Dear friends,

Seven people including Inderjeet Duggal, Ajai Srivastava, Varun, Rohit
(IT professional currently pursuing a project with the Himachal State
Electricity Board ), Lokesh an employee with the HPSEB, Parul Sood and
me (Hema Dogra ) had met on Jaunary 20 in Shimla. After discussions
the main issue that seemed to be bothering everyone was to maintain
regularity of the website himvani.com so that it remains visible.

For that Ajai Srivsastava suggested to generate content for a weekly
column that would be hard hitting (may be satirical and without naming
the person them to be safe) on bureaucrats, politicians or people who
matter as policy makers. The idea is to generate some interesting
content apart from news and which would include such facts which might
not qualify to be a full fledged news article but as interesting
behind the scenes incident. We wish to make it a weekly feature from
first week of February. Suggestions and comments are invited for this.

Suggestion for holding some debates and events were also floated where
all agreed to hold a debate on some burning issue about Himachal, by
mid-February.

To execute this, a team has been formed, called the Shimla Chapter,
where, Hema, Ajai Srivastava and Parul have volunteered to hold the
first Himvani debate and the rest would contribute in their own way.
Hema was nominated as a the first co-ordinator of Shimla chapter.
After the first event the Shimla Chapter can be reshuffled as per the
suggestion of the members of Himvani. We would like to have
suggestions on the topic for debate by January 30, so that other
formalities like inviting the panelists from the field and other
related things can be worked out in time.

Meanwhile we have also retained Sanjay Kanwar full time to perform
various secretarial and administrative tasks of VOH.

Lokesh had floated an idea to hold writers meet in Shimla, which would
also be worked out after the debate. Adding to it Varun said that he
is already working on the idea of holding a Barcamp (initially of
bloggers) in Shimla in association with the Instablogs.

The meeting ended with hot Pranthas, butter and tea at the Press Club.

Cheers

Hema Dogra.


PS: We will be uploading the photographs of the meeting separately.