Co-working in Delhi: The Jelly Meet Idea
Jelly Meet is a fast-growing co-working movement that started in New York. One of the co-founders Amit Gupta is a successful serial entrepreneur. The Jelly Meet idea basically involves arranging a place where people can work - no rents involved. Just bring your laptop/netbook. Ideal for freelancers, bloggers, developers etc.
The Delhi version of Jelly Meets happens every Wednesday at the Cafe Oz in Khan market. A complete list of Jelly Meets around the world can be found
here.
This is something I have always wanted to arrange in context of my startup
Bighow, getting bloggers and journalists to meet twice/thrice a week in a comfortable, easily accessible location. Until this happens, I will try to check out Jelly Meet. Perhaps you should too.
Labels: bighow, event
The enduring wisdom of Mahesh Murthy
Some entrepreneurs are born writers. Good writers. Mahesh Murthy is one such good writer/entrepreneur. I used to read his articles in Businessworld running in 2000 and abouts. Good writeups. Good inspiration. Good advice laced with honest, punchy strains. I saved some cuttings. They were that good.
Thus, one is glad to read him writing that kind of writing again. In the Wall Street Journal, he writes a piece on
the value of being an entrepreneur and it gives me heart and makes me willing to go on with
Bighow.
Mahesh writes,
(Why I am an entrepreneur)...there are perhaps a few million types of jobs out there. And there are seven billion of us. So there’s obviously a lot of us who are not in jobs tailor-made for us. Look around you – know anyone who isn’t deliriously happy in their current job? Know anyone who is?
The rest of us just can’t find a job that suits us. And we really don’t like ‘adjusting’. So we make a job for ourselves. Where we like our bosses - ourselves, the business - our own, the working hours – whenever we feel like, and the location – wherever we are. We don’t do it to take a risk – we do it to be safe.
And the world calls us entrepreneurs, heroes of some sort. But really, we’re just folks who didn’t find a job that suited us well enough.
.
Amen.
RelatedStartup is hard in New DelhiLabels: bighow, startup
Khabar Lahariya: How a local print newspaper still makes a difference
The Columbia Journalism Review has this beautiful, inspiring story about a local print, biweekly newspaper called '
Khabar Lahariya' ('
The Wave of News' in English) in the local bundeli language, staffed by 20 local women, who are either high school or college grads and freshers.
Started some seven years ago, Khabar Lehariya has a circulation of 35,000 and sells for two rupees (four cents, roughly the cost of a cup of tea in Bundelkhand, a hot and dry region in central India, famous for its bandits, harsh landscapes (think of Robert Rodriguez's Mexico movies), the place where Lord Rama lived and most importantly, for rains that almost always disappoint.
Focus of coverage: To cover all "local issues", all that the main press ignores -
untouchability, dominance of upper castes, banditry, women's rights education, governance (rather, the lack of it)...it is an endless list of problems in India's heartlands, mercifully untouched by the malls.
A paper like this might do great with help of cheap technology like mobiles, for example, for filing voice and SMS-based reports.
How much will take for similar local village journalism initiatives to bloom in 600-odd districts throughout India?At 20 reporters per district, Rs. 5000 ($100) per month, that comes to $24,000/year per district and $14,4000,00/year ($14.4 million) for whole of India. That is what I have in mind. At the current budget for the completely unnecessary Commonwealth Games, we could have funded this
'non-profit local news across India' initiative for 50 years, at least, give or take another 50 years.
Labels: bighow, citizen journalism, local news
How much does it take to support investigative blogging?
The Firedoglake blog is on a mission to
raise $150,000 to fund a full-time, three-person team headed by Marcy Wheeler, who made her name with her scoop about Khalid Sheik Mohammed being waterboarded 183 times in one month. Marcy Wheeler also liveblogged the Libby trial, which is considered a breakthrough in online journalism.
On day 1 of the fund-raising campaign, they were able to raise $10,000.
For
Bighow, I hope to have a 10-person reporting/blogging team. With average salaries of Rs. 300,000 per annum, I am looking at Rs. 3 million, or $60,000 approximately. Soon, I will be crowd-sourcing for a list of things to investigate.
Labels: bighow, blogging, online journalism
The Elections show the reality about Indian Digital Media
I was one of those who had hoped that during this election season, which many marketers are touting as India's first digital elections, we would get to see some exciting coverage from bloggers. That sadly is not the case.
99% Indian bloggers are city people. They have an urban outlook and like the best of bloggers, are prone to navel gazing [aka adventures into self-importance] I understand the pains of living in small boxes when the brain is bursting with information.
Jaago Re campaign excites these people, because talking about digital things makes them feel good about themselves. More people are active on Facebook and Orkut groups than people who would actually vote or better, stand in elections. An echo chamber of people taking time off from their main jobs.
Some bloggers, like Rajesh Jain are active and interested in politics but there are so very few of them. Most Indian political blogging I have found so far are nothing but rants.
Last year, some people had talked to me about starting something like DailyKos type of group blog. These people were interested to put their views forward in no certain terms. These people were talking about hundreds of contributors. If these guys could have started it in time, it would have meant for some interesting online conversations, for sure.
Some Indians are blogging from other countries. These people have no idea about what is happening on the ground. Mostly, they can aggregate posts from other media sources and that is. Some of my friends, who were avid bloggers have moved to the United States. I do not expect them to write about who is winning from their constituency in Bihar.
For example, look at the
Global Voices Election Coverage. This is superficial aggregation - useful for foreigners and lazy foreign reporters eager for easy sound bites -
useless for Indian reader. Read
Wikipedia coverage of elections instead.
I know Ethan Zuckermann, the man behind Global Voices advocates something called Bridge-blogging, which means making one culture easy for others to understand. This is a noble idea.
But, India is not Africa and I am not denigrating the Africans. Indian Politics is messy at the best of times but that is what makes it so interesting. I am sure Global Voices would have put someone in the country in charge of aggregating voices and analysis rather than publishing the latest from Google. I am guessing that the bloggers Global Voices used to depend on earlier are busy writing for their traditional news organizations.
The Global Voices coverage is a collection of who is doing what.
There is no context. This is 1/4 of proper link curation. I am guessing the writer is in the United States or someplace outside and is using the net [Google ] to build links.
When someone said that there were just 50,000 active Indian bloggers, he was far, far off from the mark. I think there are fewer than 1000 Indian bloggers writing to be read. If you were looking for coverage of the quality in display during the U.S. Presidential Elections, you must wait at least 5 more years when some of our young people learn to
write with perspective.
Much is being made about the Mumbai Terror Attacks being covered on Twitter. It was just coincidental that the attacks took place in India's most prosperous place. If you had checked Twitter or Twitter's Indian equivalent SMSGupshup.com during that time as I had done, you would have seen yourself how little original reporting actually happened.
There are no bloggers in the Indian hinterland, where all the election stories are. Those who are there in the field cannot write to save their lives. Those who want to report do not have the resources to do so.
When I approached Venture Capitalists in 2007 seeking for some funds to support a network of reporters [national, international] for Bighow.com, most refused. Many simply did not get the idea of a
platform for local news on a global scale. Many still do not.
I was about to (still want to) make an announcement on Bighow that we are looking for people to cover the elections. Coming from a state (Bihar) where electioneering is at its worst, or the best, depends on who is seeing, and from where, I know that without some money to travel, without mobile devices that could send pictures, video or audio, there is no point shouting from the roofs that we have done the 'first' Indian this or that.
False hope and over-hype are two luxuries Indians can do without. I still have the announcement saved as a draft.
A couple of days ago, some people launched a site that let
voters report from polling booths. They called it, yes you guess it right, India's first citizen-powered so-and-so. As an entrepreneur who has seen reality, I can tell you the people behind the good idea were not bright enough. Maybe they do not even live in India. If they were serious or had the resources, they should have launched it in advance at least. Check out this page and see for yourself what (little) useful reporting citizens have done after the first phase of polling is over.
The reality of online media in India is not as rosy as what people say it is.
Related in Mediavidea:Indian Blogger as JournalistSimple Guide to the Biggest moments in the Indian BlogosphereSimpleguide to the state of the Indian BlogosphereSimplegudie to Internet and Cyber Laws in IndiaLabels: bighow, blogging, india, local news, trends
What is good journalism?
I did not go to any journalism school. I have never worked for a newspaper or a magazine. As the founding Managing Editor of a Blog Network, a blogger and as the founder of a
platform for Local Journalism, this is what I have learned so far:
Labels: bighow, citizen journalism, guide, journalism, online journalism
What is Wrong With Media?
This is the wrong question to ask to those from the media. Fear, worry, confusion, orthodoxy are no breeding grounds for imagination and introspection.
Labels: bighow, blogging. ethics, guide, new media
The Nine Rules of Online Journalism
As some of you know, I have been working on a series of
guides on Online Journalism on Bighow. This presentation is a part of the exercise. Apologies for the sparse look.
Labels: bighow, guide, online journalism
Introducing the Web 2.0 Hall of Fame
In 2004, it was Facebook, in 2005, Digg, in 2006 Google bought Youtube, in 2007 Twitter and in 2008 Friendfeed and lifestreaming. In 2009, it is all about the recession, how few web 2.0 startups are making money. Andrew Chen writes that
web 2.0 is not cool anymore. True if you only look at it from a business point of view.
Web 2.0 revolutionized the way we interacted on the internet. Web 2.0 fueled the Obama phenomenon.
However, web 2.0 as a business model hasn't worked for most. I have written a series of articles under the
"web 2.0 hall of fame" title, trying to list the best things about web 2.0 - the tools, the sites and above everything else, the people who made it happen and set trends for others to follow.
You can access the articles (so, far only 7) here on
Bighow.
My favorite articles from the series are:
the
Forty people and forty sites of web 2.0 and
the
11 best books about web 2.0.
Labels: bighow, books, enterprise web 2.0
A set of interesting 'future of media' polls on Bighow Polls
To look at what the future holds for newspapers, I have created four polls and look forward to seeing what you think about the issues at hand:
1.
What will you miss the most when newspapers are gone? 2.
Which among these is the best news business model? 3.
What print media business will you miss most? 4.
Which media brand will you miss most? and this one for fun:
5.
Who is most useful new media guru? Labels: bighow, future, news business, poll
"The world is not interested if you are not interested"
As a blogger and as a founder of the web's only all-in-one free online publishing tool,
Bighow.com, I look into the dark void of failure and loneliness of the
struggling entrepreneur on a regular basis.
[The image above is a screen-shot of the
publishing options at Bighow.]
Success I have yet to see. Failure is a constant companion. I try not to be seduced by failure.
A student of journalism puts out her
frustration with the state of the news business:
As I sat through most of my classes this semester, I realized the overrated-ness (if you will) of journalism. Journalist can be very ruthless, not caring about where their next story comes from - as long as it comes. I spent four years of my life studying to become a journalist, which means I sat in classes learning about the history of journalism, the technology boom, and how the news is shifting from newspapers to the Internet. I also spent a lot of time learning about the importance of “newsworthy-ness” only to realize that the only time I ever sit down and watch the news is when I’m bored, then EVERYTHING becomes newsworthy....
5 of my friends began their college careers as eager journalists. 5 of my friends are now either in a different field or no longer eager about being a journalist but eager to graduate. My choice is to go back and get another degree in Graphic Design - something that results in product that highlights as opposed to false light.
So, is journalism over-rated? Let's leave that for the pundits.
Although, out here in India, many of my colleagues who were in online publishing have moved onto
'secure' offline jobs.
Not easy: making it in the tough world of publishing, especially Online Publishing.
Not easy: Seeing so many talented journalists, writers and creative people struggling out there in the Matrix.
Don't panic.
Immortal words from the Great Douglas Adams.
Here's a short guide to succeeding in online publishing:Easy: Being positive and having a strong spine.
Easy: Being interested.
The world of online publishing is a tough place but it is a big place.
Incidentally, this is how I came with the name Bighow for my startup.
There is competition. Sure, but where isn't completion?
There is turbulence. Newer ideas and technologies threaten existing structures.
This world of ours has always been turbulent.
There is nothing called the 'good old days' except in the cliche handbooks of lazy writers and senile old people.
Quality will out.As long as you are able to serve what your community/readers/viewers/listeners require, you will do fine.
Start at finding out your own group of people who will listen to you.
In my experience, people who share your passions will be the first one to listen to you and talk with you.
This is the new reality that people from journalism backgrounds fail to grasp.
The Online Journalist is a community builder from start.
Seth Godin says,
"Build your own tribe."For that to happen, you will have to be interested in the world.
Labels: bighow, journalism, online journalism
The Ultimate test of a quality blog or a website
Can it become a book?
- Like
Dailycandy.com- Like
Postsecret.
- Like
Indexed.
- Like
Julia and Juila - 365 days, 524 recipes.
- Like Pitchfork's
Pitchfork 500- Our Guide to the Greatest songs from Punk to the present.
These are 5 of my favorite examples. You can find more
here.
Seth Godin always uses his blog to write a number of posts expounding upon an idea he is working.
Nicholas Carr wrote
"The Big Switch" along similar lines, exploring the pluses and minuses of a Google-dominated online world.
Jeff Jarvis is anti-Carr, in the sense that he is all praise and nothing else for Google and wrote a number of great posts upon the idea - Link Economy, What Would Google do? - before he came out with his
"What would Google do?" book.
Darren Rouse is well positioned to bring out a book based on his excellent
"Digital Photography School" blog.
Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration(labnol.blogspot.com) can hope to make a success out of a Tips and Tricks book titled
"Digital inspiration - 101 ways to use Digital tools successfully".I am sorry to report that my Blog Mediavidea can't be turned into a book.
Mediavidea is more than 2 years old now and there are more than 400 posts but
there is no single focus.Unless you consider New Media which is too big a topic for a guy for me to cover.
Rather than being an armchair warrior, I hope to prove that
Bighow, the online publishing platform works. But, that is another story.
So, tell me: Can you turn your blog/website into a book?
Labels: bighow, blogging, blooks
Bighow and CNN’s iReport: long lost cousins?
I am not sure whether the guys at CNN had a look at our in-the-works citizen journalism site Bighow.com when they launched
iReport but we are mighty pleased that someone somewhere has the hots for same shade of blue, minus the rounded corners, which we thought was too common a part of the web 2.0 look template.
At least some thing we must be doing right, hmm? For further proof , click
hereLabels: bighow, citizen journalism, news 2.0
Local News from Google: Bighow Local Lite?
Following Topix.com, Google News now allows you to search for local news by punching in your Zip code or locality. The announcement from Google
says,
We’re able to create a local section for any city, state or country in the world and include thousands of sources.
But, using Zip codes to search for stuff does not come naturally to us and Geo Coding of all the news sources in the world is in its infancy.
I haven't been posting on this blog for almost a month now.
Reason: I am moving across the country looking for people to put some seed funding into Bighow, which takes a two-pronged approach to aggregation and publishing.
So far, no progress and I think that is because I don't have a programmer since October 2007. No team, no money.
For example of better news aggregation, may I suggest these links from an unfinished Bighow.com?
Work on Bighow.com stopped while we were working on the publishing end. Work on automatic aggregation is next on the work list, along with 100 other items. :-)
Note: Being the only active tester of Bighow.com, the pages have not been since December 2007.
Bighow Countrieshttp://bighow.com/country/USA
Bighow Citieshttp://bighow.com/city/San%20Fransisco
Bighow Localhttp://bighow.com/local/Janakpuri
Bighow Groupshttp://bighow.com/group/Actually%20Useful%20Technology
Bighow Tags: Best of 2007http://bighow.com/news/tags/Best%20of%202007
Bighow Listshttp://bighow.com/news/tag/type/List
Bighow Tags: Best of 2008http://bighow.com/news/tags/Best%20of%202008
Bighow Tags: Worst of 2007http://bighow.com/news/tags/Worst%20of%202007
At its core, Bighow is a multi-platform,
'Publishing cum Aggregation' tool using which we plan to have a global news network of bookmarkers and reporters.
The future of news depends on quality aggregation, a promise for which I shall fight on.
Labels: bighow, google, news aggregators
BarCampDelhi3: random thoughts on Bighow
The latest edition of Bar Camp in Delhi will be held on December 8, 2007, and promises to bring together a disparate collection of this Capital City’s inquisitive tech professionals, ambitious startup entrepreneurs, intrepid and nimble-footed investors, gawky media persons and enthusiastic bloggers.
As usual, there will be a number of exciting sessions and interesting people and I shall try my best to make it there. It is interesting that the day-long event is being held in Noida, and not in Delhi and that gives me an opportunity to come back to some salient features of the startup environment in this city, an possible in this country as whole:
1. Startup is still hard in DelhiNot much has changed since I wrote this
post in 2006. Php programmers are still hard to come by if you are short oj funds. Garage startup is a misnomer here and most probably means an air-conditioned basement in any one of Delhi’s tony neighborhoods. Sweat equity amounts to zilch in a community where job and career pressures envelop everything in a foreboding shroud.
Maybe, I will go to the event and shout
‘Php Pehelwaans Wanted!!!’ till someone listens.
2. VC is tough, angels are tougherThe reality is investors are more interested in Indian startups prefer them to be in fields other than internet – real estate, green technologies, micro finance, retail…
It doesn’t help that many Indian startups are
me-too offerings.
The first VCs who responded to my email about supporting my startup
Bighow.com (concept site is already up, thanks to a supportive programmer), about whom I had read much in the media, responded after a while and they sounded like they did not read the executive summaries, introductions etc. and recited the tired spiel about internet not being widespread in India, when I prefaced the email with something like
‘Bighow.com: world’s first community publishing tool (aggregator cum publisher)'.
As for angels, don’t get your hopes up. There are so-called angel networks which are actually fronts for well-off businessmen and it takes a while before your documents reaches to the intended person and by the looks of it, the decision is based on
1. community think and
2. numbers – they asked me for 3 year income statement projections and having supplied the basic numbers, all I have to do now is to make some fantastic adsense–based projections, with absurd CPM rates, among other things.
Lest this post turns into rants from a disillusioned entrepreneur, let me quickly give you the important links about BarCampDelhi3. I hope you benefit from this useful event.
Links and addressesThe BarCamp Delhi Wiki (where you can log in for free, enter your details, register etc.)
http://barcamp.org/BarCampDelhi3
Location of BarCampDelhi3Impetus Technologies (Direction on Google Maps)
D-39/40, Sector - 59, NOIDA
Bar Camp Delhi Mailing Listhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/delhi_barcamp/
Labels: barcamp, bighow, community, india, startup
Bighow beeps in
On October 21, I quietly launched my new startup
Bighow.com. Bighow.com is based on a simple premise:
what if there was one web service where you could share links, like digg.com or del.icio.us and could also publish original items, like a blog post? And wouldn't it be sweet if you could do that in not only news, but 21 others topics as well?I like to call Bighow.com an
all-in-one Community Publishing System (COPS, anyone? :-))
With
Bighow, I have tried to do something of a structured database. As a result, there are some preset categories and sub categories when you submit your items. However, we have also incorporated tagging, thus ensuring a two-level categorization - the best of structured data and folksonomy.
Last year, when I left a comfortable job to pursue my dreams, like most startups before me, I faced challenges and I even wrote about it back then in a post titled
Startup is hard in New Delhi.
Much of what I wrote is still valid. But developing Bighow has been the most exciting educational journey in my professional life so far.
We have tried to do something FUN with the
'Craigslist+Google Base+Digg/Del.icio.us' approach. Bighow is nothing great to look at and I think we have only archived 10% of what I hope to achieve with Bighow.com. Interesting things are in the works - Microformats, APIs, XML/Republishing, Edgeio type deportalization...
I started with $8000 in my bank and in fact, Joydeep who developed Bighow learnt php while we started coding.
Here are the topics that Bighow covers:
News - news, reviews, events, announcements, forums, community, polls
Classifieds - jobs, wanted, services, for sale, products, travel, vehicles, housing, vacation rentals, matrimonials, business for sale, coupons and
Listings - resume, personals and business profiles
I am particularly excited about
Bighow Polls (http://bighow.com/poll) and about we have tried to display information submitted information across Countries, cities, localities and groups. Bighow has RSS feeds for everything, including
advanced search. Even the Classifieds section has detailed flagging and comments.
I am taking it slow with Bighow and partly the reason is that Bighow is hosted on a shared server, my busted bank account partly the reason.
Bighow is about a new news foundation and I hope we don't get caught up in the
Web 2.0 is dying rant cycle. In fact, I agree with PR Guru Steve Rubel's suggestion to
question conventional web wisdom and I am looking forward to building a small news team to bolster, moderate and seed Bighow and and do interesting things with Bighow on a local basis.
I hope Bighow plays an important role in the news business of tomorrow and while I work at raising some funds to promote Bighow, build a team, I would like to hear what you think about Bighow, what I should do with it and so on...
Labels: advertising. online advertising, bighow, startup
