt at Lower Parel and others were not going
to Lower Parel, at that time I was sure that I’ll be getting late, just then I
saw a perfect train which was heading to the platform and luckily it was going
towards Lower Parel, I immediately boarded it and found myself a seat. The
journey took exactly an hour and I was at Lower Parel station by 9:00 AM.
Quickly I found my friend and were rushed towards Blue Frog, which was located
at a walkable distance from the station.
Registrations
My friend Mohit told me about an
interesting lucky draw called ‘Early Birdies’ which was about to happen at the
event, the catch was that ‘Only first 50 bloggers will get the privilege to
participate in this lucky draw’. Luckily I was the 40th guy and thus
made into the lucky draw. I saw a nice crowd of young bloggers outside the
venue, they looked excited and with high spirits, I was enjoying being the part
of that crowd and that’s when they started the registrations. So the thing was
that we have to enter our data inside a computer and the computer will verify
our invitations (Yes guys, this event was for only for those who were invited),
BigRock team (guys in orange Tee’s) were busy handling crazy bloggers, they
gave us our Badges and a Backpack which contained Agenda for the meet and a
freebie which I later found to be Portable Wireless Speakers (Thanks BigRock)
You guys might be wondering 'What a potato is doing in the photo?' - Well read further to know about the Potato Mystery.
Meeting Pro-Bloggers
On entering the venue, I found the
BlogGuru Mr.Amit Agarwal and FoneGuru Varun Krishnan having a chat, I was
excited to see two of my biggest inspirations. They saw us entering, we greeted
each other with handshakes and made a formal talk. Mr.Amit Agarwal asked me
about my blog and thing are write about, on hearing that I write about
Technology, he immediately said ‘You are my competitor then’ which I found very
flattering :P So to capture this moment, we clicked some photos with these
guys. I found both Amit Agarwal and Varun Krishnan, very polite, they stayed
with us and answered our stupid questions without running away.
 |
| This is Me with Mr.Varun Krishnan (Left) and Mr.Amit Agarwal (Right) |
Breakfast and Beginning
Obviously I was hungry, I left home
early morning without eating breakfast, so I didn’t miss this opportunity.
Immediately after ProBlogger Talk, we reserved our seats by putting our
backpacks and other stuff, and straight away headed to the breakfast counter.
The food at Blue Frog was great, overall the venue was rocking (since it is a
pub) the sitting arrangement was cool and plenty of screens were put on every
corner of the venue where the Tweets with hashtag #WordUp were being displayed.
The stage had a drum kit, guitars and a bass arranged properly which gave a
hint of a rock show.
Rock Show
So the show began, the hosts for
the day asked everybody to stand-up from their seats and gather in front of
stage. After that the meet began with a rocking start, the IndiBand played two
songs live, whicle bloggers cheered them. I had a great time experiencing a
live concert and I tried to capture the full rock show in a video, which I will
upload soon on YouTube.
 |
| Rock Show, IndiBlogger Style |
Speakers at the Meet
After the rock show, it was time to
bring the speakers on the stage. We looked up at our Agendas for the coming up
sessions. The marketing head of BigRock took the stage and welcomed all
bloggers. The hosts announced the contests which were held that day (later on
this) and the show began.
Vinit Goenka:
The first keynote of the day was
delivered by Vinit Goenka, he spoke to us from his heart (as he was not reading
a script) the session ended in 30 minutes, after that people started bringing
up their questions to Vinit Goenka, which he answered.
Amit Agarwal:
 |
| Mr. Amit Agarwal Speaking to Bloggers at WordUp | Source: IndiBlogger |
The second speaker of the day was the BloggingGuru himself. Mr.Amit Agarwal took the stage and started sharing blogging secrets and tips, along with a simple slide. He started his talk by saying that there are actually no secrets, you have to be really dedicated towards your blog to achieve success. He shared a lot of useful tips and explained How we can improve our blogs. After his session, people started shooting their questions and he answered them politely.
Anshul Tewari
Next was Anshul Tewari from
YouthKiAwaaz, he talked about blog promotion and how someone can bring change through
blogging.
Lakshmi Rebecca
The host of a popular YouTube talk
show ‘Chai with Lakshmi’ took the stage. Lakshmi Rebecca started her session by
showing us a clip which explained ‘What she actually does’. She showed us a
clip about AForestation in which she interviewed a guy who was deeply involved
in it. I’m not going to write about the clip, you can watch it on YouTube. After the clip, Lakshmi called up
lead designer of Cleartrip.com, Mr.Sunit singh on stage and had a small talk,
just the way she does on her show.
 |
| Lakshmi Rebecca having a talk with Sunit Singh | Source: IndiBlogger |
After the talk, to boost the
spirits of bloggers, IndiBlogger team came up with a game called ‘guess the
number’. This game is a played during every meet, the rules are simple, the
host chooses a guy from the crowd and asks him to guess a number from 1 to 10,
on choosing a number he looks up a list and announced what prize he won. A few
lucky guys managed to win 1k to 2k cash and luckily the host chose me for next
turn, I chose a number and won a ‘Potato’ :D - I hope this explains the earlier photo.
Varun Krishnan
Here comes the FoneGuru, Varun
Krishnan from FoneArena took the stage and explained the importance of Blog
monetization and the great ways of doing it.
TheUnRealTimes
Shri Krishna Chepuri from TheUnReal
times took the stage and presented a nice presentation. He told us about legal
aspects of blogging and made us aware of how things can go wrong if we don’t
pay attention at them. He told us about his things which brought them into
trouble.
Lunch and Interaction with Harsh Agarwal
It was about to be 1 PM,
IndiBlogger took a pause here and requested all bloggers to have lunch. The
Lunch was delicious and I filled my stomach until it cried and asked to hold
on. While my friends were eating, I went out to the Selfie zone and clicked
some selfies (There was a selfie contest) immediately I posted those photos on
twitter.
After lunch I found Harsh Agarwal
having talk with some guys, I looked at it as an opportunity and went to him
along with my friend mohit. Harsh Agarwal was generous and he greeted us with a
handshake. After that we had a good talk with him for about 15 minutes, in
which he answered our silly questions. We also managed to get a photo clicked
with him.
After Lunch
After lunch the meet moved on and
some other speakers took the stage. The first one was Scherezade Shroff.
Scherezade Shroff
A fashion blogger, vlogger, model
etc. This girl was gorgeous and had a pretty voice, she spoke about lifestyle
and fashion blogging.
 |
| Scherezade Shroff during her session |
Harsh Agarwal
The SEO Master Harsh Agarwal was
next speaker, he presented a slide and shared some great WordPress SEO tips. He
showed us how Meta tags, removing dates from search snippets, images etc. can
help us improve our site.
Snigdha Manchanda
Another gorgeous lady, she is the
girl behind TeaTrunk and StoryNinjaa. An entrepreneur, storyteller and a tea
specialist shared some creative writing tips and also explained various plots
of storytelling.
Stand-Up Comedy
This was an interesting session by
Bhavish Ailani, a stand-up comedian. He brought the laughter and rose our
spirits with he amazing jokes, comments and gags. Unfortunately he had to end
up quick because of limited time.
During all this the Blue Frog team
served Sandwiches along with tea, I liked the music being played by Blue Frog,
it seemed like he stole my playlist, as one after the other, my favorite songs
were being played.
Contests
At the beginning, the IndiBlogger
team announced some contests like ‘Best Tweet of the Day’ and ‘Best TwitPic of
the Day’ – The winners would get Sennheiser HD 205 headphones.
There was a questionnaire contest for each session which included a twitter question related to the session, for
example: After Harsh Agarwal session, BigRock posted a question related to
Harsh Agarwal session and we had to answer on twitter. Like this every session
had a question – Winner from each session would get a 1000 Rupee Flipkart Voucher
Mega Prizes: Two lucky winners from the Lucky
Draw ‘Early Birdie’ would get a Motorola Moto X and Moto G.
There was also a selfie contest in
which the best selfie would win a voucher or headphones.
And the Winners Are…
Since I was active on twitter throughout the event and had posted a lot of smart and creative photos and tweets on twitter, I was the winner of ‘Best Tweet of the Day’ contest and got Amazing Sennheiser HD 205 Headphones.Yippeee!!!
 |
| My Prize : Sennheiser HD 205 Headphones - Thanks WordUp |
Other lucky winners got Moto X, Moto G, Flipkart vouchers, headphones etc. I was lucky enough to win a Potato and Sennheiser headphones :D
Summing Up IndiBlogger Style
That was it, the meet concluded
successfully but that’s not it. The hosts once again called everyone in front
of stage where they asked us to move our heads like rockstars while the music
played in background. Then we gathered for a group shot and the event ended.
 |
| Bloggers going crazy at WordUp | Source: IndiBlogger |
Farewell
So we took our bags and headed out,
waving goodbyes to friends and other fellow bloggers, clicking photos etc. This
was a day well spent, which will remain un-forgettable in our minds, for me it
was the best IndiBlogger meet so far. As I headed out, I was taking a lot of
memories and of course a Sennheiser headphones :P with me. We also got T-Shirts
on our way out.
 |
| Wonderful Speakers : (from left) Scherezade Shroff, Varun Krishnan, Anshul Tewari, Snigdha Manchanda, Lakshmi Rebecca, Amait Agarwal and Harsh Agarwal |
Some of My Un-forgettable Moments at the Meet
- Meeting Amit Agarwal, Harsh Agarwal and Varun Krishnan.
- Winning a Potato
- Winning the Twitter ‘Best Tweet of the Day’ contest
- Having fun time with friends
So guys that was it after that we
headed home and promised that we’ll keep blogging. Sorry to write such a huge
article on the meet but truly it was some amazing moments and I tried to share
them all. Good Luck!
Photos Source: Some of the photos used in this post were taken from IndiBlogger Facebook page and others were clicked by me.
Photos Source: Some of the photos used in this post were taken from IndiBlogger Facebook page and others were clicked by me.
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