National Cyber Media Conclave 2009

NATIONAL CYBER MEDIA CONCLAVE VENUE: SYMBIOSIS INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY DATE: MARCH 28TH, 2009 REPORT BY: GIRIJA NAIKSATAM On the 28th of March 2009, the junior batch of the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC) organized the first ever National Cyber Media Conclave at our very own Lavale Campus. The event was formally inaugurated by an unconventional click of the mouse button by Director Prof. Ujjwal Kumar Chowdhury. This meet was the first of its kind to be held by SIMC, put together with the hard work of a few students and nine distinguished speakers that chose to grace the occasion with their presence and share their knowledge about the fast growing cyber medium. The day was divided into 2 sessions. Session 1; ‘The Potency of Cyber Media for Information Exchange, Social Exchange and Networking’ had Kiruba Shankar, head of Business Blogging Pvt. Ltd. and Five Technologies, as the first speaker. He spoke of maximizing the social media connect through mediums like Twitter, Blogspot, Facebook and other similar platforms. The next speaker, Shivam Vij, a journalist with Open Magazine in New Delhi, highlighted the growing hostility between the new and mainstream media. He was followed by Viewspaper Founder Shiv Bhaskar Dravid spoke on the importance of media as the fourth estate in the society; as one which was, at one time a watchdog to one that had today turned into the manipulator of public opinion. He did however, emphasis on new hope that was summoned by the arrival of new media. Next in line was Ms Jasmeen Patheja, a fellow at Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, who talked of her project ‘Blanknoise’ that addressed issues of sexual harassment in public places from off line to on line. The second session; ‘The Emergence of the Web as a Medium for Branding and Marketing’ that began post lunch was initiated by Blogworks CEO and Founder Rajesh Lalwani. He spoke of social media and how the public was publishing content and not merely consuming it which had made media a level play field. He also mentioned changing preferences and clutter in the media that marketing needed to direly address. This was followed by Rashmi Dhanwani, Manager, Media and Internet, Breakthrough who brought in a social awareness message into the scene. Talking about human rights violations and cultural relativism, she told of how Breakthrough campaigned about human rights issues with an example of the “Bell Bajao (Ring the Bell)” campaign against domestic violence. Namit Bimbhat, CEO – Switch Media, the third in line, focused on the evolving face of online video and global learning and relevance for India. He emphasized on the opportunities for video enablement like education institutes, destination portals, travel portals, radio stations, broadcasters and publishers. The fourth speaker of the session was J. Mahadevan, Vice President, Bharatmatrimony.com who talked about engaging with cyber users in the simplest way possible; thus focusing on matters of interest and navigation and usability. The last speaker for the session Atul Chitnis, Senior Vice President, Geodesic Information Systems, spoke of the business of open source. He said that in today’s changing world everything was based on open source software citing examples of an e-book, a multi-media player, an Apple iPod and a mobile phone. Both sessions ended with a question and answer session with the audience Issues of privacy, plagiarism, clutter, popularity, call-to-action were discussed between the lay men; us students and those who were skilled craftsmen at harnessing the power of the cyber media.