New Delhi Times - Gaurav Bhatnagar reporting from New Delhi, India

After driving "midsize" rentals in the US, my Honda City was feeling really small and cramped yesterday morning. The steering seemed stiff and the accelarator appeared powerless. Clearly, I was back in the real world (India).

Our two week trip to the US was tiring, exhausting, exhiliriating, stressful, exciting, nostalgic all rolled into one. This was my 5th visit to the bay area but only the first one where I got a real feel of the valley and learnt what makes it such a special place. My earlier trips had been during the lull time in the Valley and moroever I was then a spoke in the big wheel so quite out of the loop from the whole startup scene. This time it was different. And even better, we were in the good company of Marc Canter who makes sure there is never a dull moment!

Here are some random notes from my visit.


On Bloggercon and BarCamp

We attended these two "unconferences" immediately on our arrival. I think the unconfernece format has been taken a little too far now. Bloggercon followed a discussion format where one discussion leader kicked off a discussion and then the audience participated. It was good except that the same set of people were vocal in all the discussions. At times I also felt that the topics that were getting discussed were the exact same conversations that happen in the blogosphere as well. You can think of it as if what the discussion leader said was a blog post and what everybody else were comments to that blog post! So some thing like a real life blogosphere. Anyway it was a great oppurtunity to meet up with many "A list" bloggers so I can't complain much. The barcamp was even more unconferenced. Maybe it was because we went on Sunday when everybody was tired and exhausted. But I got a chance to discuss microformats with Tantek and ask him when Technorati is gonna support rel=me tag.


On managing offshore teams

For the first time, I found myself on the opposite side of the fence (or time zones). The day went in meetings and the night was spent interacting with the team in India. It was a crunch time since we were very close to the ship date so communication was absolutely critical. I experienced first hand how difficult offshore team coordination can be. But at the same time, the advantages became more obvious as well. We spent the day going through the system looking for bugs and issues. I would then go over those with the dev team and by next morning they were all fixed! So the 24 hour work cycle really does work!


On Gnomedex

Gnomedex was the big event that we had actually flew in for. It was up in Seattle. Gnomedex was very well attended and was yet another chance to hook up with the A-list crowd. Chris Pirillo and Ponzi organized a kick-ass (un)confernece. Kudos to them! The conference followed the Bloggercon discussion leader format. Marc made his presence felt throughout the event - first by taking Senator John Edwards to task, then by falling asleep, and then by announcing People Aggregator.  There was a "backchannel" chat room as well where people were discussing the conference live. That was really fun and lot of smack talk ensued!


On People Aggrgeator launch

Marc announced People Aggregator at Gnomedex. It was amazing how many people had already heard of PeepAgg and actually understood the bigger idea behind it. It was also gratifying to get so many "congratulations" and "well dones" from the Gnomedex attendees especially because these are people whose opinion matters a lot. Shipping software is great! That is what makes our jobs exciting. Ourmedia, GoingOn, PeopleAggregator.... we pretty much OWN the social software space! :)


On BBM offsite

BBM is a very virtual company and PeepAgg launch also served as an offsite for the whole team to come together in one room. It was great to meet Phil, Paolo, Richard and Marc Senasac in person after having worked with them for so long. I was bummed that Paolo, inspite of being an Italian is not a football fan. Considering how Italy was performing, you would have expected an Italian to be hopping mad. But nope. Paolo had this "I couldnt care less" look throughout! Paolo - I hope you will at least watch the finals tomorrow!

On seeing Marc Canter in action

It was an experience in itself to see Marc in action. Marc is a passionate guy and he doesn't lose an oppurtunity to put his point across. His language and analogies are colorful, to say the least. Marc was the life of Gnomedex and by the end of the conference everybody knew who Marc Canter is and what People Aggregator is. This is his own unique style of marketing. Like Marc said - "Dude I only have to fall asleep in a confernece to get famous!".

On being back in Redmond and Seattle

Visting Redmond always gives me a sense of deja vu. As expected the place hasn't changed at all. Hanging out with old friends, drinking beer and joking about things we used to joke about before, it almost felt like I had never left the place. Life was easy back then. It was monotonous but easy. There was also stuff that I had really wanted to do while I was still there but didn't - like climbing Mt. Rainier, doing a road trip from coast to coast, taking the cruise to Alaska etc. For a monment, just for a moment, I missed not being there.

And finally, as I was leaving from Seattle, it rained. What is Seattle without rains? :)