500 Words Before 9

I came across Kiruba Shankar’s blogpost a couple of days ago where mentioned about an writing experiment of his. Kiruba is a well known speaker and author who is actively involved in various unconferences and similar events.

Internet is driven by content creation and it is one of the prime reasons for the staggering growth of internet startups. Photographs, Videos, Podcasts, Designs, Blogs everything is content. Most of the websites rely on the content created by its users and try to enhance how others interact with it. Twitter’s Tweets – content. Facebook status update – content. Flickr photo upload – content. Blog post – content. Email – content.

I for my part have been contributing a little content once in a while. Either through one of the rare blog posts here or through tweets or through comments etc on various blogs that I read regularly.  I also regularly take photos when I travel. Though the photos are not equal to that of a pro, it serves its purpose of preserving memories and capturing the fun of the moment.

So when I came across the blog post about Kiruba’s experiment of writing 500 words before 9AM, I was influenced. I too decided to try out the experiment. I hope to write everyday. But not necessarily before 9. I’m not exactly a morning person (with the exception during trekking when I get up before sunrise to enjoy the feeling). With greater quantity it would be easy to improve on quality. So I will write. It can be a blog post here or an entry in my personal online diary, Oh Life or probably a set of tweets or some or all of them.

Kiruba Shankar at NITT

On an uneventful Sunday I chose to attend one of the guest lectures of Currents 2010. The reason being the topic of discussion – Blogging, something which I’m very passionate about. And more importantly the speaker – Kiruba Shankar. He is probably the best example  one can give of  Personal Branding. So I went for the lecture in spite of the fact that I’m from a different dept and not many other-dept guys were present at the lecture. Though the lecture got delayed too much, it was worth the wait.

He managed to keep the audience entertained through the entire duration of the lecture, something which is not easily achieved especially at NITT. He started off with a story of two friends trying to run away from a tiger and then went on to discuss how businesses could benefit from the social media. He cited quite a few interesting examples like Dominoes Pizzas, IIPM,  Trisha etc etc to emphasize on the fact that social media can have a huge impact.Though I have read/heard most of what he said earlier, it was interesting just because of the way he presented the lecture.

Like him I too give importance to something called the digital presence. If you google for ‘Alagappan’ you are sure to find my domain name at the top. As Kiruba said during the lecture, my domain is my digital property and this simple search can be a substitute of a business card.

He also made people think on the fact that so much of data could be generated if all of us start blogging. Even his lecture at NITT could be soon forgotten unless someone writes about it. As of now there would be just a couple of tweets, a few facebook updates and this blog post which records his presence at NITT on this day.

“If only everybody starts making proper use of the various tools available to them, they can have a huge impact on this world.”