Meeting D.Murali, Deputy Editor of The Hindu BusinessLine newspaper has been one of the interesting experiences I’ve had. Murali is one of the very few traditional journalists who have whole heartedly embraced social media.
He invited me to his office to conduct a video podcast interview. After the interview was done and we had lunch, he gave me a printed sheet of paper and asked me to fill for a column called ’60 Seconds Chief’. It was a questionnaire. It had 20 questions and was meant to be filled quickly which explains the 60 seconds. Oh boy, it took a much longer time than that. I remember spending over 20 minutes to fill it. I had fun doing it.
Most of the questions deals with aspects of leadership and I thought it was a very innovative concept of authoring a column for the paper.
Here is the original scan of the paper that I had filled.
Murali has an able support staff to back him up. A person called Ramesh then draws a portrait, on the lines of Wall Street Journal. Padmaja, who works at Hindu’s office then helps compile everything together. It then finally gets printed in the paper. My interview appeared in yesterday’s edition. Here’s the scan from the paper.
For more of such interviews, visit http://60secondschief.blogspot.com. To view Murali’s video podcast interviews with industry leaders, visit http://muralilistening.blogspot.com
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This evening, the NDTV-Hindu crew came home to do a shoot for their tech show titled ‘Byte it’. It’s the soon-to-be-launched TV channel in which NDTV has a 51% stake and The Hindu holds the rest 49%. It was originally named Metronation Chennai but I think its new name ‘NDTV Hindu’ is far better as it draws upon the strength of two well entrenched brand names. I’m told it will be a Chennai centric channel with content being on the lines of NDTV GoodTimes, Profit & News combined.
We fixed the interview time at 4PM but I came in 45 minutes late, making the crew wait. Got stuck in the previous training and as luck would have it, traffic had to get real bad. After profuse apologies and locking away my pesky kids inside the room, we began the shoot.
One of the episodes was on writing for the web with an intention of making money and the other one was on the browser shoot-out with focus on Google Chrome. We nailed it after a few retakes.
Few interesting observations. Those focus lights were absolutely blinding. The first few seconds were actually painful and my eyes began to well up. It took a while before I could get used to the sheer brightness. If that wasn’t enough, the lights were producing a lot of heat and worse, the fans had to be switched off to cut down on ambient noise. I began to sweat almost instantly and had to wipe the sweat every few minutes.
TU Dinesh is the host and the producer of the show and it was heartening to see him again. Just a few years ago, I first met him as a student when I went to guest lecture at the Madras Christian College. He stood out from the crowd then with his enthusiasm. From a student to a trainee at Indian Interacts to his current role at NDTV-Hindu, that’s quite an appreciable climb.
I’m told that the new Channel is aiming for a pre-Diwali release. Will get to know the date and time of this episode’s telecast as we get closer towards the launch.
And oh, the next time, I should clean up my book shelf. Didn’t realize it was this messy.
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Two weeks ago, CNN IBN covered the cycling movement in Bangalore and Chennai as part of its Citizen Journalist program. The team came over to Chennai for a day long shoot. The first part of the program has already been aired. Rohini Mohan, the brain behind this series, sent us the web version of the video.
In Chennai, me and a group of folks are on to a ‘Cycle to Work Day’ program where we encourage corporate companies to encourage some of their employees to cycle at least once a month to office. In Bangalore, there’s a team that encourages cycling in general called ‘Cycling Maadi’ (meaning Let’s Cycle).
CNN IBN wants to track these small citizen driven movements over four weeks. This would require us to document our efforts and the progress on handycams by us. Yup, no professional videographers. It’s us and our cameras.
I already played truant. I was supposed to send in my second piece tonight but missed the deadline thanks to a week long trip away from home. Now that I’m back, I hope to quickly catchup. Will let you know how it turns up.
Meanwhile, here’s the first episode of the video.
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CNN IBN is going to launch a new program called ‘Be The Change’, a program that aims to highlight initiatives taken up by citizens. They got to know about this small initiative that a small bunch of us have taken on promoting cycling to work amongst corporates, especially IT companies.
I have been cycling to work the past 8 years (On and off. Mostly On)and totally enjoy it. I remember when I worked at Tidel Park, one of the swankiest tech parks in the city, most would vie to drive big cars while a few bunch of us would cycle to work. We were the mavericks and loved the idea of being different. I would cycle from Virugambakkam to Taramani, a distance of 24 kms. Two Way.
A couple of days ago, Rohini Mohan of CNN IBN flew in from Delhi to shoot. The program follows the citizen journalism mode…which means that instead of a professional reporter covering the story, it is us who host the program. We also had to think of the script of the program and in what sequence we had to shoot them. I had never done such stuff before and it was interesting putting on the cap that professional broadcast journos do.
I had with me, Venkatesh Chandrasekaran, Head of Research & Development,Automotive at Satyam Computers. He is also the founder of Schools for India project and the brain behind the ICR on ECR annual cycling race from Chennai to Pondicherry. He is an avid cycling enthusiast and often cycles to work.
All of us got together at my home at around 9:30 a.m. We started shooting around my neighbourhood
They fixed a cordless mix onto me and made me talk about my experiences while I was cycling. I loved this part. Seen here is Satheesh, the official camerman from CNN IBN. This guy is amazingly professional and tried out various angles. This shot was taken by me when we were moving.
Seen here is Satheesh and Rohini tying the camera stand to the cycle handlebar.
Now, with the camera fixed to my cycle, Sathees does one final check. I was made to cycle around and talk into the camera. You should have seen the kind of attention it generated around the crowd.
The camera on Venky’s cycle.
You know you are a total geek (or a very busy head of dept) when you can’t resist checking mails between shoots.
The whole shoot lasted for over 6 hours. All this for a mere 4 minutes of actual air time. Amazing. I was impressed by the passion and the eye for perfection that the CNN IBN crew had. By the time we finished around 4:00 pm, we were ravenously hungry and headed to Karaikudi restaurant for a sumptuous meal.
The program should air on CNN IBN during mid November. Will update you on the exact date and time.
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Email:Kiruba @ Kiruba.com
Phone :+91-44-42733619
Mobile : 98415 97744
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Virugambakkam,
Chennai, INDIA
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