Content?

So the toughest part of any job is to make people understand what you do unless of course you are the CEO.

As for me, I work with content and I work on content and that is so exciting. Every professional in each industry generates content all the time. And still if all this content is not effectively understood, presented, managed, stored, preserved or used…it ends up being reused only by the author in another organization since in the same organization people either do not know that such content ever existed or cannot search for it.

The key for an engineer, doctor, designer, lecturer, writer, strategist, consultant or any other professional is to manage the content which they are generating. It is a critical skill. And content is not only the written word but it is communication in any form. So when people are making videos or recording audios in board rooms, they are actually working on content.

Any person who specializes in content needn't be a remarkable writer but a person with a deep understanding of how communication in any industry can be best captured, presented, searched and made reusable. Before starting to work on generating any content, follow the We, Them and I model.

Start with the ‘we’ of the content - Your target readers and peer group. Structure the content in a way which will be best understood by the ‘we’ group and structure it in the best way that they are to understand. Use terminology which is best understood by your peer group.

Then its them - an unknown audience who may later use your content. Which means your content should be reusable and should also be easily searchable. That also means no reference to people by names, if any, but with their designations/ roles.     

Lastly its I - The last you have to think is ‘I’. And think of I when you start to create the content and are done of thinking about what goes as content. It also means that your content should be free from personal prejudices or opinions. 

Tendencies are usually to focus on the ‘I’ primarily, then ‘we’ and perhaps never think of ‘them’ while creating content. The thinking usually goes - If it appeals to me, it must appeal to my audiences. If you aren't good with user experiences, take feedback from your audiences rather than making those risky assumptions or presumptions. 

We are just not used to seek what we want to find in surroundings which we usually get easily

Recently I read Brad Pitt finds Varanasi staggering. Ashton Kutcher will pose as if spellbound with Vrindavan. Now what exactly are we missing here?

Either these people are too media intimidated to say the truth or wear a special pair of shades, which we Indians are clearly devoid of coz, honestly, all I find these places to be is – only- filthy. And this when I am already used to the rubbish and chaos of metros and everybody’s insensitivity towards it. Come to think of it, not even one person around me is bothered about my peace, the one honking relentlessly or the one trying to break the queue or the one with the most screeching ringtone ever or making the loudest conversation ever. Each person around me is just so not bothered.

What next? Do I book myself to a tranquil holy city holiday hoping it to bring me peace for a few days?

Visit to the holy cities is tormenting. Touts, muck, conmen, holy men haunting you for money… even the slightest thought of peace or anything enchanting cannot touch me. You just want to get out of the place sooner than you came in. Try closing your eyes for a few seconds to chant, the commotion and the fear of being pick pocketed is so overwhelming, that you can’t even feel what the place is or ever was. I am sorry but I cannot pretend to get into a trance or appreciate anyone who has gotten into it after seeing urine, shit and the unfathomable stink from the holy waters. I am no Naipaul but I cannot overlook the obvious. Small conveniences are still so inconvenient, shockingly, considering we are such a powerful economic dynamo.    

On the contrary, I feel peace is where all the westerners hail from. Open clean spaces, nature, cool breeze and silence can give you tranquility and beauty like nothing else. So if they really say the truth about India, they find here what we cannot and we find there what they cannot.

Perhaps we are just not used to seek what we want to find in surroundings which we usually get easily.   

Money, money, money, must be funny, in the rich man's world…

I was confused to hear a moving speech by a friend recently the subject of which was “I want to make money, loads of money. People are doing nothing and making money.”

And it confused me because I started to think why does this person want to make money?

Now don’t give me the ‘is she mad’ look. Of course everybody wants to make money isn’t that obvious? And I know the argument that money buys comforts and to be happy in a country like India you need comforts around you all the time. Do we hear Mukesh Ambani complain of the traffic or Mr. Mittal crib over the power cuts?

But what I was wondering was if this friend wants more money just because everybody else wants it or is there a clear plan as to when, what and how. I think he was doing what most of us do, which is, we have a tendency to follow the brood, without reason and devoid of logic. We think it's the brood and masses are not wrong, so simple isn't it, just follow it. So now I request you to give a minute and honestly think of all the situations that made you happy in the last 10 days.

Your time starts now…

Think, think, think…think hard. Yes, made you happy in the last 10 days.

Good. How many were situations where money made you happy?

As for me, I have definitely been happy on my birthday last week but my happiness didn’t have anything to do with (you guessed it right) anything material. I had many friends and family wishing me and I was truly overwhelmed. I had my facebook page flooded with wishes and all of it had nothing to do with money. I was so happy to interact with some really expressive children who, unfortunately, cannot communicate due to a physical limitation but they communicated with me beautifully. And guess what, no money for that as well. I went for TEDx and heard some really good speakers and that made me a happy person. At work, one of our campaigns got a really good response and I was happy for that (and yes I get my salary but even if the campaign would have been a failure, I’d still be paid).

So perhaps you could argue that buying something really expensive had made you happy, the feeling to be able to afford. Of course it does. But my problem with that and especially in these times is that things are changing so constantly. Just as we are reveling in the pleasure of our new possession there’s already a new edition to make us feel bad. There is no end there…

And my second question is “how much money do you want to make?” and if you are able to give me a number, excellent.  But once you get that number, assure me you won’t change it and ask for more. And also, you won’t ask for health, luck or protection. And you will tell me how did you get to that number and also your plan with that money and will you guarantee me that you will be happy forever after you make that money and not be chasing another brood?

As we grow, our mind gets cluttered. So perhaps it’s simple. I think we just need to unclutter, sit back and reconnect with some basic meanings of happy, health, want, need, desires and money (as individuals and not as a brood) and rethink about what we really want and in what proportions.

A place called home...

Words confuse me.

No, seriously.

Now take for example the word home. The dictionary throws meanings like shelter or, interestingly enough, the place in which one's domestic affections are centered or as they famously say, home is where the heart is. Even a tree can provide shelter but that's not home. And the plush room of an ultra-luxurious 5 star hotel will definitely be a place where my affection will be centered, domestic or undomestic I don't care, but that's not home either.

So in my quest to understand the meaning of home, I asked myself: At the end of a tiring day, where is it that I look forward to reach?

Obviously, the answer is home but why?

Do I have a spa waiting at home or a red velvety carpet that will lead to a king sized squashy bed and soft pillows that will devour me along with my fatigue? I wish there was but none of that is the reason I want to reach home.

So first of all, when I head back home, I look forward to see an affectionate and smiling face with whom I can discuss my tiny and honest details of the day. It’s the space where I can be with no formalities or rules. The place which is comfortable and soothing and not necessarily huge, plush or has the most expensive interiors which I can exhibit to my friends and foes. If that was the case, the best home would be the premium luxury deluxe hotel rooms. Remember after a long vacation, we still look forward to come home. It's a place where I find relief, the same kind of relief which I find after applying an ice pack on a burnt finger or after having received an unexpected bank interest when am almost broke.

I now understand that home is a place of peace, relief and comfort irrespective of the number of rooms or the exquisite and costly interiors. It's a place where we feel grounded and content. We create a home and cannot buy it. It is not a hotel and it needn't be a palace. If there is no peace, comfort or relief, even the most spacious and opulent homes will feel like a prison and we will just keep running away from it either for frequent and relaxing holidays or in search of better homes.   

The tragedy of an ignored king

So once lived this person called Content. Content was always told that he’s the king. Wherever he went, he was told that he is an important person and also a versatile person. Content dressed as words, video or audio and in any form was still the king. And Content appeared all over the place; newspapers, websites, television, documents and everywhere and helped strangers communicate without meeting or relay important messages and information over different mediums.  

But then people ignored him.

“What kind of a king am I?” thought Content, “always ignored and left alone. I’m always told that I am important but hardly feel important. People grapple for me when needed and then as easily forget about me when not needed. I am so powerful that I can change the fate of people, organizations and even countries. I get created in minutes and last beyond my creators and I travel as easily. I know no boundaries and take seconds to get from one medium to another. To be understood, I only need the help of a language but that too is my closest ally with the help of technology now.  I can affect the masses, change trends for the lasses (there, Content gets carried away) and ensure, over generations, history passes and still I am ignored.

People don’t know have the skill to create a wonderful me and still are creating me. They don’t realize that creating me is serious business. They create me without knowing the power I have so they copy me from here and there and put me together haphazardly. I can make such great impact if only people knew my value and handled me in a mature way. Managing me requires  logic, structure, understanding, articulation, creativity and thought. And most importantly, one has to build me for the intended audience and not for yourself. Create me intelligently and skillfully and then see what impact I have. I am all pervasive, so any field (no matter how critical) which fails to capture me skillfully, fails. I need skillful management and clarity. Treat me like a king and I can promise astounding results”     

Impatient, restless, aggressive or just expecting more?

It is quite amazing how impatient we now are. I am not here to discuss the hazards of technology on the human race but I can’t help but notice. And I notice this each day... 

I impatiently hit the ‘end key’ on my Blackberry the moment it starts to misbehave. Few seconds of its inactiveness is enough to get me impatient and restart it. And as soon as it restarts, I want it to be working perfectly or I could restart it again. I want calls to instantly connect. A few waiting tones are enough for me to assume that there has to be something wrong with the network or the telecom ministry.

Not that laptop is the favored one. The reason could be any hefty application but the laptop still bears the brunt as it is made to forcefully shut and come back to life as fast. And the rate at which the tapping of my fingers or feet tap increases is directly proportional to the time that the machine takes to restart. I want websites to open at the blink of an eye and if they don’t then I am quick enough to repair my internet connection or restart my router. I quickly disconnect and connect LAN cable and log calls with the IT team. And till the problem is resolved, I feel I shall miss something critical, work shall suffer, I will miss my deadline and my entire world will come shattering down.

I have lost the patience to see fancy flash websites. The F5 is the most exploited key as I ruthlessly vent my impatience out on it. I want google to throw intelligent results. I want banking transactions to happen with a click and wish that there weren’t as many passwords. I want quick music downloads and the favorites I have on my laptop should get transferred on my mobile as fast and what is on my mobile should effortlessly play in my car. I want to browse the net and check my mails while am on the move. And I want to click pictures and upload them right away (as if it were milk which could be stale the next day). I wish I could have an ipad for books, music and videos at my fingertips, anytime, anywhere.

I want all channels on my television. If I don’t have the 432^nd channel, then my digital TV operator is obviously crappy (even though that 432^nd channel is not expected to get more than 34 seconds of my divided attention).

Call it impatience or expecting more but what I am wondering is whether we control technology or is it the other way? 

Humans are Complicated

Humans are complicated, have always been.

So my name is Twitz and I am a splendid sparrow. I am free, free to breathe, free to fly wherever I want, whenever I want. I have my palatial palace nested on one of the sparse trees in an industrial locality of Gurgaon. The city is supposedly called millennium world class city but I fail to see why. All it has is tall towers, unmanageable cars and traffic, smoking generators, broken roads and frustrated people. Not that the humdrum of Delhi is any better. But in Delhi we share one tree between 5 bird families and here I have it all to myself.

And my nest overlooks one of the cabins of a swish office. The cabin, with all the modern day amenities, seems like the most comfortable place. If only it didn't seem so confining, perhaps I would have liked to stay in it. There's this middle aged man who's, on most of the days, quite well dressed already occupying the cabin. It must really be comfortable for he spends more time there than his nest. But I don't understand, if the cabin happens to be so homely then why is this man frowning all the time? Early morning, he walks in, with the most grievous expression and has it glued on his face all day. He screams at all the seemingly meek young people and is shouted at by some more grievous overpowering men and women. He screams on his telephones and even screams at the person serving him coffee. Why should he be so unhappy? What is so troubling in his life? Doesn't he have the power to change what makes him unhappy? I can't imagine waking up to so much bitterness each day and taking it back to my nest only to come back next day with it.

So on one of the fine evenings, it started to rain and with it nature exuded its fresh fragrances. I lay warm in my nest with my family drawing in the freshness, the innocence and sheer liveliness. And then I saw him but this time with a different expression. He was leaning by the window, and staring longingly at my nest. He was almost crying and had sadness in his eyes. Did he envy me? Was he wanting to feel the rain, freedom or just be happy? Why wouldn't he do something about it? Did he dislike the confines of his cabin or swish office? Did he not like the people around him? I wish I could ask and help him but I dare not. 

All I would say is that humans continue to remain truly complicated.