Business Analysis Guest Lecture at Symbiosis, SICSR

Yesterday I was in Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, SICSR Pune for a Guest Lecture on Business Analysis. It was a great experience meeting all the students, dressed in their formal attire on a Sunday evening. The session was very interactive thanks to highly interactive students of SICSR. They were always ready with answers if I asked any questions, they were ready to think and improvise when I asked them to dig deeper on any clue, they were keen to ask many questions and they were enthusiastic to take part in the class activities that I conducted during the session. Please keep these qualities for the lifetime, they will help you to become even better.

Visit to Symbiosis

It is always pleasure to interact with members of Symbiosis Family and it leads to a different kind of satisfaction. Thank you for having me there and sparing time for my session on a Sunday evening. I wish all of you good luck and a great future ahead.

Tarun Chandel
Business Analyst

Welcome Yuva Vividha Audience

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I was speaking at the Yuva Vividha Seminar at the St. Stanislaus High School Campus, Bandra, Mumbai. The aim of the seminar was to introduce children, teachers and school administrators to the world of ICT by relating it to their school studies and their environment. My session was about Writing and Creating content on the Internet and I talked about it from the bloggers perspective. It was very interesting to mentor and guide people to blogging. The session was very interactive thanks to the ever inquisitive audience.

As it was a working day, I attended the later half of the seminar. The other sessions were also very good and informative. Freeman was also present at the seminar and he talked about how we can use internet and how Google is the new university. The other session I attended was about a very interesting project named She Creates, where a bunch of people are helping poor girls to highlight their issues by creating movies. Overall the seminar was highly interactive and the sessions were very interesting, I would suggest more and more schools and institutes should have such seminars.

Thanks to Chandita of Comet Media for inviting me to the seminar and her warm hearted hospitality. I really enjoyed the whole event.

Tarun Chandel
Blogging, Passion and Interaction

The Power of Blogging

We walked out of the Blogcamp Hall after a session on Podcasting. One of the camper at the lunch time asked me Tarun what do you think is going to be the next big innovation in Blogging. Blogcamp was covering a lot of aspects of blogging (be it writing, podcasting, regional languages, micro blogging, video blogging etc.) and this question was very relevant in the given context. After thinking for a while I said, I don't think there is going to be any. I think we are still trying to make sense of the last big thing, blogging. The ability or the freedom to express yourself freely, it will take a generation to understand the true impact of it. We are still trying to understand the web or the effect of technology and I think its not wise to leap on when you are not sure what you are on. We all are executing the ideas that were invented long back, process of web logging started in pre dot com bust era. Yes there are a lot of innovation taking and have taken place but that is all because of the promise made by the basic platform.

The ability or the freedom to express yourself freely, it will take a generation to understand the true impact of it.

History is written by the victors, industries are known by the big companies in that space. And this mindset always makes us judge the success by the size. What is the success of blogging, number of hits, amount of money you make, ranking in technorati ??? But think about it the true power of blogging is that it has given the distribution channel to all of us small people who would have been lost. We are small but we sure have unique insights and unique ideas and using this platform we can share these with those who seek such unique things.

Think about it, 10 years ago the only way of distribution was broadcasting. The basic idea behind that was or still is, one thing fits all or to have content that majority of people like. But with this new medium we can have a narrowcast, you can make content for specific audience. The mindset is turning around. We are the people who propagate one size fits one or fits few.

There has been a lot of debate about traditional media Vs the new media. There have been a continuous tussle between the two. I think the reason is that ... or let me put it this way, people who are older than 40 - 45 years they have spend better years of their life getting to know about world and other things through TOI (newpapers) or other magazines, so most of them dismiss new media. People of my generations have spend a mixed time on getting updates through traditional and new media, so there is a tussle. We have to accept that we are part traditional and part new in our approach and in our upbringing. If you talk to youngsters and kids they hardly read newspaper or follow TV, that in the generation of broadband, online games, online streaming and they follow the world online. For them traditional media is too slow and not up to their unique taste.

Coming back to blogging as I said at the start that we all are trying to make sense out of this big phenomenon. People keep scratching this surface in their unique ways. A lot of people have found ways to make money out of this platform and they keep innovating. Innovation has not only been in the ways to make money but in the way to interpret this phenomenon and thats why we have different flavors like photo blogs, Podcasts, video blogs and latest of all micro blogs and mobile blogs.

We always tend to look at big blogs and stigmatize small successes. If your blog gets 10 hits a day you will be labeled as failure. But isn't it a nice thing that you are able to share your thoughts with 10 people, 10 right people, who actually want to read what you write. That's the magic magic of blogging where you can be yourself. As the number of reader grows on your blog you tend to become generalist saying things so as to suit the masses. I think most of the bloggers here would agree that they wrote best when they wrote for themselves or for those few who cared.

This is all I had in my mind and it stayed in my mind. One tip to myself never stand up to talk unless you have sorted things out in your mind :) Life has its unique ways to make you learn!

Updated:
You can find a good coverage of Blogcamp Mumbai Style on Deep's Blog.

Tarun Chandel
Life, Learning and Technology

I am on Mint The Wall Street Journal

Mint Post

In todays edition of Mint The Wall Street Journal there is an article that I have written. The article is about Bridging the gap between students and industry with the help of camps like Barcamp MU3 that took place on 8th March.

Technology is changing at such a fast pace that it is difficult for an individual to keep tabs on everything, as I have mentioned in the past as well that camps like these give you a snapshot of the world around you (or let me put it this way gives you a heavy dose of all the technology related things that you missed or are still missing). As a student of technology it becomes even more difficult to keep oneself updated all the time, as the syllabus doesn't cover these new advancements. So for students such camps are of even more importance as they get to know about things that they are going to face when they will step out of the college.

I would suggest:
colleges/institutes should keep such camps at least once a semester,
as a student you should ensure that you attend such camps,
and to professionals working in the technology industry do visit these camps as the energy levels and enthusiasm that campers carry is infectious!

Thanks to Namitha and the Mint team, you guys are doing a great job.

Tarun Chandel
Life, Learning and Technology

Pune Bloggers Meet

Yesterday I was in Pune for the Pune Bloggers meet. The event was very good as I got to meet a lot of interesting people. Also it was good to catch up with some of the bloggers who were at Blogcamp Pune as well.

The meeting started with an interesting video about bloggers (a question to organizers: is that video available on YouTube??). It was followed by a round of introductions where everyone got to show their blog and believe me Pune has some amazing bloggers. Post introductions IndiBloggers team had a very interesting session where they read out comment from somebody's blog and the blogger was suppose to do a small jig if it was a comment from his/her blog, very nice idea! Then there was a Pizza break and during this time I could talk to some of the bloggers. After the quick Pizza break we had a session from Microsoft on Live Writer (makes it easy to blog while you are off line but doesn't have a Mac version :( so of no use to me). There was an interesting skit by the IndiBloggers team before we wrapped for the day.

There were some really good bloggers I got to meet like Harsha (I follow his blog and it was nice to meet him in person), Vineet (another member of our Symbiosis family), Sandhya (nice to see an evangelist from Microsoft), Karamveer (he knows how to make money from blogging and also a very sporty guy), Anwin (one of the guys behind IndiBlogger), Prashant (always nice to see him around), Renie (the super cool IndiBlogger founder), Aparajita (nice to meet another blogger from Symbiosis family), Divya (did not get to talk him but very nice blog) , Maltesh, Meetu (Entertainment and Movie blogger), Navin (Tech Blogger) and many more.

All for the love of Blogging :)

The event was very nice though I would have liked little more time to meet the bloggers. I think the Pizza break was very small. I couldn't meet a lot of people I really wanted to meet, as the time was very less. This is one of the thing we will have to keep in mind during the Blogcamp Mumbai, to give more time and space for bloggers to meet each other.

I always like to visit Pune and If I get to spend time with good people and have nice food it just makes the travel worthwhile. Thanks to Moksh for his company in the morning and delicious Misal Pav on our way to Pune. Thanks to Rohit for delicious lunch and the Blogcamp Pune T-Shirt (yes I finally got one). Thanks to Vineet (the guy behind the show), IndiBloggers team and Microsoft.

Tarun Chandel
Life, Learning and Technology