How it All Started?
The idea of kick starting an IBL in the Indian blogosphere was ignited by Deepak Karthik in the IndiBlogger community. What started off as a casual facebook post in the IndiBlogger group was turned out to be an instant gratification for fellow bloggers who wanted the cities to come together, not just to show their strengths, but to meet, greet and interact with fellow bloggers, network with them and show the power of the Indian Blogging Community. Akshay Kumar G and Binoy joined hands with Deepak Karthik to sail through this exciting event!
IBL has a very strong Internet presence with its own website, facebook group with 300+ members (check the image above), their own engaging twitter page.
This edition is sponsored by www.writeupcafe.com who hosts the event. The teams are required to submit their entries in this website.
What’s It All About?
IBL was conceptualized similar to the IPL format. It has eight teams participating from eight different cities. Most of the team names resonate their respective IPL team name, with a twist! The eight teams participating in this edition of IBL and they are: Chennai, Patna, Kolkatta, Pune, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Bangalore. All the teams had the freedom of choosing their own name, designing their logo, banner et al.
The Participating Team:
Chennai Super Bloggers, Bombay’s Bloggywood, Delhi sutras, The Bengaluru Blogger’s Bistro, Kolkatta Knight Writers, Pataliputra Wordsmiths (Patna), Pune Blog-In, Amdavadi Tadka (Ahmedabad)
How the Blogger Scores?
There are four rounds in IBL, each comprising of 16 post submissions. There are 8 genres announced by the IBL moderators and every team should make one of their participants to blog on the respective sub-topic under each genre. The caveat is, only one post per person is allowed in one round. This is to ensure that all 16 players get to participate in any given round. Upon request from all the team members, the IBL allowed to have a reserve player in each team, just in case if any one of the member pulls out of the series.
With an array of awards lined up like the Fair play award, Captain cool award, Best emerging player award, Player of the tournament and Most popular team, the bloggers will only have to show their individual and team skills to take away the recognition and walk in the limelight.
Why I support Chennai Supper Bloggers
The first main reason why I support Chennai Supper Bloggers is because my heart lives in this beautiful city also because Chennai has an interesting mix of writers for this edition of IBL. From various backgrounds and skills like poets, food blogger, photo bloggers, upcoming authors, columnists (Hindu NXg) and versatile personalities in various age groups, ranging from college students to mothers, the team is fully charged up and making its noise louder in the blogosphere! It has bloggers from various places like Chennai, Trichy and even U.K.
The logo of CSB (Chennai Super Bloggers) designed by the vice captain Kalyan Varadharajan, captures the soul of Chennai in a quintessential way. The team has created a promo video which again captures the spirit of Chennai http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfX6mll99uU
With team meetings in Adyar Sangeetha, Zha cafe, Bessy beach etc., the team ensures to catch up often and interact to plan a way ahead for the coming rounds. This is apart from the online meets and chats!!! These meetings reinforce camaraderie, team harmony and imbibe the passion of writing and the art of blogging. This also shows how serious they are with this entire concept of competition.
My personal experience is.., “it’s always fascinating to see people from various walks of life coming together for a common passion and giving their share of knowledge for the team work. The team is extremely cooperative and fabulously positive to take on challenges and tasks in the right spirit!”
To take this a bit more seriously there is lot more to it which I should not reveal now 🙂
With 3 genres complete and the 4th genre running, Chennai currently stands in 3rd place in the overall score table.
http://www.indianbloggersleague.com/p/ibl-logo.html
Chennai Team Members Are;
Anand Arun (Captain)
Blog: http://musingsofanand.blogspot.com/
Kalyan Varadarajan (Vice Captain)
Blog: http://kalyanb4u.wordpress.com/
Sowmya Swaminathan
Blog: http://myspace-ss.blogspot.in/
Sulaiman Sait
Blog: http://sulaimansait.blogspot.in/
Hemalatha Venkatraman
Blog: http://hemalathavenkatraman.blogspot.in/
Prashanth Ashok
Blog: http://www.prashanthashok1.blogspot.in/
Ganga Barani
Blog: http://scribbledbygb.blogspot.in/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/gangabharaniv
Twitter:
Padmapriya T S
Blog: http://aalayamkanden.blogspot.in/
Ashwini C N
Blog: http://ash-aqua-girl.blogspot.in/
Carmalin Sophia Ayyappan
Blog: http://carmalin.blogspot.in/
Sanjeetha KK
Blog: http://sanjeetakk.blogspot.in/ / www.litebite.in
Gayathri Kannan
Blog: http://gayathri-myscribbles.blogspot.in/
Kaushik Rangarajan
Blog: http://badabingbadabambadaboom.wordpress.com/
Prason Christopher Robin
Blog: http://www.chronicwriter.com/
Uma Maheswari Anandane
Blog: http://perpetualthinkings.blogspot.co.uk/ &http://www.umaspoembook.blogspot.com/
Rajarajan v
Blog: www.thealchemycritics.blogspot.in
Gopalakrishnan
Blog: http://satirestall.blogspot.in/
How Really To Make It Fascinating:
I already see fair amount of enthusiasm amongst participants but there needs to be lot more things that they need to add that brings media and audience’s attention:
- Choosing topics that deal with marketing element of a brand. For example review of a restaurant or a hotel or the local street side chats of the city or a retail store. This adds a surprise value to the brand and brings local audience’s attention. Thus increasing interaction with the audience and encouraging brands to sponsor.
- Each team should be allowed to Tie up with NGO. This will help make this IBL, completely social. Besides generating and ideating content on regular topics, considering their favorite NGO and covering a story on it from different perspectives will not just support them to increase their visibility but also shows how a team looks at an NGO.
- Culture and Tradition is something that Indians always love to highlight – why not ask these bloggers to pick a tradition or culture of their city which is totally invisible to many. This can be an eye opener to many. Showing the hidden side of the city with a lot of research shows a true self of the blogger when they are actually competing for their city team.
