The first Cochin Tweetup happened on 9^th March 2009 at Barista, Bay Pride Mall, Menaka. Live twitter update was done by the guys with mobile – @remzology, @maravind, @kg86. Until we get a place with a decent (and hopefully free) wifi connection, only mobile tweets will be available.

Planning

The tweetup was the brainchild of @kg86…

quite a few off days ahead, can we have a #kochi #cochin #tweetup ?

Kumar Gautam aka kg86

Soon many others from Cochin responded – and we decided on the date and venue. Barista, Bay Pride Mall at Menaka, Cochin was chosen because there was a possibility of getting WiFi there. Also, it was the default venue for Cochin Bloggers meetings.

Cochin Tweetup

Execution

I reached the venue at 5:05 PM. I did not notice any open laptops so I assumed that I was the first person to reach the venue. After a few more minutes, I noticed a guy behind me playing with his mobile – but still no groups. Still, I was not worried – we are in Indian Stretchable Time after all.

After another five minutes or so, I noticed that the guy behind me is still lonely – and still has not ordered anything. That’s when I began to suspect that he is here for the Tweetup. One problem of the internet is that you don’t know what the guys on the other side look like – you only know what their avatar looks like. And I assure you, the guy behind me did not look like this…

So I went over and asked him if he was here for the tweetup – turns out he is Rameez Nooruddin – aka remzology. When I saw him earlier, we was playing with the mobile – yup – updating twitter. And he didn’t recognize me because I was not wearing my glasses.

Soon people began to come. I am not sure about the order – but soon @sid88, @kg86, @adheeth, @maravind, @remzology, @ronyjacob and myself(@binnyva) were at the table.

Discussion

A overview of the stuff we talked about…

• Arrest of 19-year old blogger for Orkut community against Shiva Sena
  • Implications for Bloggers
  • Comment Moderation in Blogs
  • Need for EFF Wing in India
• Mobile Browser
  • stshark, bolt, ucweb, operamini, skyfire, fennec
• Mobile OS
  • Android vs Symbian
• Name of our city – Kochi Vs Cochin Vs Ernakulam.
  • Cochin was declared the winner.
  • Ambiguity of Kochi
• Films
  • IMDB Top 205 List
• Dvorak Keyboard Layout Demonstration by myself and Mahesh
• Discussion on what to order
• Cappuccino Test by Adheeth @sid88 on Adheeth‘s Cappuccino.

Did I miss out anything? If so, put that in the comments.

Pictures

Group Picture – From left to right…

• @ronyjacob
• @sid88
• @adheeth
• @maravind
• @remzology
• @kg86
• @binnyva

@maravind‘s Artwork – Logo for Cochin Tweetup created in just half a minute.

Outcome

Everyone who attended enjoyed the meeting. We decided to do this once every month or so. And we thought that was the end of it.

But the responses in Twitter where more than what we anticipated – there where many calls to scale up the meets to a Kerala wide operation. Finally after a tweet from Arun Basil Lal, I decided to create a site to coordinate Tweetups in Kerala.

And thus TwitterKerala.com was born.