We did some brainstorming & had short spurts of chit-chats over random topics. A part of this conversation was reviving the OCC Kolkata chapter. In fact, when Sumit suggested his idea, he didn’t even know he was talking about reviving OCC

Sumit’s idea:

Sumit hyperactively said that we could create a group of a few people in the city, who could meet regularly and work together, meanwhile sharing & discussing ideas and be helpful to each other. The basic concept of crowdsourcing per se.

How the picture was drawn.

I told him about the existing OCC Kolkata community, how it started in July last year out of my post-jaundice pastime and its current state, where Amitabh was frantically trying to survive the community.

It was at this point when we decided to take a plunge on this. And after two weeks of lethargy(We’re in Kolkata. You have to spare us for that ), I got in touch with Amitabh, we started shooting emails to each other much faster than the frequency of the consistent strikes in Kolkata, and eventually decided to imbibe the original concept of Saul Klein in Kolkata’s OCC, about which you can read more here and even more here!

And that was not very far behind. It was just this last Sunday! We closed the topic by Monday. Sumit took up the job of writing a blogpost & circulating it. Everyone else among us and the HeadStart Kolkata team decided to tweet & retweet about it!! A day-clash with something called the Toastmasters Club which happens every week on Tuesdays prompted us to schedule OCCs on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays. So, we decided that we will arrange for internet, wi-fi & meet twice every week on Wednesdays & Saturdays. Wednesdays in the Sector-V CCD & Saturdays in the Park Street CCD!

Well, what it apparently meant was that the re-shaped OCC Kolkata would start off on my 25th birthday !!

The first new-faced OCC Kolkata – when it happened

The work culture at OCC Kolkata

On the D-day, me being sick joined in a bit late. But, when I reached, I found there were already 7 other people there. All were happily working. Bingo! That was a surprise!

Lending a supposedly incomplete list of people who’d come down, from Sumit’s blog:

• Sumit Datta
• Saikat Singha
• Prashant Verma
• Pallav Nadhani
• Sumana Chakraborty
• Sougata Pal
• Bibhash
• Samiran Ghosh
• Mitesh Ashar(myself)
• Nitesh Ambuj
• Pankaj
• Abishek Rungta
• 

  Sumit & Saikat in an intense discussion about their product, while Sumana is busy with her own work

  Ashmita Brahma

• Nikita Poddar
• Debashish Mohanty

Now, as I see the first OCC after the re-design, the response was simply fantabulous. Apart from the number of people who turned up over the span of the whole day, there were people who took back some value, which has had been the lacking part, as I can say from personal feedback I have received from so many people.

The value

Among others, Sumana, who is a copywriter, got 3 leads!

Abhishek & Pallav

Where as, Abhishek & Pallav, who are planning to come up with an angel fund based out of Kolkata, actually ran the idea through the people present and crowdsourced the name of their angel investment firm! As requested by them, the name of the company is still a secret, and they’ve promised to launch the fund at one of the OCC Kolkata happenings!! They have also promised to have a cake-cutting ceremony on the day of the launch at OCC!!

Not to mention, there were a lot of mini-discussions with different results for different people, while they worked on their laptops, sipping on to coffees and munching sandwiches.

If not anything, you are at least doing the work that you would have anyways done otherwise!!

What’s next??

What’s next?? Yes… Next is the next OCC. Now it will keep on happening. Every Wednesday & every Saturday.

For this Saturday, the venue is going to be one of the CCDs in or around Park Street. We’re still contemplating which one to go for. Suggestions about this are welcome. To know the venue, follow either me or Sumit on twitter.

Once we crowdsource a definite venue, it will get fixed & come what may, if you walk in on one fine Wednesday or Saturday, you shall definitely find at least a bunch of few enthusiastic chaps to sit and work with

So, more of it this Saturday! Catch you there!!

Update: Please do join the OCC Kolkata mailing list here: http://groups.google.com/group/occ-kolkata

Update: Please follow the hashtag #occkol on twitter for updates on the timing, venue

The first OCC was an awesome experience and I met really amazing people. It’s now time for us Kolkatans to gear up for the second one in town.

It is happening again at Oxford Bookstore, Park Street. Here is the venue on maps: http://linkbun.ch/m53

If you are an entrepreneur or any other startup-related professional or even a student who is keen to do something on your own in future, make sure that you are there at 12 PM this Sunday, 10th August, 2008.

See you there!!

But it is for sure that if the iPhone does launch for the price of 12,000, I would really consider buying it, but only after I find out a bit more about the data plans that are going to be attached to it.

I eagerly await Vodafone’s & Airtel’s press releases to tell us more about the iPhone in India. That would decide the fate of the phone that would reach into my hands.

It’s been long since I posted anything out here, thanks to all the OCC preparations.

OCC stands for Open Coffee Club, which was founded by a London-based entrepreneur, Saul Klein. To know more about what is the original philosophy behind Open Coffee Club, you should check out the following posts on Saul’s blog:

• http://localglobe.blogspot.com/2007/02/opencoffee-club.html
• http://localglobe.blogspot.com/2007/03/opencoffee-club-structure-vs-free-form.html

We pulled up the first OCC meet out here in Kolkata at Oxford Bookstore this Sunday. For a first OCC meet, it had an exceptionally amazing amount of energy, interactions, networking and bonding among the seven of us present out there. Two veteran entrepreneurs, two about-to-startup entrepreneurs & 3 wannabe entrepreneurs.

The discussions ranged from introductory to fact-identifying to debative ones. We went on for four & a half hours with a lot of useful chitter-chatter, and most importantly, we did not follow the so-called agenda that was set. That is what is an OCC meet is supposed to be. The meeting is supposed to take its own course.

I would rather call it an OCC mashup. A meeting sounds highly formal. Isn’t OCC supposed to be synonymous with informal..

Ohk. So the next OCC mashup is expected to take place on the upcoming Sunday, supposedly at the same place. We will keep you updated.

Also, folks in Mumbai are now enthusiastic to start off with OCC once again, and hopefully the OCC scenario can really rekindle again.

If you are an entrepreneur or OCC sounds interesting to you, you can catch up with us on our Google Groups. Visit the following links to join them:

• http://groups.google.com/group/occ-kolkata/
• http://groups.google.com/group/opencoffeeclubatmumbai/

Hope to see you at the next meet!!

Also read:

Angsuman’s blog post on yesterday’s OCC meet.. oops sorry mashup

Anyways, there were better differences than that to be written about. Firstly, it did not follow the conventional method of dynamic barcamp scheduling(as I would call it ). Pavan Soni, the lead planner who has successfully conducted WiCamps in other cities earlier and is also conducting WiCampKochi in the week to come, was anchoring throughout the camp, discussing various facets of innovation and inviting the session-takers.

The attendance was much more than I had expected at the WiCampKolkata. When I had registered on its wiki, there were only 13 people on it and that was only 5 days before the camp. The day the camp was held, the wiki had 96 registrations, and almost 100-110 people turned up.

Like I said, there was no wiki on the spot to register sessions. The few sessions that were registered on the online wiki were the only ones that were taken apart from a session by Myshkin about his entrepreneurial venture Anaemedia, a pathbreaking product to curb the number of anaemia-triggered deaths in India. He had started in 2005 and the product is still under development.

A notable session was Ram NK’s, about his experience of leaving a really cushy-comfy position in the UK and starting up RangDe, a non-profit peer-to-peer MFI he started with his wife earlier this year.

Overall the camp was cool, the attendees were diverse and a good boost to open communities in Kolkata. I am looking forward to a lot of action out here.

I’m not sure but I guess that there have been more than one BarCamp in Kolkata in the past, but the fire still does not seem to have alighted.

A few folks from Wipro have got together and un-planned three Wipro Innovation Camps within this month of July. The first was in Gurgaon: WiCampGurgaon two days back on July 11, i.e. 2 days back. I will be attending the next one, WiCampKolkata on July 18. And the last one follows in Kochi: WiCampKochi on July 24.

I’m attending this one after seeking special permission from my doctor, since I have jaundice. It feels good to be able to catch on to atleast some action after being in a house arrest since the last 30 days and missing out on two Mumbai Startup Saturdays & most likely to miss the BarCampAhmedabad.

I was happy to know that instead of the earlier reports of the iPhone 3G being launched in October this year, the iPhone 3G is most likely to come forth around the end of August, although only with 2G operations.

Also, it makes sense to wait for the iPhone to join the bandwagon. For the same price-tag that the phones in market are available, I would get 8 GB instead of 2/4GB(which most smartphones are limited to) alongwith some really amazing features, an iPod and the future ability to use 3G.

Also, for all the bloggers around, I just thought of mentioning about one of the very very few free open-source apps coming up on the iPhone’s AppStore. The Wordpress for iPhone app is going to be a part of the apps going to be available in AppStore, using which we shall be able to blog on our wordpress.com blogs smoothly over the iPhone. Although it is not yet clear whether people with native Wordpress installs like me and many others would be able to enjoy this software.

Anyways, I have already pre-registered with both, Airtel and Vodafone and I hope to lay my hands on the baby soon!