Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

If this is your first visit here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. I talk about India, Entrepreneurship, Marketing and the New New Thing. Thanks.

Just opened my desk drawer and there were hundreds of coins, tens of Diet Coke Pull-Tabs and lots of pencils. I have been collecting these for some time now. And these things are as dear as anything else could be. In fact you can hold these tabs for ransom and I would do anything to get them back.

I am sure people DO collect things - from something as mundane as a stamp to something as interesting as a food bill (or is it the other way round?). Over a period of years, I have collected stamps, coins, matchboxes, postcards, autographs, certificates, marbles, empty boxes, bills, envelopes, tins, sand, songs, books, movies etc. Is it only me who is so engrossed in collecting things or are there more?

Curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to know what other people collect. I asked junta on twitter. Within the next two minutes I was told that people collect DVDs, Books, miniature elephants etc.

Logical extension would be a place to aggregate all these things and realized that Flickr and its group is just the right place. Just created this Flickr Group. Please see/share/comment things that people around the world collect. Use the tag “iCollect” in case you decide to upload your pictures.

Don’t you think, its a good way to share what absurd/weird/non-conventional thing do YOU collect?

What started as a random message on twitter, has now spiraled into something larger.

I sent this message on Twitter asking if anyone would like to co-author a book with me using Twitter and Web as medium. Idea was to use Twitter as a communication medium to write a book. I did not have a clue what the book would be on. What the title would be. What the storyline would be. How would we collaborate. I just wanted to see if people would want to participate in this experiment. And yes, in less than an hour, 5 people had replied.

Siyab, SimplyArun, kv, Asfaq and gsik agreed to be a part of the experiment. We soon exchanged emails and figured how would be go about it. I shall keep updating this once we flesh out the details.

Keep tuned.

UPDATE ON 13 Jul 2008: Setup a wiki to help Collaboration. PBWiki Link
UPDATE ON 13 Jul 2008: Setup a blog. Twitter Book Blog

Image Credits: Flickr

Freedom is something that most of us has taken for granted. Most of us reading this have born in free India and had all the comforts and privileges offered by freedom. And we were thus shielded from an era where even things as personal as thoughts were controlled.

I was talking to few college students in Mumbai and I realized that most of us are disconnected with reality. Most of them think that its ok to accept western culture and leave our heritage behind. And then there are some who had their feet firmly planted in ground and want to first understand the past and want to plant careful steps in future.

I was wondering, is there a way to find out what everyone thinks about India as a country and what is their big idea of freedom and independence? For a lot of people freedom is an oppurtunity to pursue their dreams. For some it is their second nature. They look at it as a way of life. For some it is something insignificant for which all the freedom fighters lost their lives. Some are indifferent and haven’t really thought about freedom at all.

Which category do you fall under?

The Idea
This brings me to the idea. The Freedom Blog. What if Indians all over the world submitted one piece of work that they think symbolizes freedom? This could be an original thought, a blog post that you have written, an original composition, a link to a website, a photograph, a picture, a video, a music piece, an incident, a mashup or any other way that you think expresses your idea of freedom.

Post this submissions stage, all these submissions would be put on the Freedom Blog in context and publish them on a website or a blog on 15th August 2008 for everyone to scrutinize.

The result will give us a fairly good indication of what people really think of Freedom. How they perceive it and what it actually means to them.

Interested?

Few ground rules

• Deadline for submission: 5th August 2008
• How to submit: Email your ideas to saurabh.garg@gmail.com.
• Ownership: You retain the ownership of your work. I will just re-publish them on the Freedom Blog with due credits.
• Terms and Conditions: None.

How can you help?

• Obviously you can help by submitting your work.
• You can also help by spreading word about the Freedom Blog. You can post on your blogs, in your twitter streams, email to friends, share on social networks, call up people etc.
• And finally if people do submit their work, you can help in filtering and putting things in context.

How did I stumble on this?
I happen to be a huge fan of collaborative experiments on the Internet. I have participated in quite a few myself and its about time I did something of my own. I was working on some other idea when I stumbled on this. Obviously serendipity plays a huge role in my life and it so happened that Independence Day is around the corner. And I thought If I started acceptance of media from 5th of July, people will have a month to ideate and create their work, I will have time to collect it and then I will be left with some time (9 days) to actually collate and make some sense out of it and finally release it on 15th August 2008.

What do I get out of this?

• Satisfaction of actually being able to unite Indians into thinking like a group.
• Understanding of the way people think.
• Answer to the question “if people actually cherish freedom and independence”. Every submission would mean that entrant has indeed thought about freedom at some point in time and is aware of the comfort (and challenges) that freedom brings. Every person who spreads the world is an Indian at heart and is also seeking answers to these questions. Every person who reads is concerned and wants to enrich his/her understanding of Indians.
• UPDATE: Someone has already asked if this is a commercial project. NO this is not commercial. This is not sponsored by anyone. There is no media coverage happening.

Obviously none of this is possible without help from you guys. Please let me know if this makes sense. Thanks for your time.

Date: 29th March 2008
Loc: SJSOM, IIT Mumbai
Agenda: None :)

And this “none” agenda makes a barcamp an interesting place to go. I was there for Mumbai Barcamp 2 also and I met few good people there. Hope to bump into more people this time. Also, last time, I saw a lot of people and companies walking in herds and trying to create things without even knowing “the why” question. Hope things change this time around.

Register: http://barcampmumbai.org/BCM3_registrants

As of now 200 people have registered already. Keep watching this space for more.

Update: As on 26th March, more than 400 registrations. Looks promising.

I was talking to a colleague in office and I realized that I need to talk about taking media to a new level. I have been procrastinating it for a while. I am penning down my thoughts on media in India and invite you people to share this with anyone you think can contribute. Please add your opinions also.

In my opinion media is supposed to perform three functions
1. Inform junta about things
2. Bring people together and share opinions
3. Shape public thought

However, currently media as I see it is not really doing any of these three. Media is being operated as a business with profit motives and as my colleague put it, actual function has become the by product. I would not question why or how this happened. I shall talk about what can be done to bring it back on track. And obviously this is where I would need you guys to help me out. Please help me structure my thought process.

I think there are few things that are really critical for having media in true spirit.

1. Objectivity - Obviously we want to take sides, churn out opinions but we should do it with objective bent. We should kill a brand, praise a person but should be objective.

2. Independence - Independence is a huge word by itself and can have many connotations. Independence of thoughts, independence from influence, independence to write. And lots more.

3. Thought leadership - Apart from just publishing happenings and reporting events, media needs to have thought leadership. They should have original opinion on things. Thoughts on how to shape the society and probably a bit of foresight to be able to foresee the future.

4. Reach and feedback - There are two things here. Media could use any platform for delivery - paper, website, twitter, plays, design anything but it should have a certain reach. Atleast in the targeted audience, it should reach everyone and it should be contextual and relevant enough for them to consider it signal, rather than noise. And feedbcak is more critical than everything else. Media needs to know what is happening, how are people reacting to things, what is the audience thinking, is India covering the right things, is the media being a thought leader in the first place?

Now having established things that are critical for media in my opinion, I will talk about how can Internet help us in achieving the goal.

1. Collaboration - This word has been misused more than any other word on the Internet. When it comes to media, collaboration could take shape of co-authoring stories, thinking out loud, accepting defeats and promoting what is better, so on and so forth. Mutiny is a very good example but again we tend to incline towards popular things rather than pertinent things.

2. Reach and Feedback - With Internet as delivery model, both reach and feedback can be much simpler. With Internet, we can real time feedback from people and improvise at the same time. The time gap between conversations is reducing and making us faster.

3. Democratic - Since people on Internet are hidden behind a cloak, they can come forward and talk about things that they want to talk above without any fears of retribution. Although this silver cloak is a bane as well, it gives regular junta lots of power too.

There have to be some issues with the Internet. I foresee following issues with the use of Internet. This is not a problem because of Internet but because it is open.

1. Accountability - Everyone on Internet is hidden behind a silver cloak. If someone wants to misuse media, Internet help him. No one is owner of the content and no one is questionable.

2. Seriousness - Most people still consider Internet as “oh the internet” and think it as a collection of amateurs blogging away to glory. There are so many good authors that I cant even create a list.

3. Numbers - There arent just enough people on Internet in India. And most of people on the Internet don’t really care about reading things. I am not sure how many would read this post completely, leave apart shaping opinions and contributing. If you do read , please say “SECRET REVEALED” in the comments, I will be happy to get 10 comments.

In the end, I dont know if this kind of an initiative could ever gain momentum in India or anywhere else or if this can ever replace traditional businesses disguised as media. I am just trying to present a perspective on things.

Please understand that everything I have said could be incorrect. They are just my opinions and want you guys to help me come up with something concrete.

Thanks for a patient hearing.

P.S.: I started this as a personal email to Sanjukta and Swagat but I thought I could share this with a larger audience too.