TEDx Chennai

Hey folks,

For the last two months or so, I’ve been trying to help out in organising what is India’s first ever TEDx event.

For starters, lemme explain what TEDx is. I’ll have to start off with TED.

TED is an invitational conference that started in the US in 1984. It is an initiative that promotes ideas that are worth spreading. There are a set of speakers who’re carefully chosen to be some of the best, in terms of their ideas. And then, there is the audience. The members of the audience are also carefully chosen to be the best-in-class. All this is to ensure that ideas translate into conversations that matter and actions that bring about change.

The registration fee for a TED Global Conference is about $6000. Wait, don’t jump yet. Everyone who’s ready to pay the money isn’t eligible! TED picks those that are eligible. There is even a popular argument that TED is too elitist. But I think they can afford to be that elitist or overly-selective in order to ensure amazing quality. You would better understand if you see a TED video. Go down to TED and watch a video now.

Now, apart from TED Global Conferences, there are also TED Conferences held in specific countries. This year it is taking place at the Infosys campus in Mysore. Find out more about TED India, here.

Apart from both the above Conferences, TED has a provision for independent communities to organise TED style talks in their own geographical locations. This is the TEDx. Naturally, TEDx events are not organised by the guys at TED. They’re organised by some independent group of people who’re passionate about bringing TED to their communities and about Ideas that are worth talking about.

Having said all that, let me tell you now that TEDx is coming to Chennai very soon! I’m part of a small team of folks that are keen on bringing TEDx to Chennai. We’ve been working on it for the past 3 months and it’s taken good shape now. So, here’s TEDx Chennai.

TEDx Chennai will take place at the IC&SR Auditorium inside IIT Madras on November 29th 2009 (Sunday). It will be a one-day-event and all the speakers are being hand-picked to ensure a very interesting experience for everyone.

Tickets are running out! So, do hurry to secure yourself a seat!

Yours Skeptically,

Wave Rider

Hey folks,

Anyone who’s been following my Social Media traces should know pretty well that I was craving (like mad) for a Google Wave invite. After nearly 2 weeks of craving and nearly losing hope, Raja got a direct Google invite. I still haven’t asked him how he got a direct Google invite. Maybe I should, when I meet him tomorrow.

He announced the news on Twitter and I was the first fellow to ask him for a secondary invite. Srinath soon followed suite. Raja promptly invited us both. Nice guy. Very nice guy, I should say!

About two days later, I got an email from Google saying my account was approved for use with Wave. Yes, I was totally wow-ed! I scrambled for the link on the email and promptly signed up.

I’ve been using it for 2 days now and I think it’s a great collaboration tool. Probably, even better than a Wiki in several aspects. A wiki can serve as a web-site or a blog. But, a wave cannot. Atleast, that’s what I’ve understood of it in these 2 days.

The most amazing thing I have noticed in these 2 days is the fact that everything on Wave is a wave. Your settings page is a wave. Your extensions page is a wave. Your Help page is a wave. I guess that should make it easy for those that use the wave API/Protocol to build apps/extensions over it.

Trust me. A wave is a bad idea to be used for personal communication like a group chat. It might seem to serve that purpose amazingly well initially. But, later on, you’ll realise it’s a pain to communicate like that. Thankfully, you can switch off the real-time content updation. Otherwise, you’d have to waste more than 80% of your time in concentrating on who’s typing what.

For collaboration, it is an amazing tool. I realised that from the videos and from my personal use. I created a wave for my startup idea to collaborate with LVS and Vinay. One for TEDxChennai to collaborate with Raja, Jo et al. A wave for ‘Sit‘ to collaborate with LVS (alone, for the moment). A wave for all my (external) blog posts and a To-Do wave.

For all the above uses, I find Google Wave perfect. I still haven’t tried tweeting from Wave et al. I don’t think I really need to do that. I use Firefox extensions for all my social media profiles. Somehow, they seem more convenient.

More in the days to come.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I can’t send invites. So please don’t spam this blog.

The brighter side of life

Hey folks,

I had written a post yesterday night(or today early morning), after a long time. But, it was too serious and I felt kinda bad. So, here’s a post with all the nice things.

Class is getting less rigorous and more funny now-a-days. Many thanks to Saranyan, Sandhya, Arun, Virus, Poorna, Anand et al for keeping me cheerfully occupied on campus.

I kinda initiated a small process to change the content on my institute’s website. The content was/is pretty old, dry and boring. So, I volunteered and wrote fresh content for the website with a lot more contemporary language. It was a nice process of learning, collaborating with the management and arriving at trade-offs on what words to use where without affecting the freshness of the content. I kinda learnt the difference in thought process between our generation and the previous one. It is VERY visible, mind you!

I also showed them how there was no original ‘controllable’ content with respect to my institute, on Google’s first SERP. I myself felt the approach was a bit rude but it was the best one I could use to convince them to have a strong Social Media presence. I gave the management a plan that was approved provisionally. Haven’t begun work on it yet. Will do, after the mini-vacation. The plan is pretty strong and clear. I’m trying to document the plan into a 6-7 post series for the Electrosocial Blog. Let’s see. Should be done soon.

The first trimester exams came and went. With a lot of fanfare, I must admit. Let’s stop talking about it now, shall we?!

Had a lot of fun meeting Saranyan, Vinay and Srinath over a relaxed Sunday breeze at Bessie Beach. Separate post coming up on that!

Woke up to a wild idea one fine morning and ended up thinking on it all week. It’s grown well into a fine, neat plan now. Roped in LVS and Vinay. We’re now trying to see if we can make it a startup company, our first in life (together and individually). Again, let’s see. Should happen mostly.

TEDxChennai is shaping up VERY well. I’m kinda proud to be one of the active organisers! IIT Madras and RTBI have agreed to co-host the event. So, it’s slated to happen at the IC&SR Auditorium inside IIT Madras on November 29th, 2009. We are now looking into the nitty-gritties of the event. Hopefully, things should fall into place soon. Made some nice friends as a result of this commitment! Raja, Jo, Balajee, Benny and the big man himself, Kiruba!

There was initially a plan to work on a research paper on (a topic in) Branding. I had bootstrapped the idea but had to let go of it temporarily, for reasons best left untold here. During the mini vacation, I had the chance to speak to Milind about it and managed to get a lot of gyaan. Roped in Saranyan, the thalaivar. Will begin preliminary work on it soon. Doesn’t look like it’ll get done in anytime within a year. So, this is one of my longer commitments. But the kind of work involved is really wow. Should keep me motivated to work.

Heard of the NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009 and checked out the details. Sounded wow. Roped in Saranyan and registered sincerely, as Students. Macho discounts, I tell you! And, amazing value. Can’t wait to catch Guy Kawasaki! So, will be out of town on October 27th and 28th 2009. Bengaluru, here we come!

Found some amazing people to connect with, on Twitter. Mostly as a result of me attending the Chennai Tweetup on 11th October at Mast Kalandhar. A few more people from LinkedIn and Facebook.

Raja (the total thalaivar) sent me an invite to Google Wave, a deed for which I’d prolly waive the treat he owes me!

Will write more in another post.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. Separate posts on (second) college life, Google Wave, nice people I’ve met in the last 3 months, Social Media addiction, the Bessie Beach meetup et al would come up in the next few days!