Mauritian Bloggers Meeting 2

So here we are, after the first

we did it again with the second

Special thanks to the Organising Team: Morinn, Jevin and Yashvin for the much awaited event in the Mauritian Blogosphere:

Had a nice Geek talk about Google.mu in creole, Web 2.0: Twitter and demographics, Mac fanboyism, Google Chrome OS, Mobile Computing, Google and Bing etc..

In fact the Geek talk had already started whilst we were on way to Spar Supermarket:

Sajid got his first Football purchased and Sozzz got a Paprika Pringles. Notice the mobile phone of Saajid, no doubt he recently had tweeted a snap of Carrot, “sousou” being sold at the supermarket.

Hoping for a next great Bloggers Meeting 3!

(euhh sorry for the few no. of words, maybe because I am used to saving scarce resources not greater that 140 characters )

Nice meeting with key web 2.0 perso.

Yesterday, after 8 hours of hardwork in the office, time to unwind! As scheduled, we had to go to an informal meeting at Caudan Waterfront.

Interestingly we got to meet with different key personalities of Web 2.0 in Mauritius via Happyweb Agency. To start with -> Someone expert in Drupal and who is going to attend the forthcoming DrupalCon Paris from 1st to 5st Sept. Then we had the pleasure to meet the CEO of Mascareignes IT Ltd and his friend who is an expert in Prestashop and does php programming using Symfony Framework. I am really interested to give Symfony a try now. Then meeting with CEO of Vinivi who also presented another friend. We spent nice chit chats, obviously with a pint of beer and croustillant ‘gajacks’!

There were many nice discussion topics which I can mention in my blog:

1) Tweet or blog?

I introduced myself as a Mauritian blogger amongst the growing community which is already planning the second Bloggers meeting. I also added that I have a growing interest in tweeting and find myself tweeting more than blogging (as you can notice the right sidebar contains more of my tweets now).

The other side of arguments were about the denial of Tweeter. It is something of no great interest to some folks. As yest, we were having a look at the Twitter presentations, there came to my mind the slide of 5 Stages of Twitter Acceptance on Slide 4 of the second presentation. It goes as follows:

1. Denial

“I think Twitter is stupid. Why would anyone care what other people would do right now?”

2. Presence

“Ok. I don’t really get why people love it, but I would love it, but I guess I should at least create an account”

3. Dumping

“I am on twitter and I use it to paste links on my blog posts and pointing people to my press release”

4. Conversing

“I don’t always post useful stuff, but I use twitter to have authentic 1×1 conversations.”

5. Microblogging

“I am using twitter to publish useful information to people to read and converse 1×1 authentically.”

Personally some were on the Denial and Presence phase of acceptance of Twitter whilst I find myself Microblogging Fun!

2) Recruting IT people

This was a key topic about the Mauritian labour market of IT people. It was fun to hear the anecdotes of interview session of young graduates at the companies. My question was obvious about UoM graduates where we have headhunting by Accenture and Ceridian at the CSE dept. I am a bit stunned to learn that there is actually a shortage of key IT people in the market, to the extent that “importing” a bunch of foreign IT talent is required to fulfil the vacancies.

3) Funding for start ups

I got to learn a lot from the experience of the guys about the DO’s and Don’t of starting a business in IT.

4) Google

This was also greatly interesting about Search Giant and its data centre. I think the video they were talking about was “Inside Google Data Center”:

To sum up, it was a very nice networking experience with the key personalities in Web 2.0 in Mauritius. Of course, the whole “gang” was not present. Many other invited people did not turn up. We ended up the meeting with the need of consolidating a mailing list which would inform every subscribers of future meetings.

World Music Day 2009!

Music....

The Fête de la Musique, also known as World Music Day, is a music festival taking place on June 21.

La Fête de la Musique a pour vocation de promouvoir la musique de deux façons. Sous le slogan homophone à son nom, “Faites de la musique!”, elle encourage les musiciens amateurs à se produire bénévolement dans les rues et espaces publics.

Source: orange.mu

On the same link, we can read the principal activities being organised at the Municipalities.

“De plus, dans le cadre de la Fête de la Musique, Orange organise un concert à Mont Choisy de 7h à 18h avec des prestations de Djs locaux ainsi que le groupe Crossbread Supersoul, le bluesman Eric Triton ou encore Cassiya.”

Source: orange.mu

Personally, I am keen to go to Mont Choisy, on this nice sunny Sunday, since my fav. local artist is performing –  Eric Triton.

On lexpress.mu, we read interesting opinions from Mauritian artists about our local music losing its identity vis-a-vis music on the international scene.

Kishore Taucoory, auteur-compositeur-interprète du groupe Bhojpuri Boys (I have always been a fan of this group since childhood):

“Au niveau de Bhojpuri Boys, tous nos morceaux ont un parfum mauricien. Les musiciens mauriciens doivent réaliser que si nous faisons simplement qu’imiter ce qui est fait à l’étranger, nous ne créerons rien de nouveau, et nous ne pourrons jamais dépasser les initiateurs. Nous devrions plutôt garder notre originalité mauricienne pour laquelle nous savons que nous saurons respectés”

Let’s come back to the world of secondary schools celebrating Music Day. I think that most of them will be hosting this event on Monday, if I am not mistaken. The usual routine: absenting from classes in order to go to the rehearsals, watching other guys rehearsing in the Music room, going to the auditorium or multi-purpose gym for stage rehearsal with lights and music, and enjoying enjoying a lot on the actual music day…

Sometimes it is fun to watch the academic staff participating. Yes apart from assigning homeworks and “lecturing”, they do sing, play instruments or even dance!

At the University of Mauritius, we have a music room in the Gymnasium complex. As far as if anything is organised to celebrate Music day, cannot say anything but to stare at the Student Union.

Well folks, Enjoy the Music Day and I would like to end with the quote from Shakespeare:

Duke Orsino:
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Twelfth Night Act 1, scene 1, 1–3

Stress at work!

What if the stress level is higly elevated at the office tomorrow just as  shown in the video clip?

Simply lol – “I don’t want to work today!”

Something interersting to read on Stress at the workplace..