It was way too quiet to begin with. A pregnant lull after the rush of a big snowballing network, and the unrelenting clickety-clack of the newswheel.
There was space and there was time... after years...to think of what next.
What next?
Even through the blur of the BIG EXIT, the heady farewells, the physical shift to another office, I had heard Raghav think “Digital is where the challenge is”.
Now in the quiet of a new office, as a team of One (Raghav was yet to exit his N18 responsibilities), I set sail on self-learn.
I trolled tech sites, web culture hubs and online “labs” that explored the intersection of journalism with digital. I spoke to people who knew stuff. Raghav was both mentor and sponge-absorbing the panic juices. I even enrolled into codecademy.com to figure CSSand HTML and PHP and every possible @##@@%!! It was “dizzy-tal” overload but a wire-frame was emerging.
INNOVATION in web journalism belonged to the young start-ups. The legacy giants were struggling to make that big leap onto the “new media” gravy train.
SOCIAL MEDIA was the biggest distributor, the party where the content pulse was throbbing.
The world had moved to MOBILE and India was a burgeoning smartphone bazaar.
CONTENT was still KING. But the USER was now the SUPERWOMAN. The news now had to be personalised, prioritised and be pinging on smartphones.
It was a two-way highway. News was now CONVERSATION, not just communication.
And agile TECH would be the soul of this news reboot.
By the time Raghav and I booked ourselves on a DigitalDarshan Yatra across NY and the Bay Area, I had acquired enough jargon to wing my way through most meetings… “responsive-adaptive”, “graceful degradation”, “progressive enhancement”, “bitrate...”
Both, NY and SFO did a Bold, an Underline and a Highlight on Innovation. With 20-something founders in hoodies meeting up with Raghav, the 50-something “startup” guy from India. Anonymity was both a comfort and an advantage. An Indian techie in the Valley was even called in by a startup founder in San Fran to “verify” us India guys. In fact, this Indian Techie, Amit Rathore, is now the founding partner of Quintillion’s TECH joint-venture, providing The Quint its spine - its agile technology support. So verification? Any time!
We were back in India – FUTURE READY – wearables and all. The next six months were a fast motion blur - gathering a team of the bright & the young, setting up an office from scratch – iMacs to foosball, to coffee brew. The new lessons of recent months resonated on the audio track: create an open, psychedelic workspace. Set up flat hierarchy, tech-backed, tight operations. Keep the news succinct, edgy, accessible and VISUAL. Don’t herd, let the young guide. And watch in amazement as the new digital commandos create magic… one sparkling pixel at a time.
It is happening and it definitely isn’t quiet anymore.
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