iShift

I was planning to hold this post till sunday night when I would have blogged my departure from Mudra/ Tribal DDB.(Not that 48 hrs makes much difference:-) But since DigitalMedia already got wind here...here are the details!

Sometimes, mid-way through a job, your role starts mutating in a way which may not be to your liking! So, I decided to hang my digital boots which were getting a bit sooted(I hope there is a word like that) with analog dust.

I am joining The Futures Company as Principal Consultant. The Futures Company has been formed by the coming together of Henley Centre HeadlightVision and Yankelovich. This WPP entity is a pretty cool global trends, futures research and consultancy company. Got offices in the US, UK and India!

And am shifting base to Delhi/ Gurgaon. Will start the Delhi innings from July 1st week.

The blog stays, the rants stay...even though I may not be privy to agency insider information:-) Banking on my small group of friends inside agencies. And while I don this new hat of a consultant, I think I will remain an account planner(in spirit). The hats are quite interchangeable!

IndiAdrant is Two Years Old Today!!

And this guys is the most amazingly consistent thing/work/writing I have ever done in my life! Pat on my back:-)(Small barely noticeable flutter/ blip in the blogosphere LOL) And here's the link to my first post Viruses of the Mind written on Aug 18,2006 in case you don't believe me...LOL

And the second year of blogging has been harder, more lonely! More repetitive(perhaps) but consuming lesser time...With RSS feeds taking away the sense of micro community the blog had once, it's been difficult keeping the momentum...

Also, often I feel sucked out. As if whatever I had to say, I have said earlier. And yet it's still addictive as hell! A week away from the blog and there is this gnawing desire to write something, anything to keep it going...As if it's a plant left unwatered or something:-)

It's the best piece of public narcissism devised by man/ technology. At the end of the day, even if nobody indulges you or humours you, you do it to yourself!

With about 355 posts,IndiAdRant has out-lasted a merger and a job change!! In the afternoon, I felt like cutting a cake for the blog:-) But then felt too lazy to do it.

What an atlas of my mind this has become! Maybe after I finish my Bollywood book next June, will hunt for a publisher indulgent enough to thread this atlas into a book...

I feel good and empty and lonely and happy and tired and energised and nostalgic and confident and lucky and knowledgeable and connected and good...

Goodnight!!
P.S. The small vase in the picture is my first pottery assignment!! Made after a sumptuous meal at the Taj property at Kumarakkam when we visited Kerala last December!!

IndiAdRant is 1 year old today

The Feminisation of the Internet

Meraj forwarded me this link from NYT. Thanks Meraj, somehow it feels you still work for me(and that too without pay..LOL). It's an article of how more girls than boys are creating content on/for the web!!

Come to think of it there are more and more women creating content on the web or are more conversant with technology in India as well. The other thing is many of the content-creating guys have a strong feminine side to them(including you Meraj and me:-)

Some key points from the article...
1. Among the youngest Internet users, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

2. A study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35% of girls compared with 20% of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 % of girls compared with 22% of boys).

3. Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.

4. A Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary content creators — but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened. The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities than nonblogging teens".

It's interesting. The idea that the gender of the world wide web might be changing over time...Mental Bookmark.

Picture Source : www.jupiterimages.com