Chennai Twitter camp sees enthusiastic turnout

The ‘Tweeps’ of Chennai got together for a ‘Twitter Meet’ titled Buzz140. The meet was a first of its kind event organised by the Knowledge Foundation, which has previously organised the BlogCamp and many other un-conferences. Buzz140 saw the participation of more than 130 youngsters from the city.

From topics ranging from How Twitter saved my a** to How to get out of Twitter addiction, the event saw many interesting discussions. When one of the participants mentioned an incident in Chennai when a house caught fire and the neighbour ‘twittered’ for help, the hall broke into a heated debate on the use of common sense and whether Twitter is the right platform for everything.

“In any event, what people first think about is the content. For an un-conference like this, the content is generated on the spot,” says Kiruba Shankar, blogger and owner of Business Blogging Pvt Limited. To add a local flavour, there was a session on ‘Tweeting in Tamil’, which was received with much appreciation. “There are so many options available to express yourself creatively in the language you’re comfortable in, but people just don’t know about it,” Kiruba explained.

Aishwarya, the owner of Ten Feet Under, a design company, says, “We all live in an era of ego-searches, and Twitter is another way to use the Internet effectively for the same.” Perhaps one of the only women in the huge group, Aishwarya says, “There are so many women on Twitter doing so many interesting things like designing shoes to cooking interesting dishes. I really don’t know why they’re not here.”