I volunteer for the Silicon Valley Indian Professional's Association (SIPA) as the Co-Director of Public Relations and Newsletter.    The organization is commited to promote personal and professional development for business and technology professionals in the valley.   We cater to a diverse set of members including entrepreneurs, CxO, technology, law, tax, finance, business and medicine professionals.  My contribution includes authoring the newsletter, volunteering for events, organizing events and recruiting volunteers and members. 

 

Last week we had a very interesting event on "Blogging and Beyond" featuring three of the top bloggers in the world - Guy Kawasaki, Chris Pirillo and Ramit Sethi.   It was a discussion which revolved around their experiences, when and how they started blogging, why they blog regularly, what it means to them, tips on blogging, how to make money off your blog and how to attract traffice to your blog.  In my opinion, Chris Pirillo was the most entertaining and informative, sharing his personal experiences and humoring the crowd.   The thing that struck me most was that Chris was very honest, straightforward and open about his achievements, ad more importantly it sounded like one fun ride.    Chris has been very kind enough to mention me in one of his blogs, which has in turn helped me get some awesome traffic.   Thanks Chris!

 

To add to the SIPA excitement for the week, I volunteered over the weekend by manning the SIPA booth at the Fremont Indian Independence day festival.  It was an intriguing experience meeting people from different walks of life, and explaining to them the mission and goals of SIPA.  We got a large list of people interested in becoming members and/or attending future events.   One observation I did make though is that most people coming to our booth definitely had something to sell back to us!