First ever national cyber media conclave at an educational institute
People coming out and voicing their opinion like never before in times when meted out with wrongs themselves or to their friends and folks has become a common phenomenon. Changing people behaviour has been and is fuelling the web space or vice versa, still seems to be a debatable question. But certainly new or cyber media has arrived, seemed to be the common sentiment resonating in the house when nine renowned speakers from cyber world got down to discuss the various aspects of new media from content, design, activist, branding and marketing in the recently held National Cyber Media Conclave 2009 at Lavale campus of Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication .
The seminar was broadly divided into sections where first panel spoke about potency of cyber media for knowledge sharing, social change and networking; and the second one discussed the emergence of the web as a medium for branding and marketing. The first panel opened with Kiruba Shankar, Business Blogging Pvt. Ltd’s Founder CEO and F5ive Technologies Co-founder. Mr Shankar enthralled the audiences with his personal instances on the power of blogging and social networking, taking a walk through the aisles and engaging audiences in the conversation as also done increasingly by the medium. This power packed presentation was followed by one by Mr Shivam Vij, a journalist with Open Magazine in New Delhi, who kick-started it by bringing forth three riders. The first one being a current journalist and not a former as wrongly addressed by the emcees, secondly not being a rock star like Kiruba and thirdly more importance given to the second session on web marketing, pointing out commercialisation of the medium even before its start. On a more serious note, he talked about the power of blogger’s fair, their collective strength and hostility with mainstream media from the days of Times of India being refereed to as “Slimes of India”. But he concluded saying that now; both media have come to a stage of complimenting each other and more often than not, mainstream getting story ideas from their web counterparts where he quoted the example of the “pink chuddy” campaign.
The third speaker, Viewspaper Founder Shiv Bhaskar Dravid spoke on the importance of media as the fourth estate in the society where he talked about this power being handed over to general public and pointing out the visible benefits that this media has over traditional one by giving them the power of publishing, no space constraints and cost effectiveness.
The fourth speaker of the session, Ms Jasmeen Patheja, initiator of “blank noise” project emphatically talked about street sexual harassment and how a noise can be made against it by range of media like photography, video installation, sound, performance and the blog.
This was followed by Q&A and lunch after it which the second panel joined for the marketing and branding section. Post lunch session started with sex talk when Blogworks CEO and Founder Rajesh Lalwani, gave a short presentation on social media which he described as sex as it has to be done by the people themselves to be understood completely. Moving away from the analogy which got him a lot of attention from the audiences in the otherwise generally drowsy post lunch session, he touched upon the new ground rules for marketing in the age of web where he talked about how Marketing has changed from psychographics to tribes by choice like Orkut/ Facebook communities and sales pitches have converted into conversations.
This was followed by a presentation by Rashmi Dhanwani of “Bell Bajao” campaign’s fame. She talked about internet as a tool of mass mobilization and a 360 degree multi-media campaign including her campaign which has user generated content.
The third speaker of the session was Mr Namit Bimbhat, CEO – Switch Media .He talked about the evolving face of online video: global learning and relevance for India where he gave examples of Youtube, Netfix and Megastudy which have become major hits.
The fourth speaker of the session Mr J. Mahadevan, Vice President – Products – Bharatmatrimony.com talked about connecting with cyber users. He also garnered a few smiles from the audiences by coining new terminology of kissers – keep it simple, sensible, enjoyable, relevant and scream worthy content because according to him, that’s what audiences are looking for.
The last speaker for the day Mr. Atul Chitnis, Senior Vice President – Geodesic Information Systems, talked about the business of open source. His act of taking out high end gadgets one after the other form his bag to emphasise the importance of they using Linux or switching to Linux brought to many of the imagery of magician setting his shop.
Overall the session was a good attempt by an educational institute to expose students at all levels to the world of cyber media, which generally doesn’t gets its due attention in the curriculum. The day long affair was also interspersed with contests on best web business plan and workshop by Mr Lalwani.
