Live TV Experiences
I was on a program called ‘Bloggers Block’ on Headlines Today channel tonight at 9:00 PM. It was a live telecast. Some fascinating experiences.
* I was informed that the OB van (outdoor broadcast unit) and the crew would come in to my house at 8:30 pm, half hour before the show to set up the unit.
* The time clicked to 8:45 and no sign of the van. I almost gave up when I got a call saying that the crew is having trouble with the cops for having parked the van on the road. This incident happened right outside my apartment. By the time I hurried downstairs, the problem had been sorted out. Relief. 12 minutes to go.
* We take the van to another side of the apartment but trees and electrical lines pose a problem. We finally open another gate to get the van inside. All this in a semi-panic mode. 8 minutes to go.
* Meanwhile the camera men rush inside my home to set up the camera and the lighting. 5 minutes before going live, the camera man gets a call from the studio that they are not getting the live video feeds. Panic mode heightens. The crew does a bit of tinkering with the wires and things get ok. 3 minutes to go.
* I then quickly realize I hadn’t changed my dress. Was still wearing a slightly crumpled tshirt. I must’ve created a record in shirt changing.
* I rush back and sit in the chair. One of the crew members plugs in a collar mic. He then plugs an ear piece into my ear from a walkie talkie kind of a device. This is where I get to hear the anchor. A guy in the studio did a voice test. It was too low. I say so. He turns up the volume real high. Nearly cracked my ear drum. I say so. He tones it down. Before I could say its ok, I can hear Zaka Jacob, the anchor start the program.
* My wife rushes out to my neighbours home with our digital camera to record the video from their TV. A paltry 128 MB memory card doesn’t take you far. Just 5 minutes of video recording possible. That’s hardly sufficient for a 30 minute program. She manages to take a few shots.
* There was a lot of hissing noise from the ear piece. Too late. I strain myself to hear the debate going on at the studio. Can’t make out everything.
* Then suddenly the anchor goes like this, “Let’s ask Kiruba who is from Chennai. Kiruba, what do you think about the issue?”. Your mind desperately seeks to assimilate whatever little information you were able to decipher from their conversation. I pick up bits and pieces and I then proceed to answer what I felt was appropriate.
* On one occasion, when Zaka (the anchor) asked me a question, I heard it but didn’t know it was directed at me. There was a few seconds of silence before I realised that the silence was there because I wasn’t speaking. I then quickly proceeded to answer.
* I thought I spoke pretty ok. Ideas flew in smoothly and I managed to keep my answers to the point. I liked the way how I put my views across. Don’t know what others felt. If you got to watch the program, I’d like to get your feedback.
* I don’t think the topic deserved a 30 minutes program. It was a simple set guidelines for bloggers that was set. No rules. No censorship. Just guidelines.
* Try staring at a camera continuously for 30 minutes. That’s what I did.
* Surprisingly, I didn’t feel nervous. Sitting in a studio and having a conversation with an anchor is one thing but sitting in front of a camera and speaking to a person you can’t see is another. Add buggy audio. And then add Live TV. But it was rather cool.
* Zaka Jacob did a good job in guiding the discussion.
* Overall a very fascinating experience. A big thanks to Sharavathy from the TV Today’s Chennai office for putting me on the show.
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Live TV Debate Tonight on ‘Bloggers Code of Conduct’
Headlines Today is having a debate about the brouhaha over the ‘Bloggers Code of Conduct’ at 9:00 PM tonight. The rough draft of the code suggested by Tim O’Reilly has met with mixed reactions. While some think guidelines are helpful, many feel its an infringement on their rights.
Headlines today has invited Pavan Duggal, a Cyberlaw expert, Kajal Basu, a journalist blogger and me for a debate. While I’ve read the code last week with only a passing interest, I’m suddenly catching up on it in detail. Ah, the things that TV makes you do.
And its going to be live TV, which means you get to see my goofups straight on.
CyberJournalist.net has created a wonderful model Bloggers’ Code of Ethics, by modifying the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics for the Weblog world. Recommended read.
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Meeting Micorsoft’s COO, Kevin Turner
When I got a call from Microsoft to inform me about their global COO’s visit to India, it all sounded familiar. Last year, I got a call informing me of their CEO, Steve Ballmer’s visit. It was for an event called IndiMix and they had wanted to shoot a video of me pitching for the event . The video never got published. They invited me for the event but when I got to know I’d be part of at least 5000 other people, I let it pass. You achieve nothing in such big crowds. As you can guess, I had good reason to brush off the recent call.
But I was wrong. The call came from D’Souza, a passionate web evangelist at Microsoft. Evangelists are good people, way better than sales folks. I have known D’souza earlier when he had invited me to speak at a few Microsoft events. He wanted to meet up with me in person.
When we met up, he handed out a personally written invitation (in calligraphy) signed by the General Manger of Microsoft India, inviting me for a round table discussion with Kevin Turner at Mumbai. And I quote a line from the invitation…”We are trying to bring together the key web influencers in the country to enrich our understanding of the space – thereby adding value to the offerings that we bring to the market in the future”.
As if I wasn’t impressed enough, he said it was a round table discussion with ten other invited folks. Good. So, it is NOT going to be 5000 folks. Just 10 of us with Kevin. Makes for a better chance for a meaningful conversation and hopefully I get to add value to the discussion.
I’m looking forward to meeting up with Kevin Turner and I won’t hide the awe. The awe is understandable when you get to read his profile. As the COO, he is responsible for all sales & marketing initiatives. He heads deptartments that has 35,000 employees (that’s half of MS’ 70,000 employees) and responsible for generating revenues of $44 Billion.
And he is just 40. His photograph lies about his age. Damn! He is just 7 years older than me. Sigh!
In addition to Kevin, I’m looking forward to connecting up with the other invited members. I heard a few names and I was impressed. I should get to know the entire list by today.
Should be fun.
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The NIT Trichy Visit – An Overview
I was at NIT Trichy to talk on ‘The Business Side of Blogging’ to the MBA students. Here’s a quick recount of the trip and the talk.
I’ve heard a lot about NIT Trichy (previously REC Trichy) over many years but got to visit for the first time. The hospitality of the students was fantastic. They had taken full care of my transportation and accommodation. Satadal Payeng was at the railway station at the wee hours of the morning to pick me up. Satadal, btw, has a nice 2 wheeler blog and within a month, has started earning $100 a month.
We made the 20 kms journey to the campus where I was put up at their guest house.
There were about a 100 students in the seminar hall. Considering it was a four day holiday weekend, I was surprised so many chose to stay back in the campus.
The MBA dept has been in existence for 29 years and is only the second engineering college in Tamil Nadu, after Anna University, to start a management course. It’s reputation can be gauged by the fact that every single student has got jobs in campus placement.
I was quite impressed with the course fee. It’s Rs.1.2 lakhs fees includes the full two years course fee, hostel and even mess bill. All inclusive. Compare that with Rs.5 lakhs that a few MBA colleges charge for a year.
BIZZDOM is their first intra-departmental fest and it looks like its going to turn into an annual event.
After the customary talk by the Director, HoD, the lighting of the lamp and a premature coffee break, my two hour talk began. As expected, the students were a bit rusty but soon opened up. My usual empty promise of cadburys for the first few questions never fails to work!
I was particularly impressed with a bunch of no-nonsense questions that the students asked. I liked their attitude to challenge the basics. There were some very good questions that were raised and that helped in making the session a lot interactive.
See that big audio speakers in the picture above? Those are some of the best I’ve seen. Very good audio clarity. The mic had a small problem and I used the opportunity to chuck it and mingle with the crowd. I’ve learnt the trick that if you want the crowd to participate in the discussion, its important to have a level playing field. I guess, that helped. Not so for my throat though. Two hours of speaking aloud kinda drained me out but the session was fun.
The students have done a good job in organizing the event but coming from a bunch of soon-to-be MBA graduates and that too from a premier institute like NIT, I had expected more. The event started half-hour late and when you land there early, the wait seems much longer. Punctuality is a direct indicator of professionalism.
The biggest irritant was when my speech was interrupted by the organizers to read out the bio of the second guest speaker who had just walked in. And it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I was mid way narrating a passionate story to illustrate a point and the interruption punctured the poignancy of the moment. I’m sure the organizers didn’t mean harm but these are subtleties you would expect them to know.
The second session was on ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, yes, based on the bestselling book by Steven Covey. Mr.Srikant, a professional trainer and a seven habits evangelist was the speaker. I have always wanted to read this book ever since it started topping the New York Times bestseller list many years ago but never got to finish it. ( in spite of it sitting on my book shelf). Srikanth spiced up his talks with examples from his own life and how it influenced him. He gave a nice overview and it motivated me to start reading the book again, hopefully finish it this time and apply the learning in life.
It reminded me of the Business Book Readers Meet that we used to have. We were four friends and each one of us would choose a business book to read. Once a month, we would meet at the Loyola college grounds to give a brief synopsis and key learning from the book. This way, it gave a satisfaction of having kinda read four books and actually gives you the motivation to finish reading some of those book. Gotto restart that nice business book meets.
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Speaking at NIT Trichy
The students of Dept of Management Studies at National Institute of Technology, Trichy (NITT) are organizing an inter-departmental management meet called BIZZDOM’07. An event that aims to inculcate management thinking amongst enthusiastic engineers. Nice to see an initiative that gets the MBAs and engineers together.
The meet is scheduled for the 6th and 7th of April with the management games scheduled on the first day followed by the guest lectures on day 2. The organizers have invited me to talk to the students about how being passionate about an area of interest can actually turn into a paying business proposition. They’re particularly interested in the business side of blogging and podcasting.
There’s definitely something about me and NITs off late. This is the second NIT I’m speaking at in as many months. Last month was NIT Calicut. Trichy should be fun.
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Email:Kiruba @ Kiruba.com
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