Blogging to Alleviate poor masses of rural India

This morning as every morning of this week was cluttered with stream of callers / fellow bloggers and patiently answering all queries about various issues related to the forthcoming event Blog Camp 2006. Interestingly i got a call and the called told me he is Osama and suddenly all my antenna’s were up but the subsequent conversation that ensued followed immediately by his mail was one of interesting events of the day. Here is a transcipt of the mail of Mr. Osama Manzar and his very enlightening views

" I am extremely glad to come to know this entire new phenomenon of Bloggers camping and discussing the larger issues og Blogging. There is no doubt that Blogging is a typical Bottom Up phenomenon, where you get to know information directly from the source and the source get a chance to disseminate the information which is not subjected to various layers of so-called cleaning processes.

Anyway, as discussed, I am extremely keen to be a part of the BlogCamp scheduled on 9th and 10th of September in Chennai. I was going through your website and realised that there is no topic discussing the the real India which is hidden in its hinterland, across the country side, and among the 70 percent of Indians who speak local languages and whose knowledge lies in their oral conversation. If Blogging can include the Rural India, or rather if we initiate a dialogue of how Rural Blogging can be done, in no-time, we will see the cyberspace enriched with "GlocaL" content (Local Content for Global Reach). India is among the poorest country in the world if you look at how much india-related content present on the virtual world. And, ironically, Internet is the only true Universal Medium for unlimited access and dissemination of content and information. How do India in this case of being the poorest on cyberspace, can take advantage of the global economy? For the economica prosperity to trickle down to the bottom of the pyramid, India needs to reach out to the Internet through all possible means and tools about its immense local content and assets. And this is possible with only bottom up approach, meaning blogging can paint the cyberspace with the colours of India hidden into its 650,000 villages and among more than 3/4th of a billion population of our country. "

Mr. Osama Manzar runs an organisation called Digital Empowerment Foundation, that works in the areas of empowering masses through ICT and related tools. We have perhaps the largest database of case studies, where ICT tools are being used for rural empowerment in its various senses. They also run the award called The Manthan Award for Best e-Content & Creativity in India.

He holds the following posts Chairman: The Manthan Award, Founder & Director – Digital Empowerment Foundation, Jury Member: Dataquest eGov Champions Award 2006, Board of Director: World Summit Award, Austria, Vice Chairperson: Global Alliance for Bridging Digital Divide, Author: e-Content: Voices from the Ground – The Sequel 2.0 [2006]

Sir, I look forward to the great opportunity of hearing you in person on your favorite topic, your passion and responsibility to the rural masses in India. Welcome to Blog Camp 2006

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Future of Online marketing

Online marketing has evolved around so many areas like site hits, page visits, page ranking, and sticky eyes. Today with the advent of internet pervasiveness and the expansion of bandwidth at varous levels newer forms of marketing using compelling media like audio recordings that are converted into podcast and home grown videos are converted into optimised videos on youtube or google videos. Thus taking content to the world is now easy and doesnt need you to move mountains but the next challenge will be in attracting the target audience to the context relevant content. Thats a big challenge where a lot of marketers are adopting traditional methods to gather the relevant momentum. Today PR is easy but reach the right audience to translate all this PR into effective sales and bottom lines is where a lot of us are working on. For the moment pls listen to this intertesting podcast from Robert Scoble which revolves around how corporates are using blooging to do marketing online effectively.

http://www.podtech.net/audio/marketing_voices/090406_Marketing_Voices_Robert_Scoble_PodTech.mp3

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Bloggers RFI (Right for information)

I just returned back from a business trip of 5 days totally occupied on things that i had missed one of the red calls of the blogging community. Banning and blocking of blogs in a democratic society and measures taken were so absurd. All the govt. had to do was block a couple of websites and a couple of blogs. We are against terrorism and propoganda supporting such unjust cause. But to treat all blogs in generality to the same treatment and blame it in the name of Terrorism is taking things too far…This is India and we are celebrating democracy for the last 5 decades

Splinter groups and misguided youth taking advantage of technology is not new to the world. Back in 70′s didnt the same happen in USA when every person in the street was on a peak for the right to carry a fire arm and the subsequent ATF. There are a lot of bloggers who do pitch in some good viewpoints and it might be anti establishment or rhetoric but that doesnt give the right to censor such views.

The forthcoming blog camp is also going to have this as one hot topic of discussion and debate. Hope we all find some neutral ground on the same such that even the blogger can take the responsibility to curb activitues like terrorism and come out with ideas on the same .

Tags: blog censorship, right for information, democracy, bloggers freedom of expression, freedom of expression