A dozen of Nepali bloggers gathered at the Freedom Forum on the historic day (Magh 19 – the second anniversary of King Gyanendra’s seizure of power beginning a crisis in the country which turned out to be an opportunity for Nepali bloggers) for the first-ever almost formal bloggers’ meet.
Participants of the Bloggers’ Voices: (standing) Ujjwal Acharya, Harsha Man Maharjan, Keshav Koirala, Rosha Basnet, Ghanshyam Ojha, Nabin Karki, Mohammad Tajim, (sitting) Usthab Pokhrel, Bal Mukunda, Tapas Thapa, KP Dhungana and Raj Shrestha.
Talks were mostly centered on the need of the blogging community and its benefits for all. There were talks on blogging, and even on Terai issue (much of which was done after the end of the meet).
I (or Ujjwal Acharya) put forward the ideas about how should the BLOGAN or the bloggers’ community be based on the comments of the talks in Google Group and also about the need of a community that would ‘help each others in need and work to upgrade the quality of blogs’.
Ghanshyam Ojha said the BLOGAN should be loose network of bloggers and not an association right now and we agreed with him. He also talked about his experience on blogs and blogging in USA as the Daniel Pearl Fellow. KP Dhungana gave a brief overview on the idea of BLOGAN.
Taranath Dahal, the former chairman of Federation of Nepalese Journalists and now with Freedom Forum, promised to provide the secretariat support and legal support free of cost if required.
At the end of the meet, all the bloggers agreed on principle on the following points:
- BLOGAN should not put any restriction on bloggers other than pornography;
- take forward the awareness of blogging by any possible ways like writing articles in traditional media or lecturing on college students or organizing workshops
- support, link and promote each other’s blogs
We also agreed for following actions
- hold the meeting on first Saturday of every month to talk on various issues
- circulate a weekly email with news about Nepali blogosphere, links to new blogs and notable entries by the bloggers (all attending and supporting bloggers automatically will be automatically added to the list. If you want to be added to the list, please email to ujjwal.acharya@gmail.com).
Attending Bloggers
1. Ujjwal Acharya, NepaliVoices.com
2. Mohammad Tajim, Neppal.com
3. Utshab Pokhrel, utshab.wordpress.com
4. Rosha Basnet, rosha.com.np
5. Keshav Koirala, Keshuvko.blogspot.com
6. Tapas Thapa, Tapas.com.np
7. KP Dhungana, Hamroblog.com
8. Harsha Man Maharjan, Mediaharsha.blogspot.com
9. Ghanshyam Ojha, Danielpearl.blog.com
10. Bal Mukunda, Hamroblog.com
11. Nabin Karki, Nayadeshnepal.blogspot.com
12. Raj Shrestha, Fotobyraj.blogspot.com
Those who missed it (and emailed/wrote about it)
13. Umesh Shrestha, Mysansar.com
14. Deepak Adhikari, Deepakadk.blogspot.com
15. RP Dahal, NepalInfo.civiblog.org
16. Niranjan Kunwar, Nirlog.com
17. Archana Shreshta, Archana.com.np/blog
18. X, NepalSites.blogspot.com
19. SB Shrestha, sbshrestha.blogspot.com
20. Buddhi Narayan Shreshta, bordernepal.wordpress.com
21. X, saynasomething.wordpress.com
22. Narayan Thapa, nararyan.com.np
23. Mahesh Poudyal, Poudyal.org
24. Sailendra Kharel, pjsailendra.wordpress.com
MORE PHOTOS OF THE BLOGGERS’ VOICES AT FLICKR.
