Yahoo! (read it aloud).

I'm Nanda Kishor, Group Owner of one of the largest & active C/C++ Programming Group (c4swimmers@yahoogroups.com) attended the Moderators Union 2008 organized by Yahoo! India along with the TWO moderators of my group - Pradeep & Alok.

I know many of you might be wondering what this Moderators Union event is all about!. I too hadn’t heard of this word till one of my friend (Indushree) from Yahoo! India forwarded the mail to register for the event.

Next I followed the registration link as per the forwarded mail and came to know from that site as "Moderators Union is an event organized for owners and moderators of Yahoo! Groups. It is a platform to discuss Groups-related queries and suggestions. To know more, click here: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/moderators_league. Later I registered for the event to represent my group "c4swimmers@yahoogroups.com" and I got a response from Yahoo! team which says "Your group has been shortlisted to be a part of the Moderators Union 2008 event". Really excited when I got the invitation. Yahooooooooo!

As I couldn’t be able to visualize as to what exactly happens over a Moderators Union 2008 - 2nd event in Bangalore, India followed by the 1st event happened at Mumbai, India in the last year. So I had to be there to experience it despite I found some information about the previous event.

Here are some of the details of the event:

When/Where Was it Held

Who All Attended

I think nearly 25-30 Moderators from various yahoogroups in India (majority of them are from Bangalore) and at this moment I couldn't be able to recall all their names. Kudos to all the fellow moderators who attended the event as well as for sharing the information about their group(s).

Introduction of Moderators and their group information:

Shefali, Community Manager asked us to introduce to the audience by ourselves. I hope ALL the moderators or group owners got an opportunity to speak up about their group, group's strength / messages traffic, how they started the group, etc. Even I got an opportunity to speak up and as a Group owner, I felt proud to represent "c4swimmers" (a.k.a C For Swimmers - To discover the depth of C) as one of the largest active C C++ Programming community in YahooGroups. I think there are only 2 techie groups and mine is one among them. Rest of them are non-techie groups related to Social service, Fun/Masti, Finance/Stock Market, Indian Railways, HR, Spirituality, corporate group and many more. Sorry for not able to recall the exact group names. Shortly will try to collect & update the URLs of ALL the groups who made their presence in this event. Here's the snaps of few of the moderators:
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Product demos or Presentations from Yahoo! India Team

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* Yahoo! Moderator Central by Matt Warburton - Director, Community Management

During this preso, I got to know that Moderator Cenrtal is a place where moderators come together online to share their painpoints, suggestions, feature requests and many more.

* Yahoo! oneSearch by Kamal - Product Manager

During this presentation, I sent a message "Bangalore" to "58242" from my mobile as per the preso. And I got an instant reply with the weather report about Bangalore as: "Today HI 27C LO 14C, Sunny" :-) but the SMS costs around Rs.3/- for this service as I understood.

* Yahoo! Maps by Sridhar - Sr. Product Manager

According to me, a notable presentation of the event rather say product demo of Yahoo! Maps which is simple and straightforward to use. Best part of this product that I could see is "It gives the detailed driving directions with map, satellite & hybrid view, auto fare (approx.), time required to reach + short details to send it to your mobile(if needed) which requires us to type the mobile number and click on Send to get the driving directions to the mobile".

What about Q&A or Goodies :-) ?

Q&A followed by Tea. Most of the questions were simple - just to encourage moderators to speak up which inturn helps to recall or learn about various features of Yahoo! Groups. Its a pure First Come First Serve basis to win a goodie. I answered one question correctly and I got the goodie (a Yahoo! pen) too :-)
Now you might be knowing what I mean by Q&A or Goodies ;-)

Panel Discussion

Hope the Yahoo! team had a tough time sitting in the panel ;-) Based on the responses to our questions, it looks like Yahoo! has some plans to bring in the updated version of YahooGroups to make our life simpler.

As per the Yahoo! team, lots of features suggested or requested by us are already a part of upcoming YahooGroups release and some of them that they assured to include it in the near future.

What about Tea / Lunch

Entire event is sponsored or organized by Yahoo! India. During Tea / Lunch, I got a chance to meet couple of moderators & Yahoo! team members. I think I put too many questions to Rudra & Sridhar from Yahoo! Team ;-)

Interesting facts / Recap

* Had fun during Q&A + Goodies
* Get to know about other moderator friends from various yahoogroups
* Yahoo! Maps preso or demo by Sridhar
* Live product demos during lunch on Yahoo! oneSearch, Yahoo! Maps by Kamal
* Yahoo! team members came forward to meet almost each one of us. That tells they care a lot!

Interesting Links

http://in.maps.yahoo.com
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/moderators_league
http://in.m.yahoo.com/ for GPRS enabled phone
http://www.ygroupsblog.com/blog

Finally, on this occassion - I would like to thank all of my c4swimmers group members (approx. 3000 members) and Yahoo! India Team for their support & encouragement from the past 4 years that made us to be recognised or shortlisted for this Moderators Union Event in Bangalore.

Looking ahead to be a part of next Moderators Union Event in Bangalore in the near future.

Thanks,
Nanda Kishor
Group Owner of c4swimmers@yahoogroups.com
Webmaster of www.c4swimmers.net