User:Namrataparekh

National Cyber Media Conclave

Date: 28th March, 2009 Place: Lavale, Pune Organizers: SIMC [Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication]

“Change of Behaviour doesn’t come over night”, said Mr. Navnit Bimbhat, CEO- Switch Media Services Pvt Ltd at the first ever National Cyber Media Conclave held at Symbiosis Institue of Media & Communication which keeps adding a feather to its cap. Names like Atul Chitnis [FOSS.IN], Rajesh Lalwani [BlogWorks], Kiruba Shankar [Sulekha.com, PodWorks], J.Madhavan[ VP, Products, Bharat Matrimony]; people behind the campaigns like Bell Bajao [Rashmi Dhanwani] and Pink Chaddi [Jasmine Patheja, Blank Noise] and young revolutionaries like Shiv Bhaskar Dravid [Founder of the Viewspaper] and Shivam Vij [Journalist, Thelka] were present to converge at this media conclave and present the new media ideas to a whole auditorium of media students. Starting with discussing the “Potency of Cyber Media for Social Change and Networking”, a re-visit to the world of Blogs, Twitter and Facebook was done by Kiruba Shankar who from his personal experiences talked about the power of social media. Shivam Vij [Tehelka reporter & Indibloggies ‘06 winner] made a mention of the key moment in cyber media being a platform for social change when a management institute, led by a ‘ponytail guy’, had sent a legal notice to Rashmi Bansal [JAM mag] to remove a post who instead just amended the notice to the post. Shiv Dravid [TheViewspaper] spoke about the fourth estate in the society. Media is considered the ‘guardians of democracy’ to work in tandem with the executive, legislative and judiciary estates. Unfortunately the traditional media has gone weak in this matter and that’s the reason why cyber media is taking that place as it can combine radio, TV and print. And then to prove that new media was not all weak, Jasmin Bhatija presented a case study of social activism through her BLANK NOISE project and the different reactions that she got from the movement. The post lunch session saw the business and marketing panel with 5 power packed presentations and matching personalities. One thing that was common amongst all was that change is not immediate and it was the same with new media and the cyber world. From marketing strategies, that was explained to the audience through an interesting ladder of the target audience that makes the social media network, to Mr. Chitnis pulling out gadgets from his bag and talking about the slow but steady progress of change in the social “Software”, everyone on the panel talked about change through some or the way in some or the other field of social life. Mr. Lalwani, had an interesting comment to make where he compared social media to masturbation saying that you never know it till you try it. Even the social activism campaign, “bell bajao” had a fair share of questions raised to the fact of its effectiveness through such a new form of media. The campaign was followed by a Q/A round where each member of the panel answered questions ranging from doubts about the credibility of new media and the effectiveness of social campaigns to a very valid question raised to Mr. Chintnis about compatibility issues of the soft wares and file exchanges to which he said that change would come but slowly and that was why he was talking to the future of the media, that was the youth. In all, cyber media got the due importance that it deserved today. Hats off to the National Cyber Media Conclave team and SIMC. Hope more and more events like these keep coming up and we all "change" into happy Clickers!!

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