Hi All,

General Elections are heating up this summer in India, and there has been a lot of opinion sharing & shaping on LiveJournal as well around it. We partook of a similar wave during the historical presidential elections of US in 2008, with this community. The intention was to facilitate wide ranging public discussion of important political issues, including reactions of people in the U.S. and abroad to the U.S. presidential elections.

For India, we are certain we want LiveJournal to become the hub for - facilitate, drive, and be part of in any way possible - all citizen driven initiatives. As a  progression toward that, we have partnered with Vote Report India, a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian general elections.

Vote Report India has been seeded as a collaboration that would allow increased transparency and accountability in the Indian election process, and also provide the most complete picture of public opinion in India during the elections. With our community India_Politics, Vote Report seeks to garner opinion through comments, polls, etc. about events and issues around these elections, pool in and share existing expert-views on a regular basis,  as well as allow the global community on LiveJournal to share their thoughts.

I’d urge all of you to visit India_Politics, share your thoughts on existing posts or initiate some discussions yourselves. Look forward to hearing you,

Cheers!

LiveJournal is marking its 10^th Anniversary this year, it is indeed one of the Granddaddy’s of Social Media. :) To  celebrate the anniversary Team LJ is bringing out a book to mark this milestone.

One of the things that the editors are keen to include is a sense of the global breadth of LiveJournal. They are looking for examples from across the worlds of great writing within LiveJournal. If you have suggestions, we’d love to hear from you.

Please post them in the comments section below and the team will be in touch. You can read more about this in this community too http://community.livejournal.com/lj_turns10. You’ll notice that the deadline has entries have passed, but fear not, your comments will still be considered (and you will still be eligible for the incentives ;)).

Looking forward to your submissions.

Team LJ India

Hi All,

 We would like to announce the closure of the LJ India design contest.

 For those who participated, thank you for your submissions. And for those who missed out on the contest, thank you for your support :-)

 The entries we received for the contest where not up to the expected standards for the look-feel of LJ India community page :-(.  However, we hope to have a design up for the LJ India community page soon. Once it’s up, it would be great to have your feedback on it.

 Until next time,

Team LJ India

Contest: To create a page design for the LJ_India community

 Who can participate: Anyone. You just have to be a LJ_India member.

 Brief for the contest: LJ_India is an active hub for all Indian users of LiveJournal, as well as all LiveJournal users interested in India. It is here that LiveJournal members can get updates on various India communities like new initiatives, interesting prompts, upcoming contests and much more.

Members of the community also participate and suggest ideas & improvements, ask questions, post queries, garner insights from other LJ users or just find friends with similar interests.

To participate in the contest, you have to create a design for the LJ_India community page which depicts the essence of the community accurately.

Hi All

I have pleasant news, so let me not indulge in pleasant talk :)

The judges have given us the much-awaited, celebrated winners of the Quick-Tales contest we held for the india_writing community, and we are keen on having some pomp-and-show around the annoucements too! So, we'll be letting the news out on the 18th of November, 2008 at Oxford Book Store, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi. We warmly invite all our members to a short-story reading session by Suhel Seth, who will, of course, be reading from the winning entries. The event details are here and we'd like all of you who can make it to register at the soonest!

Also, present to highlight LiveJournal's progress in India and share thoughts on supporting self-publishing through social-media platforms will be Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Director of Corporate Development, LiveJournal.com.

All of you, who cannot be present, have no cause to despair. We'll be updating you about the event on-the-go. We are hoping that this would be the first of many such off-line meets through which this community will grow and share some beautiful writing in times to come. :)

Just to remind you all, the people's poll is coming to a close tonight as well, and the winner would be announced at the event.

Hoping to see all of you there. :)

Manpreet

Hi Friends

Hope you are well.

While the judges at india_writing are hand-picking the best from the fantastic 1,052 responses for the Quick Tales Contest; the community is thriving with dialogue and creative works by its members. And in the meanwhile, we’ve been working at many other things too!

As promised, we have a series of attractive presents in the satchel :). And here’s introducing some of those initiatives to you:

·         us_election2008 – Introduced this past weekend, this is a LiveJournal partner community dedicated to the discussion of personalities that participate in, and issues that pertain to the impending US elections.  Of its many partners, Mint is the India media representative. The idea behind this community is for journalists to pose questions and thoughts to be responded and reviewed by LiveJournal users. This platform seeks to enable bringing people’s voice and opinion to the fore. Do check it out, and feel free to send us your insights and suggestions on the same.

·         bollywoodclub – In partnership with zoOm TV, this community has been conceived as the official blogging platform for their reality show by the same name. The format of the show revolves around strugglers with individual stories to tell. Their stories, via blog entries, video and images will be powered by Zoom on the LiveJournal Idea Bollywood Club partner channel.

·         india_travels – Our most nascent project, india_travels is a perfect pit-stop for anyone who has or wishes to travel anywhere in and around India. The community would serve those who have been somewhere and want to share their anecdotes, those who want to at some point in the future and are seeking tips; an adventure enthusiast looking for fellows like themselves as well any curious travelling mind too lazy for travel himself. For this community, we have partnered with Kunzum, and seek to instill some more fun through a travel contest soon. So check it out and let’s warm up towards that too. :)

You’ll keep hearing from us on the progress with these specific communities, updates, announcements, et al. But we’d love it if you also step in and tell us what you’d like us to work on – be it suggestions for these existing ones, or any other ideas that you may have.

The very purpose for lj_india is to share happenings and garner insights from LiveJournal’s India users, as well as those deeply interested in India. All your thoughts are welcome :).

Waiting to hear from y’all,

Manpreet

Team Blogworks for LiveJournal

HI Friends!

How goes life?                                                                            

Well for us, it’s beginning to get exciting in this side of town :). You’ve all heard about the LiveJournal-Caferati Quick Tales Flash-Fiction Contest. The response has been great, and we are getting more and more entries by the moment. Have you submitted one yet? Oh and even if you have, why not submit one more, or two maybe! Unless you spam us by sending us the same story over and over again, we’d be this upbeat, and some more :).

100 of the selected entries stand a chance of getting published, not to mention the delicious cash prizes for the top 5. All you need is some imagination and an India address! But you’ve got time only till midnight, 7th of September, so tell us a quick tale and do it fast!!

Also, do help us spread the word…tell your friends, post it on your blogs, or push it on any other relevant communities that you may members of.

Until next time…when we’ll be back with the goodies ;)

Manpreet

Team Blogworks for LiveJournal

So, you'll have seen the news, as we promised we have launched our first real India initiative - it's a writing contest with some pretty decent prizes!

We wanted to focus on an area which was core to LiveJournal and creative writing was the obvious place to start. We have developed this in partnership with Caferati, one of India's most popular writing communities.

You can find out more about the contest in our india_writing community.

As you will see from the community page, we have featured some popular India communities. If you want to suggest others for inclusion please note them in the comments section and of course if you want to start your own India communities then you are more than welcome!