The Debate Starts

This is what i wrote a few years ago at the start of IPL1

Also on a serious track, some of the celebrations was off putting for me, its alright for Shahrukh to cheer McCullum  hitting Zaheer as he is the owner, but the odd thing was that nobody mentions the odd bit of shifting loyalty and the transition. Its as if the official policy of the BCCI to not to comment on the contradiction and just hope that by pretending that strong city loyalties exist and behaving as such will make the crowd see it that way. Well I am not convinced and find it difficult to accept that i will ever cheer Zaheer getting hit for a six by McCullum

Revisiting the inherent contradiction at the start of the IPL - Whether you can support an Indian batsman getting out to a foreign player.

At the start of IPL, it was obvious that national team weight overpowers the city based loyalty. But i suppose there must be a few supporters who have crossed the rubicon. Also, I suppose, the fandom would have regressed owing to this being a post world cup tournament.

However, with trend towards fragmented viewership of sports, i think the gap will close over the next few years

Need Theory Stage 5

" You know, it’s kinda hard just to get along today
Our subject isn’t cool, but he fakes it anyway
He may not have a clue and he may not have style
But everything he lacks, well, he makes up in denial"

~ Offspring

Client Engagement of the Other Kind

This blog post has strange origin. I am sitting in my organisation's training room, trying not to talk with the person sitting next to me. In this training exercise, my team is competing against two other teams.

The team currently presenting has lifted one of my ideas. Things are not looking good considering the quality of their presentation. Also i must admit that I have to work more on my team dynamic skills. Everyone in my team has to be amenable to me and my whims, otherwise i start showing hostility or divisive behaviour and i really think that i am above all this. So it becomes a little disappointing. Even this behaviour may have worked except that, I dont really want to work or take responsibility but want people to show respect to all my ideas and anyway i will throw in a few arbit ideas as a joke.

Overall the whole exercise has been good. Met a couple of reallly nice people, conceptualised a couple of ideas about client engagement. Ofcourse met old cal friends too. gives u that warm feeling in that heart..replicated only by..

Team A has in the meanwhile managed to crack the case. Our team doesn't stands a chance. feeling slightly disappointed that i am part of a losing team. Ofcourse HR, the part in which i was involved, we are much much ahead of the other teams but still it was finance and production that mattered and we will suck bigtime in those.

P.S.
Course we lost in the final standings. And ofcourse HR part was the best. But we could have handled things much better and we were clearly the worst and least prepared team.

Overall the training exercise gets a rating of Good

The State of the Media

The media, both electronic and print has been consistently attacked over the last few years for being biased, corrupt or both- sometimes credibly, sometimes less so.

Given the space, that media needs to have in a semi literate country like India, it is imperative that the media players to counter such trend and forcefully. Obviously, what is needed is a dose of professionalism. And that means a higher entry barrier at all levels. There are too many newspapers, and news channels. The industry as whole is working in a low quality, high volume equilibrium and it would be difficult to just add a dose of professionalism. So the stakeholders need to take some key steps

1. Journalists- Reporters: There needs to be a industry wide code of conduct for camera persons/ reporters. This should take care of norms for privacy, national security, source protection, source revelation, off the record/ on the records etc, evidence towards publishing a direct quote etc, norms for getting response from counter parties.

2. No of channels, newspapers: There needs to be a consolidation in terms of number of news channels and news papers. Ideally 5-6 nationally integrated media houses with local presence and diversification across print and electronics

3- Regulation of content: Self regulation never works. Governments cannot be trusted, so difficult to suggest a remedy for malafide reporting. However once the consolidation happens, maybe a couple of community led media watchdogs could be useful.

Lets see if some movement happens over the medium term on these lines. There is a need for a credible voice and if a media house succeeds, others may follow