Indian Eye

Topics discussed at Cerebrate, Goa 2008

Cerebrate 2008, held at Club Mahindra Varca beach resort Goa, went off better than expected and served the purpose of the event - to ideate and cerebrate.

Over the two days of the event, a variety of things were discussed spread over many subject.

These were the topics discussed.

Media - Cost dynamics in the media (Demand and Supply), PR and the media, Challenges faced by PR agencies with clients and vice versa, Effectiveness of ratings

Technology - Privacy and security issues on the web, Benefits of Open Source, Corporate Blogging, the uber personal device

Hospitality/Travel - Favorite holiday destinations, Grass is greener here - Hospitality in India, Rustic holiday experiences

Legal - The Creative Commons and how it benefits the community, Sharing Video aka Youtube and its legal implications, Making Legalese more accessible, Shooting the messenger - Can blogging or content platforms be sued for derogatory/inadmissible content.

Sports - The art of motivation, Overcoming obstacles in a country starved of sports
Cinema/Theatre - Financing an idea, Has creativity lost out to commercialism, Challenges of making a cinema in India and the way ahead, Method in the madness - the Indian movie industry and its success despite the trappings

Start-ups/Entrepreneurship - Financing your startup, VC funding - the necessary evil, Sailing the rough - Becoming an entrepreneur after a cushioned 9-5 exec job, Finding and retaining talent.

Marketing - Dumb it down (why the most creative ads may not necessarily be the best for the mass market), the changing face of the Indian consumer, Market in times of inflation.

Here are some snapshots of the participants “cerebrating”.

Abhimany Radhakrishnan (CNBC-TV18) Cerebrating. Others in the frame - Kiruba Shankar, Nikhila Kesavan and me.

Kiruba Shankar and Rashmi Bansal

Nikhila Kesavan and Abhimanyu Radhakrishnan

Cerebrating in the open - Kiruba Shankar (speaker with orange t-shirt). Others (clockwise): Shriram Adukoorie, James Joseph, Abhimanyu RadhakrishnanNikhiKesavan, Atul Chitnis, Dev Amritesh, Rashmi Bansal, Sudhir Shivaram, Arun Nair

Tags: 2008, Cerebrate, Club Mahindra, Goa

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Back from Goa!

Back from the Club Mahindra Varca Beach Resort in Goa, where the annual sales conference and the marketing meet was held. Spent more than 50 hours traveling by bus and train. But in the end it was fun, adventurous and great way to catch up with the rest of the zonal marketing team.

In the meanwhile, here is a slideshow of the photos.

Tags: Annual Conference, Club Mahindra, Goa, Varca Beach Resort

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Club Mahindra, Kodagu Valley Resort - Day 3

The day before saw Kiruba and Apurva make an early exit. Kiruba had to attend the Nokia Word Conference in Amsterdam and Apurva had to leave to Lucknow for a personal engagement. But I could feel their reluctance to part earlier, especially Kiruba, who wished he could stay back.

On day 3, we were up earlier and were ready for the next leg of our trip, the Dubare elephant camp.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: bonfire, Club Mahindra, Coorg, dance, Day 3, Dev, Dubare Elephant Camp, Elephants, Kannada, performance

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Club Mahindra, Kodagu Valley Resort - Coorg

Continued from Previous Post.

Heading to my room, I was wondering how it would turn out. That concern disappeared the moment I stepped into the room. Elegant and spacious, well furnished, with wooden flooring, and the right ambient lighting, it was just the room one would want to crash into at the end of a tiring journey.

View of the room - Studio apartment

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Tags: Bloggers, Club Mahindra, Coorg, Dancers, Field Marshall Kariappa, Joy, Kodagu Valley, Kupya, Perfomers, Resort, Room, Singers, Trip

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Trip to Coorg - en route

Coorg is around 270 kms from the Bangalore airport - the most convenient assembling point for the bloggers coming in from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai. Depending on how good your transportation is and more importantly how good the roads are on that particular day, it could take anywhere between 6-8 hours to reach Coorg.

As the organiser, I arrived on the 29th of November, a day earlier to ensure that there were no last moment hiccups.

On the 30th, I informed the driver to park near the airport his Tempo Traveler, capable of carrying 15 passengers comfortably (or not so comfortably we realised later).

I had synchronized the flight schedules for the bloggers so that they would converge by 9:30-10 AM at the Bangalore airport. But as was expected, the overcongested Indian skies failed the clock once again. So the flights from Mumbai and Delhi were delayed by more than an hour. Fortunately, the Chennai flight was on time and all passengers (Kiruba, Sudhir, Shrinidhi, Dhruva) reached as scheduled. Also, the Delhi flight that was delayed by an hour also managed to scrape through, bringing in Dev and Mridula.
I was a little concerned about the Mumbai flight that was delayed and arranged for a back-up incase it got delayed further. I didn’t want to inconvenience the other bloggers who were waiting. But those concerns were put to rest, when the Mumbai flight finally arrived, and just in the nick of time because the rest of us had boarded the van. The Mumbai flight bought in Anil and his wife, and Apurva.

Dev and Dhruva in conversation

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Tags: Airport, Bangalore, Bloggers, Club Mahindra, Coorg, Flight, Kamat Lokaruchi, Travelers, Van

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