The Blog Meet III looked like a failure to the few who reached the venue at the scheduled time. The earlier two meetings had attracted exactly 12 bloggers each time – though there were changed faces. On Saturday, when I reached the Freedom Forum, there were only three – Deepak, Rosha and Tajim; and it was already a few minutes past noon.
After some minutes, RP Dahal joined us – for the first time. And, KP Dhungana as usual said when I called him that he was ready to be scolded but was making to the venue in a few minutes.
I had a list of bloggers who informed me they couldn’t attend (the ISL) and then it was James Gomez, whom I had invited in the meeting, who called me saying that he was nearby. James, who is a Singaporean politician/writer/blogger, is in Nepal for his professional work and since we had been friends since meeting in Manila and Seoul, I invited him.
As he was coming, I asked Utshab, who was working in his office nearby, to come for half-an-hour, and he did it. Ghanshyam Khadka also made it. Tapas too arrived despite having family function as his home and that made 10 of us.
James talked about his own personal life and how he raised his profile. He started from his family background, writing on book called Shame of Singapore (on the self-censorship of the Singaporean press) and then moving to politics and all.
Then he suggested a few ideas for moving BLOGAN ahead including the writing an research based report on blogging history of Nepal (so that some foreigners can’t come to study blogs and mis-interpret) and then possibility of blog growth (in terms of number and role as the media) in coming years due to the political situation of Nepal.
It was indeed wonderful listening to James and we all appreciated his ideas for BLOGAN.
And, there were of course our regular talks about updates and all. We, after much discussion, agreed that it’s better for us to move ahead with a formal, registered organization rather than remaining a loose network. The idea was basically based on our future plans as we found that we won’t be able to work on the plans like conference and trainings.
And, we also talked on having very clear agenda and aims. KP took the responsibility of formulating the first draft for discussion (which will be sent to all Nepali bloggers and posted at NepaliVoices soon). Then there was issue of membership; I took the responsibility of drafting the membership criteria for discussion.
Then we also decided that to move forward on the web-hosting services. Initially, we have been offered the space of 25MB, top-level domain registration and pre-installed WordPress along with a number of themes and plugins for Rs. 2500 per year. All of us agreed it was cheaper and then we are moving ahead with the plan. It will be soon finalized.
Despite having a great meeting, something that we all felt pessimistic was the number of bloggers attending. Probably also because I only sent invitation on Friday, next time I will send invitation a few days earlier. The next meeting is of course the first Saturday of Baisakh, same venue same time.
Post about the Blog Meet III by other bloggers
Utshab Pokhrel
Deepak Adhikari
RP Dahal
