Blogging Workshop at BIMTECH

Posted on August 1, 2008 by Jerry

Never ever did i expect that something that i follow as a passion would get me a chance to conduct a session at one of the best business schools in north India.

Last week-end, i flew to Delhi and on Saturday i was at BIMTECH, Greater Noida, for a session on blogging and the monetary benefits of blogging. The E-Cell of BIMTECH had contacted Mutiny for help and i took the offer.

The session was planned at 6p.m.. You really have to appreciate the guys who study at b-schools, a session at 6p.m. was nothing for them. Other colleges too were invited for the workshop and there were indeed people present at that time of the evening on a Saturday evening.

The session kicked off after a brief intro about the speaker, ahhmmmm that’s me , and about Mutiny and of collage 300x187 Blogging Workshop at BIMTECH course about my friend Mayank (yes its the StudioWordpress guy!!! – http://mayankgupta.com or http://mayank.info ). Mayank was supposed to be on time and help me out with the session, but he was caught up with an emergency Snooker game-session. Well he did turn up to save me for the last 30min .

I started off at the same grounds from where i started the blogging session at Wipro. Telling them everything that i knew about blogging, etiquette, etc etc. But there was a flaw. Most of the people who were there didn’t know how to start a blog. By ‘start a blog’ i mean they didn’t know even how to get a blog at blogger. The lesson – get to know the people and the requirements before we start.

So STOP!!! Get back to the basics. Took them through the live demo of setting up a blog in Blogger. So when all was set, and everyone was on the same page, we were back to where we stopped.

Mayank was just in time as i was getting warmed up with the business side of blogging. Talked about some of the ways that i knew about making money out of blogging. Though i have to mention that i’m too lazy for a blogger that i don’t earn as much as others do, out of blogging.

The idea of a community blog was something new to them. The facts on how Mutiny has grown and maintains itself interested them.

After that it was Mayank’s turn to help everyone with the things that he knows. The way he earns his living was interesting to listen to and i’m quite sure that it would have opened up some idea for those who were listening.

The fact that interested me a lot was the volume of idea that people had for blogging. They all wanted to blog for so many reasons and they just wanted to know how.

Put together the session was one that’s one of the most memorable. I’m taking back some very valuable learnings and some ideas with me.

More pics here

Blogging Wordshop at BIMTECH

If any BIMTECH guys are reading this, i would like you to give me you feedbacks and comments too ..

(Cross-posted here)

Windows 7 – First Thoughts

Posted on May 29, 2008 by Jerry

I will try not to be too much biased against Windows. But will like to point out what is wrong.

Hearing the news of the Demo/Preview/Debut of Windows 7 at D6 conference by Microsoft VP Julie Larson-Green, my first reaction was, Oh NO not again!!!

fp fp fp vista2bp81 Windows 7 First Thoughts I had my concerns. Microsoft has been stealing the show with its sleeky looks and publicity. If there is somebody at the market that can sell a rickety old-bus just by repainting it, its Microsoft.

Though all the other OS-es has evolved with age, windows simply refuses to budge more or less. The system requirements just to run a basic version of their latest OS takes more than twice the power that is required to run the latest Open Source OS. The fact remains that will less overhead the Open Source counterpart gives the looks and the WOW-ness.

How far can they drive along by just adding the new features without correcting the basic problems.

XP came and by the time people got adjusted to the response time, reaction time and usability, Vista was born. Now why the hell do i have to go for double the configuration for a new OS. Then again i will be doing the same things but that is going to add another transition phase in my life. From my own personal experience, the very simple task of setting an IP which took 4-5 clicks in XP, took me 5-10min in Vista just to figure out how to get the Properties window. Though basic functionality of an OS that the user looks for needs to be kept the same across versions, Microsoft fails to comply.

If the new version is going to be more user friendly than its previous one, why do you still need to pack the age old Win-98 looks with XP? They need to realize what the other OS-es in the market are doing different to keep things abreast with feature improvements, usability and performance.

At this point they just need to stop stuffing in features into an OS. It more or less looks like a huge american burger. A bite at one end will have half of the things falling out of the other end. By the time you get used to the new tasty burger in comes a new version double the size.

Blogging Workshop @ Wipro

Posted on May 24, 2008 by Jerry

The day before the session, Christine calls me up and asks me, “So how do you intend to start the session?”. Then it hits me that, all this time i was preparing for each of the workshop, but didn’t even think of how to start of the whole discussion/workshop. Oops now i need to plan. gulp!

Ok, i felt i was going to crash and burn during the session – 1. I had no idea how i’m going to start off 2. The slides looked very very boring. The slides were a disaster, i was planning a workshop and they wanted slides if the whole thing was to be approved by the management. As a last minute step, turned to Calvin and Hobbes for help. Boy! they helped. Now my slides looked wacky and who ever saw it smiled. Let it be. So i spent the rest of yesterday’s evening taking screen shots of Twitter, Kwippy, Muziboo, Tempostand, Mutiny.in, All things Pakistan and individual blogs of 2s, Amit Agarwal, Adeeth’s and Mine. I would have loved to show all the blogs that i read, but the company firewall just blocked’em off.

On the D-Day, I was 30 min well before time and met up with Christine. The first of the participants turned up and didn’t even hope to have even 10 people. With all the work and things around, chances are that something like blogging could take a back seat for people. I was mistaken. There was close to 25 participants.

So here we go, as an intro got all the people who were there and had a blog to have their blog-ids written on the board. Only 8!!! Great!!! So more people wanted to get into blogging and as i learned they were confused at some point or the other with many things.

As we started off, i made the fact clear that it will be a discussion/workshop as opposed to a session. Pushed for some user interaction and it just took off from there, jokes, experiences and facts. A fun filled session where the beginners are now serious on starting a blog. To the question, Should Al Qaida blog? YES was the reply, as they all believed no one should be stopped from blogging.

Interestingly, every one converged on the point that, blogs provide a fact / news in its raw format rather than the media, which they though to be fabricated. We moved on to show the newbies how simple it was to set up a blog. Interestingly most of the people who blogged used Blogspot and haven’t even heard of LiveJournal or TypePad.

The discussions drifted from some serious discussions on What to be done on profanity?, What formed the basis of Moderating a Comment?, The Do’s and Dont’s of Blogging..etc to some fun stuffs that i shared with them. Interestingly people didnt know what RSS feeds are. So got someone to explain the whole RSS funda to them.

What is MicroBlogging and why do we do it?, was a tough one to make them understand. Finally i feel that when i showed them Twitter and the indian counterpart Kwippy. They then got the whole idea of micro-blogging.

Finally i had to tell them about Google Analytics and showed my own Analytics graph as an example of the worst thing that you can do – being lazy. The downward graph showed it all.
I was quite overwhelmed by the participation i had and people said it was wonderful. Felt good.

The presentation that i made can be found here – Blogging Workshop (PPT)

Tete-a-tete with CTO of Xerox

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Jerry

Scobleizer has done this video, a talk with the CTO of Xerox, Sophie Vandebroek at Palo Alto Research Center.

She has talked about some really interesting things.

Xerox as i knew was just about making ‘xerox’ copies. The term Xerox has now become synonymous to make a copy. But the real Xerox is into many more fields like Biomedical, clean water, etc.

She says, “Its fun to work in Xerox because we create the Future, Today!!!” and “We no longer makes copiers…”. WOW!!!