Panelist:
- Ravina Aggarwal, Program Officer, Ford Foundation
- Dr. Y. Suresh Reddy, Director – SRF Foundation
Moderator:
- Francesca Feruglio, Director, Programs & Operations & Co-founder, Nazdeek
Presentations-Community Broadcasting
- Offeradda.com – Next Generation Offers, Sagar Shah, CEO & Founder, Digital Webwise
- Yaadon Ka Idiot Box with Neelesh Misra, Content Project Private Limited, Gaurav Gupta, Head-Corp Comm and Marketing
- Brahmaputra Community Radio Station 90.4 FM, Bhaskar Jyoti Bhuyan, Station Coordinator, Brahmaputra Community Radio Station
Presentations -Culture & Tourism
- Endangered Archive 341, Abhijit Bhattacharya, Documentation Officer – Archives and Project Director, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta
- e-Pothi : Online Cataloguing of Manuscripts of Odisha State Museum, Odisha, Dr Rabindra Narayan Behera, Sr. Technical Director, National Informatics Centre
- Chutti.pk – Islamic travel city guides, Irfan Ahmad
- Glorious Bygone, Sanjaya Ratnayake, Managing Director, Glorious Bygone (Pvt) Ltd
- Treasure Caretaker Training, Ann Shaftel, Founder and Director, Digital Monastery Project
- Pashto multi-purpose Dictionary, Abdul Muqsit, Software Engineer, Pukhtoogle
Ms. Namita Rao opened the session with a welcome note and introduced the panelists and moderator to the audience. Dr. Reddy announced that three minutes were given for each presentation. Dr. Reddy invited the presenters and asked them to present a brief overview of the digital solutions in the Community Broadcasting & Culture & Tourism area and that each presentation should be complete within three minutes. A total of 7 presentations were made.
Presentation 1: Abhijit Bhattacharya, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata
Abhijit Bhattacharya has been working on this project since 2008. The project is on archiving program. It is an alternate archiving of cultural heritage and is a database of historical records, library. Currently, the resources are private and are not open to public.
Mr. Bhattacharya was asked when he would make the resources available to the public, on the type and make of the equipment used, and the kind of Meta data and tags used for the project. Mr. Bhattacharya further added that, for protecting the documents, the instrument should not touch the document and the scan should be always done from the top.
Presentation 2: Gaurav Gupta – Yaadon Ka Idiot Box
Gaurav Gupta gave a brief overview of the project. He added that his project comprises writers who write stories for FM. The program is based on an imaginary city called ‘Yaad Sheher’. There is storytelling mixed with music. In this program, they take up any character from the city. These stories have helped to come out of depressions. Mr. Gupta narrated a story where he got a call from a very depressed lady from Kashmir who was thrown acid by her husband. Through this program, she revealed that she came out of her depression.
Presentation 3: Sagar Shah – offeradda.com
Sagar Shah gave a brief overview of Offeradda.com and presented that it is a one stop shop ecommerce site that consolidates offers and deals available on the internet to the online community. The website provides exclusive discount coupons; send free samples people, to mention only a few of the features. Currently, it has 30000 plus deals and 10000 and more active users.
There were questions posed to Mr. Shah at the end of his presentations. Some of the questions were on the affiliate model, discounts on railways, or whether the website also includes offline deals.
Presentation 4: Bhaskar Jyoti Bhuyan from Brahmaputra Community Radio
Bhaskar Jyoti Bhuyan shared that his initiative started in 2012. His Community Radio broadcasts in five languages in Dibrugarh. This service reaches out to people in 30 tea gardens and to a population of 14000 from the river island. The programs are on various issues related to education, health, and special slots devoted to cultural programs, etc. He added that a 45 minute program is divided into 10 minute time slots because people do not want to listen to long programs.
This project was aided by UNICEF till June 2014. Now, the NGO is on their own. The cost of the project is Rs. 50000 per month.
Presentation 5: ePothi, Rabindra Narayan Behera, Senior Technical Director, National Informatics Centre
Mr. Behera showcased epothi, which is an online cataloguing website of manuscripts from Odisha State Museum. The website is designed in two languages – Oriya and Sanskrit. He shared that there are a lot of palm and bamboo leaf manuscripts that have been preserved in a DVD format now. The cataloguing is currently done only as archival and they are open to search. These manuscripts are accessible to all, including the visually challenged. There is a small charge for accessing the manuscripts.
Presentation 6: Glorious Bygones, Sanjaya Ratnayake, Manging Director, Glorious Bygone (Pvt.) Ltd.
Glorious Bygone promotes tourism on ancient historical regions, highlighting culture of different regions of India.
Presentation 7: Ann Shaftel, Treasure Caretaker
Anne Shaftel created a digital database for monasteries based in India and Bhutan. She started out with documenting sacred arts, meeting the elders before embarking in this project.
One hurdle she faced is that the sacred items were not shared easily with her because of their traditional societies. Therefore, she got the caretakers of the monasteries to document the records themselves.
The session was concluded by Namita Rao. The moderator and panelist were presented with stoles as token of appreciation, and the presenters were presented with certificates of recognition.