[KP Dhungana has written an entry about the birth of BLOGAN. At the time when the association is taking shape, it’s an interesting piece of history. I am here translating a bit of his entry and then adding my perspectives. The text in bold are translation of KP’s entry.]
It was one-and-half years ago when Umesh rang me on mobile when I was at my office. Immediately after I said hello, he started.
“KP, we need an association.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Everybody irritates me by asking if we have any association (he was asked in a radio interview about the association so he was interested).”
“What to do then we don’t have others?”
“Let’s we two make one, others will come.”
“Ok, let’s think then.”
Around the same time, we at United We Blog!, after receiving free membership of Media Bloggers Association (MBA) of USA, were also thinking in the same line. Robert Cox, the mastermind behind MBA, was willing to go with a Nepal Chapter of MBA. I, Dinesh, Deepak and Tapas had already discussed about it. We were also talking about bringing in Umesh, but we didn’t knew him personally then.
On Oct 1, 2005, we organized a dinner party to celebrate the anniversary of UWB! and invited among others Umesh and KP. I was hoping that the issue of association will come somehow [I had already received the email from KP about BLOGAN]. But it didn’t come as both parties thought the other should start it.
Earlier when I had received email from KP with the proposal of forming an association, I liked the idea and name. I sent back an email suggesting to be very clear on ethics and mission statement. I was also skeptical about forming a small association and told KP that first we should gather a fBut later the discussion just went cold.
On 26 October, 2006, Martin Chautari organized a discussion on blogging (Nepali Blogging around Feb 1st and Now) and I was invited as a pundit along with James Sharrock. KP, Darshan and Rosha were there. It was the series in which KP’s idea of blogging by Prachanda and King Gyanendra grabbed great attention.
After the discussion, all four of us went to a tea shop and discussed the idea of BLOGAN. At the same meeting, KP asked me to take initiative and I agreed. But for long, I was busy with my works and all when suddenly KP told me that we should hold a meeting on Feb 2 – the historic day because King Gyanendra seized the power on the same day two years back.
Then we started inviting people! And that was that. There were 12 who attended …
