They do listen!!

Saw this conversation on the Intel Software partner program Facebook page

Surely... sometimes it comes as a surprise that brands do listen, mostly because for so long we have been accustomed to the unidirectional manner of brand communication. However, although surprises, these are definitely the nice ones.

What an Idea!! - How brands are using Ideation Communities

Background: Ideation communities are platforms where customers can post news, stories, ideas, case studies etc and other people can rate, vote for the best ideas, comment and share ideas etc. This is more sort of like a simple Digg.com models where people submit news, community curates ( votes) the best news which is showcased on the homepage.
Ideation communities are a people centric way of carrying the brand message. It is an open platform for people to talk about brand or related businesses. But unlike typical communities or social networks the focus is more on content consumption, curation ( rate/vote/ comment) and creation rather than connecting consumers or building relationships among them.
It will be interesting to see how many popular brands have used such ideation communities:

Starbucks: My Starbucks idea is one of the most popular ideation communities. The agenda is simple. The community members submit ideas on what they would want from Starbucks and others vote and comment upon the ideas they like. By the end of the day, Starbucks has the most popular, democratically decided ideas for its brands. How this benefits Starbucks is that this community automatically positions Starbucks as a brand that is all ears to its costumers which is great for any services company. Secondly it has a platform where people repeatedly come to submit ideas, comment and have conversations, that is better than any marketing campaign. Thirdly through this platform the company knows who are its biggest fans and evangelists and it knows whom to go to for positive advocacy.
Starbucks has put in a lot of effort to showcase how it is taking care of the ideas, which in fact has been the core to the success of this community. My Starbucks idea has a 'Ideas in action' blog where they talk about the ideas that have been brought into action. They also have a leader board to recognize its most active members.

Dell: Surely Dell learnt it the hard way, but then Dell Ideastorm is some of the benchmark examples of brands using social media. Like my Starbucks Idea, Dell Ideastorm is also about the ideas for Dell services and products. The good thing is Dell has sustained this community and nurtured it with time by adding small timely campaigns to it. Presently I see them running 'Storm Sessions'.Many companies like Best Buy and Hindustan Times have tried to model their social business strategies along the same lines.
Dell has also used such Ideation platform to run periodic social media contest campaigns to promote and generate buzz on some issues. Dell Go Green and Dell Social Innovation are example of such periodic Social Media campaigns. ( As a disclaimer, I work for the firm that planned Dell Go Green )

Intuit: Intuit, the financial & accounting software company is an interesting example where an ideation community was developed to woo not end consumers but small businesses. The Intuit small business community is an ideation platform for businesses to share stories of success and business ideas and case studies to the community.How Intuit is doing it differently is that this community also showcases the full Intuit shop, intuit products, services and solutions etc. Also there are periodic campaigns and contests like 'Business Grant Contests'. This also helps the company position itself as a supporter to small businesses in helping them grow and bring ideas into action. Some other B2B ideation communities/ contests have been built by Intel, Nokia, Tata NEN etc

Idea Cellular: In India, the telecom company Idea has and ideation platform which is although not a community ( that is it does not have profile or relationships) but it is a good beginning. What is interesting about this platform is that it is engaging customers around  the ideas for brining change in India, which in itself is a good social object ( a lifestyle/ passion/ cause which is the core theme around which a community talks) for any community. A similar campaign was run by change.org around asking the US citizens to submit the ideas for change in America.

Conclusion: Ideation communities are a good way to make your business social. You can use them to get customer ideas for your brand, thoughts around a cause or a passion core to your brand, generate buzz through user generated ideation contests, crowd source around important objectives etc. Surely, you would need to incentivize the social behavior among consumers which mainly depends on what core theme you ask this community to ideate upon, how engaging the community is, inbuilt rewards and reputation systems etc.

Why I do what I do (for a living)

This is a question many people ask me or at least might like to ask me. If you look at the typical break-up of jobs from a college like IIT Delhi, you will see major chunks going into core engineering, banking, consulting, analytics, software and a very small fraction getting into marketing. Even a smaller fraction gets into start-ups as a fresh recruit. In fact start-ups are usually also associated with those who are not able to get a job anywhere else!

So what am I doing in a social business strategy firm? And why should anybody looking for a serious career in marketing and brand management look for a job in social media?

To address these questions, let me first explain what a social business strategy firm like mine does. A social business strategy firm builds a brand's presence on social web ( i.e. web 2.0). So apart from the general forms of social media that we see everyday like Facebook/ twitter/ LinkedIn, a social business strategy firms tries to establish a sustainable presence for its clients by building and nurturing community platforms for the client's prospects and customers in a way to meet the client's business needs and objectives. Hence although this is a solutions industry where there are mostly projects and consulting assignments, there are tremendous scope for understanding and learning marketing:

1) Overall presence: Although companies use a social web presence for purposes more than just marketing like support, research, ideation, CRM, attracting talent or even creating the core product ( news and media industry), however I think a presence in any form can be attributed to marketing the brand in some way or the other. Since here it is about establishing the brand's social web presence, any sort of effort will have an effect on how people perceive the brand and hence is a part of company's marketing.

2) Sustainable communities and not one time campaigns: As I must have mentioned earlier that the real value of any investment into social media is in building something that you can sustain and nurture with time. As compared to traditional social media agencies, in social business strategy firms the focus is into building these sustainable long term engagement with brands where you are on the same note as the client's marketing team in understanding their business problems and coming out with solutions.

3) Defining a new type of offering in India: For me the best offering from this job came as the opportunity to learn something that so less people know about at least in India. You get ( and in fact need) to research so much into this field that at a very young age you get the confidence to preach others how they should go ahead with their businesses on social web. Looking at the fact that most of the people working in this field are pretty young, entering this field at the right time can help one build thought leadership at a young age.

4) Get a taste of different industry sectors: Social Business Strategy is more like a solutions industry than a services industry. So one day you are understanding a beverage company's business problem and the next day you are doing the same for banks, NGOs, technology, consumer durables, automobile etc companies. Likewise you get insights into business and marketing practices of different industry sectors.

5) Generate a new perspective for brand building: When I learnt brand management, none of the many books and resources I researched talked constructively about building a brand based on what a customer wants it to be or what the customer wants from it. All talked about creating the right brand identity, right brand personality etc to communicate itself with the ultimate goal to generate awareness; basically the right ways to broadcast themselves to their customers/prospects. However at none of the resources I got to read how should a brand be built in an ecosystem where broadcasting no longer works ! ( due to the availability of social tools )
Interestingly, when I first studied Brand Management, I never bothered about it! But now I see that many brands are increasingly becoming concerned with the shift of power from the organization to the customer, and many of them are thinking of different ways of sustaining or building brands. Many companies like Dell and Starbucks have successfully shown that this is possible.

I hope the above mentioned reasons would help marketing enthusiasts and freshers from colleges like IITs to look into a career in social business strategies or at least explain it to some why I chose  it. And by the way... it also pays well :)

Learnings from the 2020 Social workshop on personal branding

Its is great to be a part of an organization that encourages its employees to build a personal brand. And its even great to be a part of an organization and working with people who have successfully implemented this mantra in their life.

I began writing in 2007 as a society humor blog since I thought that as I have nothing else to write that people would like to read and moreover as humor sells, it is a good starting point. Then 2 years later when I started working at 2020 Social and as my worked involved a lot of research in Social Media, I realized that probably I should write about social media too as I have a lot to say about it. Hence started the dilemma between writing what I wanted to write ( Society Humor) and what I was good at ( brands, marketing and social media) because of the obvious reasons of working in a social business strategy firm and having authored a Brand Management Textbook.

Typically I should have chosen one of them long ago because writing about society humor and marketing would be confusing to anybody. It is difficult for anybody to digest, " He is a social media guy writing serious stuff and also a funny guy writing random stuff". But I did not want to part away with making fun of people, one reason also being that any typical funny blog posts on this blog generated much more comments than a social media blog which I wrote then on my company blog. So then I thought of Barista, and the way they sell food ( sandwiches, submarines, lasagnas etc) but effectively branding themselves as a beverage ( and that too coffee) company. The learning was, market your USP and keep the additionals inside the shelf. Hence this blog became a place for "Social Media, Marketing & other random stuff" where essentially the social media part was highlighted and the other funny posts were kept in another category tab.

But then yesterday in the 2020 Social Salon Saturday workshop I learnt that a) I am not Barista and b) One needs to choose a very niche thin segment of workspace and try to build a personal expertise brand there.Also that the best time to develop a personal brand was 20 years ago and the next best time is now!  So it appears that it is time to make a choice whether I want to write the random funny stuff that I like to write or whether I want to write the stuff which actually adds value to me in the domain related to my work.

Moreover over the time I have realized that I always had so much to say about marketing and social media but never really seriously thought about putting anything more than my research on this blog. So as a note to myself, let me remember this day as the day I chose to write about marketing and social media than writing about society humor. Maybe its high time that I grow up!

How to make e-commerce a social activity

Background: Purchase has for long been considered a social activity and often leverages conversations. Recommendations and reviews by a friend or a third party are often very helpful in making purchase decisions. It is interesting to see how some online shopping and e-commerce platforms have leveraged social web into converting a whole shopping experience into a social activity.
Some of the interesting social features that I came upon can be categorized as below:

At the initial levels of these social engagements are websites having ratings & reviews features where users can review the product databases, rate the products which can be compared by the viewers using comparison engines. Then there are websites having comment sections for conversations regarding the products, other member's review etc. People can also add products to their 'wishlists' so that they can remember and let other see what are they planning to buy next.Amazon makes very good use of these review and rating features for its vast product database.
On the next level of social engagement architecture are product aggregation websites where the focus is on aggregating products from various sources and getting the members to recommend or review the product. These websites can cater to niche segments like shopstyle which aggregates fashion products from various sources and  lets its members curate the aggregated products. There are also social commerce websites like thisnext where the members themselves submit products from various other e-commerce websites and others curate ( rate, vote, review it) them. Hence such platform give people the opportunity to discuss products belonging to e-commerce websites which do not use such social applications. To add to this list, there are platforms like deals plus where instead of best products, the best deals and offers are featured.
Moving forward there are social commerce platforms with a special focus on community features. So social commerce communities like Kaboodle have people submitting products from various sources but then there are also profile, relationships and interactions among these members resulting in better social engagement. Similarly crowdstorm is architectured to let the community choose product for its members. Wishpot is a social commerce community focused on members and wishlists. So you can see what your friends are buying, help them out with their wishlists, see the most wished products. etc. Ebay has created product neighborhood groups ( like art, video games etc.) and leveraged these evangelist groups to drive purchases.
Then there are communities like product wiki, which is a wiki for product information and ratings. In Zlio members can get their own online store, showcase articles from zlio directory, promote products and earn purchase commission.Many social commerce platform also run periodic UGC campaigns and tactical programs to generate buzz and traffic. Woot for instance keeps doing such contests and campaigns.
Many of these platforms also have good integrations with social networks like facebook, twitter etc to carry the feed activity to their user's friends and social network. Wishpot, productwiki have some good facebook and twitter integration. Ebay has an application for showcasing your favorite items on ebay to your network.
Acknowledgments: Special thanks to mohit for making all the research easy

Ascending a descending escalator

So the e-mail that I sent to my office colleagues on a November morning read like this: 

Dear all,
I fell down the stairs and hurt my knee badly. The doctor has recommended 2-3 days of bed rest. Would be working from home till then.
Regards
Achintya

Although I actually had fallen from stairs, I actually had hurt my knee and was on bed rest, I knew that this information was slightly different from what really had happened...
The previous evening I was rushing my way in a mall to a store which I knew was going to close soon. I had one more floor to climb when I saw that the only thing separating me and the store was an escalator. The only problem was that it was moving down and I had to climb up. Generally each descending escalator is coupled with an ascending one. In this case it was a few meters away. Then suddenly I found a voice in me asking me to climb up the descending thing. That voice convinced me that I had already done it once and I can do it again. So I started doing the impossible, I started climbing up that thing. And as some witnesses state I fell twice, hurt the same knee twice by the escalator edge , made a fool of myself in the mall.... but ultimately I did it, I climbed the escalator.

And then later when I told this story to other people, almost everyone convinced me that it was a pretty difficult thing to do. And I found that they were right because of two reasons:
1) The very fact that you are climbing up a descending thing, so you have to be faster than the speed with which it is going down.
2) In an escalator the height of each step is not equal and is different at different periods in the whole cycle. So if you see, step size is smaller in the beginning, then it gets bigger and then get small again when you reach the end. That increases chances of toppling. 

So even though I ended up with an injured knee, some long lectures from friends and limped for the next 10 days, I was happy that I did that thing and that I completed whatever crazy feat I was trying to do. So much so, that I decided to do it again the next time but without falling. So the top '5 things in my wishlist before I turn 28' looked something like this:
1) Rock climb at Grand Canyon
2) Spend a month long holiday in Mediterranean
3) Make enough money to spend a month long holiday in Mediterranean
4) Get a job where I can get a month long holiday to spend it in Mediterranean
5) Climb up descending escalator without falling

So things started going fine again; my knee recovered; I stopped doing crazy stunts because I knew I had 4 more years to do them; and everything went fine until yesterday when I had the most terrible experience one could have in my situation...
So I was at Ansal  Plaza and as usual everything was going fine until I saw this guy trying to do the same thing that I did that day. He was climbing a descending escalator! And as I saw him struggle with the first few steps, I thought, Oh God, please don't make him fall. And as I saw him reach the last steps, I thought, Oh God, please make him fall. But he ultimately did it.. he climbed up a descending escalator!
And more thing I might have missed upon... that guy must have probably been some 65 years in age.

So ultimately it sucks to suck at something and then get to see the last man you expected on the planet to do it. But then you never know, someone might be fulfilling his '5 things to do before I turn 65' wishes! (Did the escalator at Ansal's moved slower than the one in the mall where I fell down ??)

Prologue

Some time a year back I thought of writing my second play. Second play because a year before the year I thought of writing my second play, I had helped this guy write a play for our hostel entry to the inter hostel play competition. However it didn't turn out that well, and the reason that came out from a mutual discussion later, was because I wanted a funny play and he wanted something philosophical and we ended up mixing the two :)

So I thought the best way to learn something is to do it yourself and hence I decided to write this play some time back. Then things kept on pending and I was successfully able to convince my self that I did not have time for these random experiments. However then work life started and I realized that I at least have the late evenings to myself which can be devoted to such arbitrary things.

Also I have thought to this play a kind of a social media experiment. I have decided to write this play in blog entries. I will also like to take help from my readers ( whatever small numbers manage to fall upon this blog) to decide the course of the story. This can be done through polls and comments. So everyday almost everyday most of the days I will try to update this story. Probably each post can be like a scene.

Now we begin with the most difficult part, the central theme and the core story. Without thinking much, let me keep this as a story of a balcony belonging to a house shared by two guys. These guys do separate jobs but then often find themselves chatting in this very balcony after the days long work. And hence the title of the play: The Balcony


The reason for writing a play about a house balcony is that I always feel balcony is a best place to observe the world (after facebook). You see so many unknown people and so many unknown faces with each  face having a different story. And ofcourse as you can just see them and not hear them, you interpret these stories in your own way. There are other benefits too but then I won't like people to get judgemental.So I hope people enjoy the upcoming posts on the play: The Balcony

Next post: The Characters

How are banks, financial services leveraging social media

I was reading the latest blog post on 2020 Social blog by mohit on Social Community efforts by banks and financial institutions and realized that I might have something interesting to add here. In my view the thing worth noticing about the social media efforts by these BFSI institutions is the difference in the way their communities are architectured when they are targeting different segments of customers.
Background: When it comes to investing & saving ones own hard earned money , people prefer researching, asking others, going for tried and tested methods and moreover playing safe. Investments and savings are something that are although done by almost everyone but then not everybody has an expertise and hence people generally prefer taking expert advice, ask peers, research, read news just to keep themselves informed and updated. Many banks, financial institutions, trading and brokerage companies have realized this behaviour and are using a social web presence to solve their problems.
Scope: In this post I have covered three types of social media efforts by the BFSI sector. The first category represents the social media efforts by banks & financial services towards personal banking, the second category of efforts are towards targeting corporates, SMEs & entrepreneurs while the third is towards targeting the investors into stocks to make them smart traders. You will see a fundamental difference in the way these institutions use social web to target these three different categories.
Illustration:
a) Social media efforts towards personal banking: A large no. of BFSI institutions have realized that providing a platform to people to talk and learn about their business needs helps them multifold. Firstly, it helps them position themselves as an institution which cares to enable people to make smart savings and investments. Secondly, it helps them listen relevant conversations and establish conversations and relationships for business development. Thirdly, it helps them understand the current needs and feedback of customers which is like the best market research ever. In this a very inspiring effort has been made by the Young&Free Alberta community powered by the Servus Credit Union to give a voice to the young generation. Y&F launches annual contest where the community chooses its spokesperson. This spokesperson then participates in the community as Y&F ambassador and educates and converses with others through blogs, videos etc. Y&F also oganizes many events for its commuity which include year round online contests and offline events. (For more details see mohit's post at 2020 Social blog).
ING Direct is also making several efforts in wooing savers on social web. They have a Saver's Blog and a community for publishing feel good news about markets and investment called Savings feel good. The news is either submitted from press or by community members. The community also runs timely contests to build interests.
Another interesting effort in this direction is by mint.com which is a maney management and budgeting software company. They have a tweet aggregator platform with tweets from various experts on savings, budgeting, retirement, loans etc.They also have an official blog on similar topics.
As you must have realized that all these communities are architectured around people expressing their financial needs and helping people make smart savings and gain important informations about investments.
b) Social media efforts for corporates, SMEs and entrepreneurs: In such efforts the focus is to help the SMEs and entrepreneurs network and gain valuable information and aid related to their business. For example the Visa Business Network helps you find out businesses in your locality, related vendors, partners, suppliers and customs. It also helps you discuss important information in your work related discussion group, set up business related goals and get help from others to achieve them. A possible goal can be 'to same some xy amount of money by year end. The person can get interesting article links from the community on savings. Or a goal can be 'to find business through referrals'

Effectively you can see that the aim of the community is to help businesses communicate, learn and network. It helps the financial institute powering the community listen about the financial needs and ideas among entrepreneurs. Also it sends across the message that the bank reaches out to help businesses which helps them bringing in more business. Amrican Express, HSBC and Bank of America also has similar business networks the details about which you can get from mohit's  last blog post
Another interesting effort here is by Kiva which is a one to one micro lending community where entrepreneurs submit their business idea. For this kiva partners with micro lending institutions. The community helps the entrepreneurs reach financial targets.
c) Social media efforts focussing on stocks and trading: There are a bunch of trading communities which are helping people become smart investors, invest in right direction, communicate with expert and get relevant market information. Also these communities help professional traders gain reputation as influencers. A good example is Covester where members can follow other members investments, read and write information blogs and if they see a trader making very good investments, the can align their investments with him and give him a share in profits for sharing his data.

There are other online invester's communities like Zecco, Moneyrec, Stockhouse and Trade2win. Tipd gives a stock and financial news aggregation platform and news community. People consume, curate and create news articles on a model similar to digg.com. The value for these stock related conversations can be estimated from the face that certain corporates like Berkshire Hathaway have discussion forums for their own stocks.
Visiting these communities are worth it. We would love to have some such India focussed communities by large banks as there are many people here who because of dearth of good investing knowledge  and lack of trust on private banks go for safest government investments like FDs and RDs giving very low returns. Also there are many who do not understand the financial jargons of the large investment products given by these banks. Banking communities can definitely help there.

5 things you need to know before making a direct call to an interested prospect

In my company we get 3 kinds of clients/propects. The first are the large B2C targeting clients which are multinational technology, FMCG, Automobile, Beverages companies etc planning to establish a presence on social web. The second kind of clients are the large B2B targeting companies in similar sectors. The third kind are the small and meduim sized companies, startups and miscellanous sectors (which sometimes include SaaS, movie directors, game developer companies, product marketplaces etc). These three sectors effectively look for presence in social media for purposes like marketing, operations (support, innovation, increasing productivity etc), establishing relationships among a target group of clients, vendors & prospects,  HR (enterprise 2.0 and internal collaboration) and similar others.

As I look after the third category where CXOs, promoters of such startups either contact us via mail/ contact form or simply call us; I have learnt that these cases involve a lot of direct calling to understand business needs and objectives before taking things forward to meetings where there is a higher investment of time and resources. If you are looking after client engagement/pitches in social business consulting you get to face the following challenges:

1) Who is the prospect: Whether the client heads the business or is a middle manager. Is he a 55 year old coming from a company culture that might demand to be called 'sir' or whether he is a 25 year old entrpreneur guy who might be thinking that since you do something online you might come pretty cheap. ( As a disclaimer a large part of things we do have online-offline integrations)  This can anyways be found out from basic searches, linkedin profiles etc.

2) Where is the prospect: You never know how much the client knows about social media and social technologies. He might be following your company/consultant blogs and completely understand what you do or he might be very naive to social media and end up asking you to explain facebook!!  But then most of these interests fall under four categories depending upon how aware they are about the business objectives and benefits of a social web presence:

3) What do you present: Depending on #1 & #2 how do you present yourself. What do you tell the client? What do you need to understand from the him/her and what are the smart questions you need to ask.

4) Where do you take it from here: How do you take this forward from this first direct call. What is the next best step?

A a disclaimer I am sure that there cannot be a rulebook to guide through a client/prospect conversation. Also it is best that each client engagement manager uses his/her own way of contacting. However there can always be a mental checklist so as to find out where are you on the conversation.

I generally follow a BNPO model which is sort of inspired by the POST model described in Groundswell by Charlene Li (of course there the reference is slightly different). Here BNPO stands for Business, needs, people and objectives. The model is described below:

a) Business: In most of the cases you will be having a fairly good idea about the client's businesses before the call. This is about asking those details which generally are not clear but are required in our business:

i) What are the client's products/services

ii) What are the target clients/customers

iii) How have they targeted them in the past

iv) How do they position their brand/product (current campaigns they are running/planning to run)

v) What are their major cost & revenue heads in the business

b) Needs: This is mostly the trickiest and the most important part of the call. In many cases if the prospect is aware about social media and the benefits of a social web presence then he knows what are the business needs that can be satisfied. But there are some cases where the prospect also says, 'We hear a lot about social media and plan to explore it for our business. How should we do it?' Generally the needs can be derived from the various business objectives we explore in social business strategies:

i)  Reducing costs: Try to understand if the client spending too much on customer support, on market research for understanding the customer opinion, on PR agencies to generating a good word.

ii) Increasing sales/promotion: What fraction of the prospect's target customers are on social web, does the brand exclusively target youth, what is the existing position of their social media efforts, what are the problems they are facing in their present marketing campaigns.

iii) Increasing relationships: Is the client focussing on a niche sector of industry as clients/vendors/partners/customers. Can providing them a community or a business network  for engagement help . Do they need leveraging conversations on such communitites.

iv) Increasing innovation & ideation: Is the client looking for more ideas for his brand or product, a repositioning or customer feedback. Does it position itself as a customer focussed company.

v) Increasing internal collaboration: Are there internal communication, workflow, employee moral or productivity problems.

Of course you have to get a feel of these problems from the conversation. You won't be ticking a checklist of these large number of probable situations :)

c) People: When you know the needs you will know the people to target. Understand where are these people on social web. Are they just surfing random sites, do they have their own blog, are they on facebook/twitter/Linkedin/forums etc

d) Objectives: This is different from needs as in if needs are the starting point of your conversation with this prospect, the objective is the final outcome you achieve from the project. So for example the need might be to position your brand as a youth savvy consumer company but the objective might turn out to be a contest module running series of user generated contests targeting youth.

This came out in a discussion with Dave Evans. Generally it is difficult to understand objectives in the first call itself. In some cases when the client is clear about the objectives then you can directly move on to preparing the proposal. Or if not, then set up a meeting or the next call with more relevant people. If the prospect knows that you understand his/her needs, any time invesment is worth it.

5) Am I missing something...?:  Sometimes it might be a good idea to know the budgets or whether there is a timeline. Also you might prefer not to make the call with your company folks around just to insure if in case you completely screw up :D

What's happening in Health 2.0

While researching on health and wellness communities I fell upon various platforms worth of interest. It is fascinating to see that people understand that with changing times and health demands people are more interested in discussing out their health problems, helping each other referring the best practitioners and using similar social tools for health related purposes. When research shows that a majority of people seek the initial help of internet for any health research or related problems, it makes sense to make the entire health research and discussions social which is popularly known as Health 2.0.
There are a vast number of health related platforms running on the social web. On a broad scale they can be grouped as Health 2.0 communities, Health Applications and Health online tactical programs. I have discussed each of these platforms in detail below:
1) Health 2.0 communities: There are a bunch of Health 2.0 communities following roughly the same engagement architecture for the members. There are influencers (doctors, health experts, coaches, sportpersons) writing blogs and news articles on various health related topics, support forums on various topics various the influencers are participating and providing expert advice. The community members can interact with the experts on their blogs and discuss and find help for their problems on the support forums. Some such popular communities are Web MD (see pic) and Aarp.org's health page. There are various other communities like Steady Health using news aggregation models similar to digg.com where members submit their health related news and others curate (rate/vote) the news articles to get the most popular news on the homepage. In India similar health 2.0 communities like Bolohealth are gaining interest. Similarly Quaker oats too has health related discussion forum on its Good morning heart community.

Apart from these independent health and wellness communities, there are some hospitals powering such communities too. Mayoclinc for example supports blogs and stories from patients, relatives, friends and staff of Mayo hospital at sharing.mayoclinic.org
2) Health Applications: There are many interesting health applications on the social web. One such application is Patients like me where you can enter various communities, feed your personal health data and find patients like you and get relevant help. Another interesting health application is by Gold's gym (see pic) which is running of facebook. Here the members can set their personal health goals ( like losing weight etc.), find people like them, recruit supporters and post their progress. Other members can provide support and comment on their progress. In India saffola ( an Indian edible oil company) is currently running a health application where people can set up goals for better living, find people like them and get health tips.

3) Online tactical programs:  These include short user generated contests or advocacy programs run on the social web. An example of such a user generated contest to promote health was run by Gimme20 health community where participants were asked to submit their fitness stories in form of pictures, text or videos to win prizes. Mayoclinic Hospital runs an advocacy program where the patients can submit stories about their experiences with mayo clinic. Similarly another hospital chain Porter Adventis Hospital allows members to start free 'carepage' which are personalized web pages by/to patients and their families /friends to provide emotional and moral support.

Shifting Houses

So we shifted our house from the awesome Sarita Vihar colony to super costly Safdarjung Enclave area. The reason for the shift was that I wanted a house so near to my office that I can walk there everyday. Hence this new house is 5 minutes from my office, 25 minutes from my gym and 30 minutes to IIT (all walking) which are practically 99% of the places I spend my weekdays. However living so near to office has its own disadvantages like you cannot get out of home late and sms your boss, 'stck in a bad jam.. will b late'. Moreover such localities are very costly.
However for me the entire shifting episode was a very big learning for one reason that it was the first time I did such massive packing, house hunting and shifting together when generally I suck at all the three things. But in this case as my flatmates ( who were also my batchmates ) were helping me in the entire shifting + packing, I got insights into certain 'shifting & packaging' personas which I have mentioned below:

1) The packing 'champions': These people are so comfortable with packing and shifting that it makes you feel as if they have injected themselves with Monica Geller harmones. Such people take charge of the entire packing and know exactly what is to be done at what time. In this case one of my roomies not only did most of the packing but took care of all bills, disposing unrequired furniture, security money, net connection etc. etc. etc.etc.

2) The packing 'daunteds': These people literally suffer from packing phobia and as you can see in the piture might even forget to take a bath in the entire shifting trauma. In my case I literally kept on delaying the packing till the last moment and moreover when now I am in my new house, I dont feel like unpacking. (I just realized that I might prefer buying some basic stuff again rather than unpacking)

3) The packing 'smarts': These are rarest (and ofcourse the coolest) of the breed who will get up at 1 in the afternoon on the d- day, start packing when everybody has finished and literally outsource the shifting to the other flatmates (no costs attached of course). In this case the second biggest shock (and I will come to the biggest shock later) of the whole packing was that this flatmate of mine litreally had twice the amount of luggage the rest of us combined had and yet he was not half as bothered.


 So, all packed and done we waited for the truck which finally arrived one hour late, uploaded our stuff in another half and stood on our colony footpath for another hour and half for the 'Delhi no-entry' to open and finally travelled 12 kms in the same truck to reach our dream house which suddenly (and this was the biggest shock) started appearing an inhabitable place to live. The same house which looked fine earlier now seemed like an inhospitable and depressing jailhouse. I dont know what had made me finalize it (maybe because we had 3 day to be thrown out and I have this gorgeous habit of postponing everything to the last moment, which has actually become my core competency, but about that in some later blog). So we entered the house at 9:30 at night and at 9:32 at the same night I had decided to start looking for new houses. (Actually we got that house through a contact and hence luckily there was no brockerage involved. Moreover it will be easier to find better houses in the same area now that we have moved here and I can give ample time to the broker to look for better houses. Finally, now I know what all NOT to do while shifting houses and the first mistake came at very low costs).
And the best thing out of all is that now when I anyway have to move in the next couple of days, I don't need to unpack!!

Hi

Hello and welcome to the revamped 'Thoughtspot version 2.0'. However this time it is just called 'Keeping it simple' for the reason that thoughtspot was more about my takes on society and people around me however 'Keeping it simple' is about anything which I think is worth sharing on the blogosphere.
The main reasons for changing the blog were:

1) It gives me more freedom to write about the stuff I want to write without getting into issues like whether this would do any good to the image of my blog. As in on thoughtspot I did not feel like writing about marketing or social media. On 'keeping it simple' I don't need to think about it.

2) I changed my house, my gym, my net connection and my bai [:P] .. and hence I thought that it would be a good idea to change the looks of the blog too.

3) Change is good

You will find the following changes in the blog. Those who are here for the first time might like to know a little bit about me:
1) This is a purchased domain instead of a blogspot domain. Hence the web address is http://achintyagupta.com instead of http://achintya85.blogspot.com
2) Here you can read stuff of your choice from the tabs. As in those you want to read about society humor might just like to go to the 'random' tab. Whereas people interested in social media or marketing might click on other tabs. Hence I wont get people telling me that I have started writing about social media which they don't understand.
3)This is a new template, some new widgets and a new name

Moreover since I have not put up any proper post for the last couple of months, let me tell you what I have been up to since last 6 months.
1) So I passed out from IIT and joined an engineering and constructional major. Realized the job is not for me and left it in a record 30 days ( I don't think anybody has ever done that so soon post joining that company) I am not proud of it but then sort of keeping up the legacy of doing everything in style.
2) I was picked up by a super cool business strategy firm in Delhi. I am working with some awesome people and great projects. So mostly we are buried in work up to neck but then we also have a lot of fun. There is multi-cultural environment with people with British, Texan, south Indian and killer rock star accents, which is turning out to be a big problem for me as in I dont know what hybrid accent will I pick up hanging out with them.
Recently we launched a 'biggest loser contest' where the employee reducing the highest amount of 'his burden' from earth ( and it has to be more than 10 kgs) in three months gets a return trip to Bangkok. I was honorable outcasted from the competition but then I am fighting for my rights.
3) Life has been good since returning back to Delhi. There have been some awesome parties in the last few months with office colleagues where you realize that the sex ratio of IIT (which was 8:1 male:female) has suddenly been reversed. It's like God realized his mistake in the last 5 years and is making up for it.
4) I am travelling more and not just to the market outside IIT gate. So there have been trips to Corbett, Old Delhi and around. Not much to brag about but then then I am ensuring that on weekends I on not at my home.
5) Moreover when your work is to manage clients and projects, one always gets to meet new and some very smart people. So the last couple of months also included talking to movie directors, gaming companies, NGOs, entrepreneurs for business reasons.
6) And then how can my life be without goof ups. So the last 6 months also saw trying to ascend a descending escalator and getting hurt and remaining on bed rest for 5 days; telling an IIT senior '02 batch pass out about life @ IIT in a party (I did not know he was from my college until he told me) and then of course being seen with somebody twice on consecutive weekends by the same person in my office which I thought would definitely trigger some office gossip but then luckily it did not (looks like nobody cares!)
7) And finally I shifted my house near office so these days I walk to work. I have not bought a TV yet so that I go out more and blog more.

How-to run an advocacy program on social web

Background: Advocacy programs provide a win-win situation for any brand or product on social web. On one hand it lets you recognize that set of evangelists who would be ready to promote your brand/product free of cost and on the other hand it leads effective promotion of your offerings to your consumers. We at 20:20 Social have researched some of the most effective advocacy programs to seek out varous ways in which these advocacy programs on social web can be modeled.
Scope: In our research we have focussed ourselves in studying how advocacy programs can take consumers and visitors across different levels of Ladder of Engagement. The Ladder of Engagement involves identifying various levels at which the consumers ( or site visitors/partners/employees ) can be engaged. It begins with content consumption, then moves on to content curation ( rating, voting, commenting ) , content creation, collaboration and then subsequently to trial, purchase and finally to evangelizing and recommendation( hereby mentioned as advocacy) to others.
Our research on some of the most popular Advocacy programs shows that advocacy can be used to transition consumers across the following levels:
1) Advocacy to content consumption and curation
2) Advocacy leading to content consumption, curation and even creation
3) Advocacy leading to product trial and purchase
4) Advocacy leading to content collaboration
Advocacy to content consumption and curation:

One of the most effective strategies of modelling an Advocacy program on social web is to find a bunch of evangelists who appreciate your brand/product and are ready to write good about them. These evangelists can be popular bloggers or influencers having a lot of connections on social web. A good example of such a program is Microsoft MVP ( most valued professional ) program where the company recognizes talented influencers in the field who write about the businesses Microsoft is related to. Another case where influencial bloggers were leveraged for brand advocacy was in the marketing campaign of Chrystler's Dodge Grand Caravan where the company loaned the car to influential mom bloggers for a week for trial run, which triggerred a lot of conversation in the blogospere. Similarly Redwood Creak ( An Ameircan wine making company ) has created a community platform around passion for outdoor adventures and recognizes wine evangelists known as ‘The Trailblazers’ as their official brand ambassadors who talk about wines and adventures on the company blogs and forums. Sometime influencers need not be popular and advocacy can be leveraged from consumers who have a strong social network. Something similar was done by MTV in its 'Elite Influencer Network Contest' where members were asked to promote their obsession for the MTV culture on their blogs, websites, social networks like Facebook, YouTube and through this MTV tried to find out the most influential individuals on social web. These contest winners will now participate in further upcoming events.
Advocacy leading to content consumption, curation and even creation

Advocacy programs can even be modelled to take consumers upto creation level on the ladder of engagement, which can be used to find your next set of evangelists. A good example of such a tactic is HP 31 days of Dragon contest which is a user generated contest lanched by the company for the promotion of its HP HDX dragon notebook. The company found 31 popular blogger evangelists/ websites who created their own User Generated Contests on their personal webpages. Thus the task of planning, designing and promoting the contest was taken up by the participating evangelist websites and involved taking the consumers across various engagement levels. Another example is walmart's eleven moms community which has the popular mom bloggers blogging about money saving ways ( which is core to the brand value itself ) and the consumers interacting with them and sharing their own money saving tips etc.
Advocacy leading to product trial and purchase
Many of the cases we researched showed brands leveraging consumer and evangelist advocacy for product trial and purchase. The Indian gaming website zapak.com uses a facebook application to give the users an option to recommend the game they are playing to their freinds on facebook and also embed it in your personal webpage. Similarly the cleaning products company 'Method' launched a campaign called 'people against dirty' which aimed at finding product appreciators who were ready to share their experience of the brand with others.
Advocacy leading to content collaboration
Now the reason I took up this point last is because I am still not sure about this, but product help communities like that of Intuit can qualify as advocacy programs. This is because if somebody is ready to help you out with a solution on a product help community then that means a) he has already tried the product b) He finds the product interesting enough to make him participate on the community c) if in the future any other problem crops up then there would surely be more people like him to help you out with that product. If such a thing qualifies as advocacy then product help programs can be instrumental in collaborating efforts around a particular problem.

What's happening in social media on climate change

Background
I follow Indian Express and almost everyday when I pick up the morning daily I see something being written on Copenhagen 2009 summit. Then there was the Blog Action day on Oct 15, 2009 when thousands of bloggers wrote about climate change the same day. Hence no prizes for guessing but a lot is happening over environment in social and traditional media. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to see how specifically social media is helping us make our planet a greener place to live.

Scope
Honestly social web is seeing a lot of activities on climate change and a greener planet. There are a bunch of facebook apps, many websites and applications on organizing events and creating petitions, online communities targeting environment and wild life etc but I would specifically like to focus on social applications targeting aggregation of environment related news and influencer platforms. The reason for the preference is that some of the most popular efforts in social media for environment have gone in these two directions.

News Aggregation

Various websites are using different models for aggregating environemnt news. The most popular of them is using the digg.com model for aggregating news. Users bookmark the environement related news they like and others curate/vote for their favorite news. The most popular news gets features on the homepage. Ngopost.org is using this kind of model in India. Then there is care2.com which is also the largest environment promoting online community and uses this kind of aggregation model. Care2 in fact does a lot more than this. It has a online petition site where people can start their own petitions and sign the petitions they support. Members can donate, read expert's views on healthy living etc.

The other popular model is importing stories and news feeds from top news websites and blogs. Greenedia.com for example, aggregates blogs, podcasts, videos by experts on green living, climate change, global warming and other topics who have been vetted by Greenedia. Experts can submit their credential for contributing to the platform or users can suggest popular blogs to be tracked by Greenedia. Alltop.com is another popular website which uses this model for many topics like food, photography, health etc and it has a separate platform for aggregating news on climate change.

The third news aggregation model is something that was adopted by change.org for Blog action day where they asked everybody to register and write on the climate change. Presently their homepage features the link to the most popular web platforms that participated in the event and also gives links to all the participating blogs.

Influencer Platform

Influencer platform are a great way to generate opinions, gain traffic and trigger word of mouth. Presently the platform getting most attention and traffic is change.org which has an influencer platform called 'Changemakers'. Users can nominate influencial people whom they want to see as the changemakers and others vote for the nominees. The selected changemakers will then be invited to write on the platform and their opinions will be pushed through change.org's network of partners, bloggers and activists.

The other types of influencer platforms are ecorazzy which aggragates news about what celebrities are doing for environemnt. With news like 'Brand Pitt to donate various hats to charity' and 'Roger Moore continues his battle with the Foie Grass Industry', this brings another way of getting influencer's say. Similarly Huffington Post has a environemnt news category called 'Green' which showcases celebrities taking about various environment related issues.

Food, Air, Water and Internet

I remember a fine day in July 2004, when after spending some gruesome 20-25 minutes over the 45 kbps bsnl modem connection, I finally created a yahoo mail account and sent my first e-mail ever. This was not only my first rendezvous with electronic mail but also one of the first times I was learning something beyond Google.

Some 5 years later, here I am, working on a WiFi, being online 10-12 hours a day and working on probably the coolest internet tools. My typical work day starts with checking mails and ends with tweeting and facebooking. I blog, I read news online, I talk to friends through net, my entire worksheets and projects are managed online, I bank through net, pay my bills through net and even have my CEO and MD added to my facebook friends list!! The entire point is, what else in my life has EVOLVED so much as internet. I still watch the same TV channels, still hear to the same music bands, still like the same food and have not changed much as a person, but when it comes to internet, I see drastic difference in my online activity and behavior.However it''s not just me. The society I live in has grown to be increasingly net savvy and this trend is only increasing not only in depth ( that is the already net-savvy are becoming net-savvier) but also in breadth ( that is new people are joining the club). I see people stay online even when in office, not because they want to chat with people, but more because they don''t want to miss any mail, people''s status updates, comments etc. Moreover everyday I see more and more people responding to other people''s content, commenting and liking their updates, tweets or uploaded videos, meaning people around me are not only becoming net savvier but also becoming more social and more engaged.

So can me and the society around me manage without net? Surely, they can as they used to some 10 years ago, but then whole point is that they wont like it. The fact that even at its nascent of stages internet has roped in all of us, definitely it has a long way to go. Earlier people thought internet was just a means of getting information (webpages, googling etc.), so people thought, its great but then how many times during a day do I need to gather information? Then it became a mode of interaction ( e-mails, g talks and messengers), so people thought, that''s great, but how many people will I keep on interacting with? Then suddenly with gaming and downloading, it became a mode of entertainment, then it got integrated with our social lives ( through social networks) and work. And now it has given us a new way of expression where we don''t need traditional media to make our voice reach to the world.

So what''s the big deal about it? We all know that net is important. But what I am trying to highlight here is that if something is changing so fast around you, are you preparing yourself for it. Can you anticipate what it would grow into and what impact will it be having on you or your business by the time you would be celebrating your next birthday. You might be using it for checking mails or random search, but can you see it bringing money for you in the near future? Do you see it saving money for you or your time in the near future. Are you updated enough to what''s happening all around the world in your field because your client might be? Are you internet enabled enough to save his time. Are you networked enough? Are you able to maintain required relations because your competitors/contemporaries might be taking advantage out of theirs. Do you know what is being said about you/your brand in the web? Do you know with the world changing everyday, what will soon become your customers demand?

Since after all the endless questions that might have been asked and all the endless doubts people might have had for internet in India, there are just two answers: Yes!! It will grow and No! you can''t stay away from it.

My favorite print ad

This is one of my favorite ads. I mention it every time someone asks me my favorite print advertisement campaigns. This is one of the ads launched in the series of 'The power of knowledge' campaign by Economic Times. It's a very old ad and I remember my dad showing it to me when I was a kid. Probably it was the first time I must have noticed that a print ad might not be just about some actress saying 'this washing powder is good on my hands'. Although I must have seen many print ads later but this still fascinates me.

It's just another color!

Now before I actually ask you the question, I want to; let me tell you that although I have lived in Gujarat for a considerable amount of time, yet technically I have never lived 'enough' to form an opinion about the place and the society. I have spent a large slice of my teens here but since the last few years most of my visits to this state have been rather short and even when here, I have stayed all the time at my home and rarely tried to go out. So for the past 5-6 years, I have rarely been out enough to be able to observe or notice people so that I could ask you the question that I actually want to. Occasionally, on a brief visit to market or malls I used to get the suspicion but that, till now, was not substantial enough to ask you that question. Then fortunately I got a job here that made me stay in the state for around a month, and all the time I spent here, and all the people I saw here, I became more and more sure of asking you the question that I am actually about to ask you.....

What is with the men in the state of Gujarat and pink shirts!!......

....... They seem to be all over them. Among all the states that I have stayed ( and there are about 4-5 states where I have spent a considerable amount of time) nowhere have I seen the fascination for pink shirts more pronounced in men. In Gujarat you will meet men wearing pink shirts with white collar and sitting at the counter of a garments shop!! I was earlier working for this engineering and constructional major and was sent to their corporate office for training and the moment I used to enter the office, ( and believe me, I am not exaggerating ) I used to see all shades of pink shirts all around me. There would be a light pink shirt reading newspaper at the reception. Then there would be another reddish-pink shirt entering the office. You get into the canteen and you will see a pink striped shirt and a pink checked shirt eating food together only to be joined by a dark pink shirt carrying his food plate. Not only that, I also realized that there were people repeating the same pink shirt every 3-4 days, meaning either they loved them or had two of them!!

I remember going to a garment store in one of the popular malls in Vadodra and demanding an official shirt only to be surprised with being offered a shining pink. When I politely asked for another color ( and preferably a white or a light blue ), I was asked how many pink shirts do I have. I answered that I was unfortunate enough never to be tempted by it. So the shopkeeper asked me why don't I get a pink one. When I replied that I was not that desperate for a promotion from my boss to buy a pink shirt, the shopkeeper told me that this is Gujarat and yahan yeh sab color chalta hai. When I asked a 'pink-shirted' guy, why was he wearing a pink, he said he liked the color and had many more pink shirts and that even I should get some as the color would suit me ( wtf....!! ). When I asked a girl about the guys wearing pink here, she said she simply did not have an issue with it.

So the first thing is what is the problem? I have a friend who has interned in Germany and tells me that the guys there are so secure about their sexuality that they don't mind wearing pink. But here that is not the case. The whole point is that people here simply don't know!!

The second thing is why is it a problem and why am I being so fussy about a mega pink shirt bonanza proliferating in the state of Gujarat. So let me tell you, that anybody like me who has a sister studying in one of the premier fashion technology institutes in the country, better be aware of what he is wearing. In the year 2004 ( when I was supposedly innocent ), I had bought a Rs 900 redish-orangish shirt for myself ( OK.... It was pink! ) from a Delhi showroom. The first time I wore it was in front of my sister, which resulted in me being called 'Pinky-boy' the whole day with added suggestions that I should throw the shirt away. But unfortunately the 900 bucks made me ignore the suggestions and I again wore it to my college in Delhi. Whatever happened then would be difficult to explain in words but you can make sense from the fact that:
1) I had my class from 8 to 12 that day, so there were no chances of going back to hostel, changing the shirt and coming back
2) I never wore that shirt again.

So here I was looking for vengeance on a soul to take out my frustration. For years I searched for men whom I knew and had accidentally put on a pink shirt. But I found none in Delhi or in Mumbai or in Rudrapur or in Lucknow. And finally when I got a whole herd of pink shirt gujratis, there is no one to support me in making fun of them. In fact people think I am a freak making fun of their prestigious pink shirts.

On the whole the lesson learnt from the brief Gujarat stay was 'ignorance is bliss' since although any other guy at any other place would think more than twice before wearing a pink shirt, this pink parade is coming from a state having reported the highest number of extra marital affairs and establishment of condom vending machines during navratri. Hopefully one day I will see some of my IIT friends who are working in Gujarat or studying at IIM-A wearing pink. Finally we will have something more to learn from this place than money making and stock markets.

Back!!

2009 has particularly been a bad year for Thoughtspot. Although it gained tremendous hits ( more than the last two year traffic put altogether), but still only I have myself to blame for just 11 posts (and now 12) in the past 10 months. But there were reasons, which are sorted now and I think I would be in a position to give my time to writing.

To begin with, some of the best things that happened to me are over and one of them is my IIT stay, which I used to think was the driving force for all my blogs. Another was working for a 'youth centric online news channel' from which I have taken a break due to my Baroda stay. The point is, I used to think that my blogs were a result of the 'arbit- fun- filled' life I had been living for the past 5 years and as that got over so I would never have anything to write in my blogs. There was a time I was so convinced that I would fall short of new ideas, that I had planned to end this blog with my IIT stay!

However as I lately realized, that it was not the circumstances that had changed around me, maybe on some level, it was just me who had changed. And although I have no regrets, the sole point is I am feeling like writing once more. Once again this world has started appearing funny and once again the uncanny thought juggling in my mind has started resulting in weird stories and observations that I feel like penning down....

.... Once again there is so much to be written.

Just that this time there won't be any IIT girls to make fun of !!

But I promise I will write more often and Thoughtspot would retain its identity as a society humor. ( I had told some people that I might start writing about brands and marketing, but now I think why do that for free :) )

Vision of change II: Not just a vision anymore

The tortoise, winner of the race,
Stood proudly in the winner's place.
The moral of the story I'll say,
Slow and steady wins the day.

Almost everyone who knows V.I.S.V.A.S. (visionary initiative to sculpt a virtuous academic system) at IIT Delhi would like to thank the messy IIT reading room and the institute library that closed at at 6; which inspired the two IIT guys Vinayak Garg and Bhushan Shinde to start a social entrepreneurial venture called V.I.S.V.A.S. The idea was simple: Students join the initiative by bringing their problems in the academic system and together work out a solutions for it. Within no time the V.I.S.V.A.S. team changed the reading room outlook and convinced the IIT authorities to extend the library timings. But that was just the beginning for them because since then what started as a soc

ial entrepreneurship venture has now emerged as an NGO and is expanding in other Delhi colleges by starting V.I.S.V.A.S. chapters there.

About an year ago I had first written about this venture as I thought that a social entrepreneurhsip venture from an institute that is know for producing business magnets is worth getting inspired. An year later I called up Vinayak and his team for lunch to get a status check and found that the team had nothing to leave anybody dissappointed.

Everyone in IIT Delhi has seen V.I.S.V.A.S. building up its avenues from scratch and bringing very satisfactory improvements in their projects. All V.I.S.V.A.S. projects however are directed towards creating a better acedemic system which in fact is the niche of the organizations working model. In fact it is perhaps India's only student organization which encourages students to search problems in their own academic system and helps them to reach a solution. Notices Vinayak Garg,"Other NGOs work for the society and try to raise the bars. We at V.I.S.V.A.S. just do that for the academic system"
So why have an organization working for improving academic systems of institutes which have already established their reputation in academic brilliance like IITs? Replies Garg," Every academic institutes will have its own problems. What is different about the working of V.I.S.V.A.S. is that each project we take up has a core ideology behind it. We just try to solve the ideology, the problems get solved on their own." This in fact might be the reason why V.I.S.V.A.S. has gained so much popularity among student community speacially in I.I.T where the organization is helping out students in their every day academic problems. One of the very recent task accomplished by V.I.S.V.A.S. was the establishment of an online exam archive where students can download previous exam papers. Ankit, a third year student who has been working on the project since past one year puts the core philosophy behind the archive. "We established the archive not just because students can download previous years papers and get relevant questions but also because availability of an open online archive would force the faculty to test parameters like pracicality and applicability rather than rote slogging."

As far as the organizations progress is concerned, apart from establishing itself as an NGO, V.I.S.V.A.S. has slowly but steadily achieved great milestones. For example,during minor 1 examinations the online exam archive established by V.I.S.V.A.S. was accessed by some 650-700 students among around 1500 IIT students who gave the exam and thats a debut success rate of 50% . Their reading room and library initiative was recognized and awarded by the IITD alumni association. Another project in working is Droabe, which is a web based portal for educational institutes aimed at providing effective commuication between students. Pankaj, who is looking after the Droabe project puts it this way,"There was a need for an online notice board cum communication and news distribution channel for students. Droabe fulfills all these needs" In fact many other delhi institutes have shown interest in Droabe and no wonder all present energies of V.I.S.V.A.S. are being focussed on this dream project which will also mark the entry of this NGO in other Delhi colleges.

Although V.I.S.V.A.S. is just more than a year old, it has built a very solid student reputation, especailly in IIT. Presently it has some 40 working members from IIT itself along with others from various other college chapters. This year V.I.S.V.A.S. would be featured in 'IITD ke funde', an official institute booklet given to freshers to introduce them to IIT life.
However all this glory and success has been achieved through a lot of struggle specially as it requires a lot of investment of time, which in IIT can sometimes be a costly affair. For example in the beginning, the founders Vinayak and Bhushan had to do a lot of convincing to students as well as faculty to launch an idea like V.I.S.V.A.S.so that it does not gather a rebellious or political image. Ankit who worked on the exam archive used to utilize his lunch hours to find time for sitting in IIT computer center and uploading exam papers. And this all must be true for everyone who is putting his time for V.I.S.V.A.S. But finally all the hard work is showing results. Today many educational institutes like SRCC are showing interest in opening their own V.I.S.V.A.S. chapters seeing its success in IIT.

"We still have a lot to do", says Vinayak. "We will soon be launching 'Dayitva', an Entrepreneurship contest in IIT with a difference that this would be more focussed on implementation rather than just B-plans and ideas. This would include IIT administration supported projects which can be carried out in IIT itself." The team is currenlty also working on Video introduction of elective courses and 'Samvaad' a seminar series for increasing awareness amongst students and enabling them to excersice an informed choice.

A dedicated workforce, a brilliant concept and some established credentials; V.I.S.V.A.S. has every ingredient for a success story. Finally it is good to see a group of students that is working on creating gloably competitive education systems. Now it would be all the more interesting to see what route this NGO takes up now. After all, that's how revolutions are created.

Michael and Me!!

I know that it might really seem illogical to some , but surely dance was not originated by very smart people. Wondering, who got the first idea of dancing, I think it must be some early man who got happy with a kill and started jumping out of joy to seek others' attention. Maybe some more who wanted a share in the kill started jumping so as to show their enthusiasm and here we have something called the origin of dance!! Some state that origin of dances were inspired from animal movements and dances like honey bee etc. but they do that because they can't communicate, we humans can! Even if dance was originated in form a rhythmic body movements to please God, as some state, do you think that was a good idea. I mean would God be like,"Hey dude! that girl moves real nice. Let me shower some good love and blessings on her!" and "What, you can't dance! Get lost, its hell you will be getting!"


Hence I think people will understand why I really get confused when I am asked to dance in parties. First of all, I don't understand, why do people need to lift their hands, jump on a leg, twist their neck, shake their knees, move their back and sweat like pigs to show that they are happy and enjoying the party. Secondly, I, like 98% of this world population cannot dance well, so there is no chance of 'impressing anyone' (I am sure that would have been the case either way, but I rather have the benefit of doubt :P). Thirdly, these 98% not so good dancers need others to dance with them, so that nobody notices and makes fun of them in the crowd. Hence, although they themselves know that they are doing something funny and laughable ,yet they do it. That clearly shows party dancing is a herd's mentality. Fourthly, around half (that is 49% of people) of them have the habit of dragging peaceful people from the crowd and encourage them to dance with them so as to show others that they can dance better than at least somebody else. I, on the contrary would have no benchmark and prefer to stay in the rest 49%. In fact in the whole of my life I have met just one guy who dances worse than me and how many parties can I take him with me to show that I am not the worst. Now, around one-third ( 33%) of the people in a party would always be drunk, and are too drunk to know that they are dancing. I surprisingly have never been so drunk to enter this category. Similarly, surely at least one in ten people in a party (10%) would be thinking he has paid way too much and would be dancing to make up for it. Moreover, if you take into account miscellaneous people like those who are dancing because they were bored or being forced to dance etc etc they will definitely account for some 5%. So you see people like me who have no reason to dance form just 1% of the disc population. We are a rare, peaceful and harmless species. Why bother us?

However, surely there needs to be a reason why I can't dance. As a child I used to one of those 4-5 kids who are made to sit with the groom on the ghodi during the baraat to make him realize the first lessons of the implications of an unplanned family. But that meant no dancing for us. Then came the school and with it the teenage obesity. So that definitely meant no dancing..... for philanthropic purposes. Even 'dancelessness' runs in my family and hence I cannot take help of my genes either. My ma just knows one step of dance and that's what she has been using for all of her life till now. So you see I was born not to dance!

But maybe the main reason why I can't dance is that I don't see any reason for it. And if anybody is still not convinced must learn from bollywood which has been constantly giving the us the message of uselessness of dancing, showing that the good guy has to dance around trees for seven long songs to get the average looking girl in saree while the bad guy does not even shake a leg to get the hotter and wilder 'Mona Darling'.
But guess you never saw that coming!