Indiblogger - Microsoft Office365 #CloudBlogathon Meet

 

Indiblogger - Microsoft Office365 #CloudBlogathon Meet

 

Indiblogger is committed to bring together Bloggers in different cities and they manage to arrange pretty interesting and attractive events with good sponsors. Unfortunately, as a result of my travelling across the country, I have missed almost all of Mumbai Indiblogger events as it turns out that I am out of town, precisely on the day of the event. Many a good events missed …

So it came as an interesting turn of event to be in Bangalore when a Bangalore event happened and I decided to break the jinx and attended the meet - The Indiblogger powered and Microsoft sponsored "Office365 #CloudBlogathon" Meet on Sunday 2nd June at 'The Tower Kitchen' in UB City

It was a Microsoft Office365 promotion event with an invitation to about 200 bloggers  out of which I guess about 150 did turn up and we all crowded the venue – The Tower Kitchen at UB City. With most of us standing and most of us tweeting, it was not surprising to see the fresh event related tweets (hashtag'ged as #CloudBlogathon) appearing on the screen. Soon we all were reading a tweet "We Blog, Therefore we …. Stand??"

Enthusiastic Bloggers were introducing themselves to each other. It was interesting to see people meeting total strangers and striking up conversations with ease … since we all had a common thread binding us – blogs. There were also 'regulars' who would seek out other 'regulars' and exchange stories and news about blogging community and other events. I witnessed bloggers exchanging books and discussing the Book Review program of BlogAdda.

This was my second opportunity of getting into an high-rise in bangalore and first opportunity of doing it in day time. So, for the first odd half an hour, I was more interested in the view from the top rather than the gradually gathering crowd. I did indulge in small talk with a couple of bloggers but my focus was clearly outside the building :) enjoying the stunning view of the city from the top and enjoying the fantastic weather with 'real' clouds over our heads; threatening to pleasantly pour over any moment.

After the initial round of registrations and settling down, the event started with a bang with prizes and gifts being showered on the bloggers. Swatch watches became the sought after items of the afternoon.

 After this initial euphoria, we came to the slightly serious part of the meet where the top guns from Microsoft - Ramkumar Pichai (GM, Microsoft) & Tarun Malik (Director, Product Marketing & Strategy) – addressed the bloggers explaining the vision behind Office365 and how it will seamlessly integrate and offer productivity to a wide variety of target audience from the students to the working professionals from different industries and profession. It was interesting to hear them speak about the possibilities of Office365 and also about the CSR activities of Microsoft. MS also has announced a unique initiative for students across India – winners get a Virtual Mentorship at Microsoft – check out details at https://www.cloudblogathon.co.in/

I took a chance to interact with Ramkumar one-on-one about the possibilities of 'Cloud' and the seemingly time-delay in Microsoft products getting onto the cloud. It will definitely be a conversation I will remember for a long time. I will look forward to interacting with him again at some other event.

Post serious talk, the bloggers meet was back in its elements of fun and games.

The thing which struck me most was the sheer enthusiasm of the Bangalore bloggers. The event had a life of its own. I haven't attended a Mumbai IndiBlogger meet yet so don't know about them but I do remember a Blogger Meet arranged by BlogAdda and although the crowd there was small (about 50 only); the enthusiasm was infectious. I am looking forward to attending a Mumbai Indiblogger event to feel the pulsing enthusiasm of Mumbai bloggers too.

Office365 does have the potential to change the way we work. Microsoft Office products are the soul of any office with the documents, presentations, excel sheets being the primary tools of working. Office365 takes these and several other tools online on the clouds and paves way for collaborative and seamless working across platforms, gadgets, devices and boundaries (geographic as well as office wall boundaries). It will depend on how well does Microsoft effect the adoption and usage of Office365 amongst the early-adopters and corporate offices.

Corporate with their data security concerns have not embraced 'cloud' properly yet and are playing a wait and watch game. Will Microsoft give these corporate the much needed chance and opportunity to experiment with cloud on practical basis? Time will tell – whether MS defines a new way of working or dumps Office365 in the end claiming it to be 'ahead of its times' …

I am not talking much about Office365 here on my blog ... guess you will get more accurate and clutter-free info on the wiki page and of course, the Office365 website (where you get the 1-month free trial also)