kartik kannan's space on the web

My Day at Stella Maris

The day started off at 4 in the morning,when I finally decided to wake up from my half baked slumber which was so,beacuse of a dripping low voltage power cut that cut through my slumber as a knife through butter. Since there was no power,and I had to neccesarily charge the laptop,I decided to leave for office a little early and I reached office at 6 30 in the morning after a breezy ride in the morning. The Presentation went beautifully according to Murphy's Laws, and I had quite a problem in discarding a lot of elements in terms of audio/video, which was throwing up errors from the previous evening. A quick review of the presentation from 6 30 to 7 30 to iron out the foibles was my one single task,before breakfast distracted me. The presentation was all trimmed and decked and I proceeded to Stella in my bike, though the original plan was to travel by auto,but given my natural dislike for travelling in Chennai via an auto(Read more about my opinions on the Chennai Auto here), I decied to travel in my bike till Stella.

As I reached the gates of Stella, there was apolite young lady,who looked at me and said "Are you attending the lecture"?, to which I glanced and said" Err... yes.... but I also will be speaking ", to which she quickly connected to my name and welcomed me inside. Stella Maris has a beautiful campus that's pretty large and I was taken into a waiting room,where I met the Head of the Sociology department,Sujatha Ramanathan, who welcomed me and escorted me to the AV hall where the lecture was to be delivered.

The Lecture started at about 9 15 after the Prayer,Welcome speech and the Intro. I noticed that roughly 10% of the audience had blogged,around 60% had heard, but not made an effort to understand it further, for the rest "Blogging" sure was news to them. There were other invited students from other constituent colleges like MOP Vaishnav College and New College.The presentation did gather some heat in the initial stages,where I managed to elicit a few reactions in terms of laughter and more importantly their attention in the first few minutes of the presentation.

The Presentation focussed mainly on the various forms of Social Media and the power it exudes by focussing attention on user contributed media.The audience was more watchful with people starting to ask questions more so towards the end.I did manage to get a couple of useful insights from the audience who responded to the small debate on whether "Blog news analysis vs Canned TV Reports" where a person pointed out that it was due to Blogs that he unearthed facts about Babri Masjid, that the traditional media could not report on.

On the whole I felt satisfied in having addressed a knowledgeable crowd who were eager in knowing more about the world of Blogs and Social Media.

No Photos to share, but the video of the whole presentation was taken, in a 176*144 mode through my Mobile Camera.Bandwith permitting, I shall try and link it in this article later tonight.