PDGM Group Photo (visit this link to view the notes on who’s who in this pic of the Who’s Who of the Delhi geek circle). For more photos from the Pan Delhi Geeks’ Meet 2008, visit the my Flickr page for this tag, or view the slideshow directly.
Okies, this post is WAY late, because the Pan Delhi Geeks’ Meet 2008 happened around two weeks ago, but I’ll use the excuse that I wasn’t in Delhi. Surprisingly, I find that nobody has blogged about it on their blogs yet! Even the ones among who have digital watches.
I think it was quite a success, despite the fact that many people who said they would be coming couldn’t turn up because of reasons best known to them. Still, a turnout of around 17 people for the very first meeting wasn’t bad at all. As Dhruv said, someone has to start off the whole thing and take the first step. We were initially supposed supposed to have the meet at Nirula’s in Outer Circle CP, but we decided later that Piccadelhi near PVR Plaza would be a better place. I gather that Rach spent quite a lot of time hunting for us in and around Nirula’s on that day. I reached a bit late, to find that Mukesh sir, Dhruv, Naman, and Abhishek were already there. Other people trickled in soon, and we thought it would be a good idea to make a poster. We did make one, plus bought blank ID cards so that everyone knew each other. Some waited inside (Piccadelhi), others waited outside to see if more were coming. I *had* to be in the latter group, since I knew most and / or more people coming knew me. Quite loony, us standing with that poster looking like kids from some orphanage, asking strangers if they were geeks, people who were coming for the meet asking random people whether they were Ankur Banerjee, and police lads turning up to find out what the hell was going on.
We finally got with the Last Stage of Civilization Question (i.e., “Where shall we have lunch”). Quite a lot of alumni turned up, like Pony, Dhruv, Gursartaj, Roshan, and Abhishek – we even had Ankit Wadhwa, from DPS RKP batch of 2000, who’s currently working at McKinsey. Later, Ashish Chopra from the Indian Bloggers and New Media Society (or, IBNMS) also turned up, along with one another IBNMS guy. Everyone had a nice time and incredibly spicy food (which I couldn’t eat); discussing stuff (not necessarily geeky), talking about the good ol’ days when they were in school, and trying to find out whatever happened to Pony’s lasagna (it never came). Later, Mukesh sir took some of us to meet a schoolmate of his who owns a Sony World showroom in CP, where we got to check out some pretty neat gadgets and know about upcoming Sony product releases. There was a lot more stuff after that, but I’m a bit bored of typing now.
I think the Pan Delhi Geeks’ Meet 2008 panned out reasonably well and could become a yearly / quarterly fixture. Many will soon be leaving to join their colleges, so maybe such a thing can be held again when there’s a college break and there are enough people in Delhi. Now that the people who turned up there know each other, future meets could turn out to be much more fun – and be held in restaurants which have less spicy food.