Notes on Third Blogmeet

To tell you the truth, the third blogmeet started in a sour note. I promptly reached the venue at 12:00 but there were only two bloggers out there: Rosha and Tajim. Bloggers too are prone to Nepali time syndrome, an hour or so late for any program. Ah, traffic is an excuse! But you can leave home half an hour early!

I asked these young people (who are in early and mid twenties) to join me in the meeting hall. We started talking things related and unrelated to blog. It must have been 12:20 when Ujjwal arrived. He had told me over the phone that he was attending a marathon competition in Durbarmarg. As Ujjwal came, an aura of energy too arrived. This man is so energetic. But, little did I realize that Ujjwal alone couldn't do much.

Nevertheless, he told us that there was one guest speaker: James Gomez, a Singaporean blogger, activist, researcher and what not. So far so good. Ujjwal started calling the bloggers. Some hurriedly made it to the meetings, others were busy frying bigger fishes. As usual, KP was late. Looks like he has picked up a habit of coming late!

The meeting started at around 1 pm. James shared his experiences and ideas with us, which were very insightful. James occurred to me an eloquent speaker, a fast thinker, constantly synthesizing new ideas. He in fact encouraged us to make a structure out the loose network of BLOGAN. He also gave impetus for writing the blogging history of Nepal. I would say, it's a little early to do such work in that we started blogging only a few years back. Nevertheless, the idea of a book on Nepali blogging is superb.

Besides James' captivating lecture, we could not move much ahead except reiterating the previous agendas. This sluggishness really sucks. We could not come up with meaningful conclusion of forming a formal structure for BLOGAN. Some talked about unhealthy exercises in such an entity while others warned about leg pulling. It's the sheer lack of confidence among us: that we will go astray afterwards, we'll break into many fractions, and will try to gain personal benefit from the organization.

These allegations and warnings are not entirely unfounded. But, I think it's too early to predict such malicious consequences. I understand that we have bad precedence of such practices. But, if you don't believe in yourself, you can't trust others as well.

There were two new bloggers whom I've not met yet. RP Dahal of Nepal Info and Razen of Esperanto blog (I didn't understand that language) provided valuable suggestions.

Amid the desperate wait for fellow bloggers, Ujjwal was making a sorry list (of those who could not show up). I gathered that we bloggers are really in a sorry state. We want to do loads of things; no doubt there is zeal, elan and aspiration. We are young, modern generation of urbanites who have left our backwater heritage behind. But, there are so many obstacles. One crucial among them is our own tendency: we don't want to take initiatives. Yet, when someone takes the risk and the road is less bumpy, we jump on the bandwagon.

As James rightly pointed out, it's all in our culture. We need to change ourselves, then only we can change others.

PS: For pics check out Nepali Voices. Utsab has a beautiful post on the event.