I met a 24 year old who not only had a killer idea, but did something about it and he sat opposite us as the CEO of Innoz technologies, the creators of SMS Gyan and 55444.in, what will be India’s biggest App store based on SMS. We were there to discuss the creation of the SMS app store, which we are currently in the process of creating, and left mighty impressed with what they had managed to achieve thus far.

A couple of days later, I got a call asking if I would be interested in working with them as an evangelist for the SMS app store – 55444.in. Now I had heard and read quite extensively about the role of an ‘evangelist’ and there was a point in my life, when all I wanted to be was an evangelist. So when this came along, it was hard to turn it down. I went and met Deepak again, and Hisam his partner at Innoz as well, and I guess they did not have to try too hard to convince me to get on board!

I am totally in love with the idea of what 55444.in can do and become for the average cellphone user in this country and I am already working to make it happen. So it is with great pride and joy that I start my work as an evangelist for the idea that I love already!

You will hear me talking a lot more about this very soon, but for now, go ahead and try SMS Gyan – send your question as an SMS to 55444 and lets see where it takes you!

The Call for Speakers was met with a Huge response and we have over 150 submissions to choose from and that list is going to be out soon. The delegate registration starts in a couple of days and this time we will have online payment as an option as well, so things are going to get a lot easier!

So mark your calendars, and keep those dates free, the next big Open Source conference is in a town near you! (or me atleast )

The new year was brought in just the way I like it! I went for midnight mass with the family and then headed to spend time with Shilpa. We even made pizza ourselves! I like this over the partying and the madness! And the rest of the year was going to get crazy anyway .. and it did

It was by complete accident that I started taking photographs at weddings. I carry my camera around with me all the time and when I first took some photos at my friend’s wedding, it was because I wanted to keep myself occupied! Some of the couple’s friends had made a movie about their life together and wanted to show it at the reception and since I had both my camera and my mac with me, I took a couple of hundred photos (like I do always), transferred them to my mac and ran a slideshow on the projector that was set up for the movie! This became such a great hit because a typical wedding photographer would take a month after the wedding for you to see the photos even and here guests who came in a little later could see what had happened earlier in the reception!

I started getting offers to shoot weddings which I still don’t take up for money. I am just not good enough yet and am still doing this as a hobby and for only my close friends. But then, sometime later this year, I should possibly start charging for it

Much to my liking, a LOT of music happened this year, with the new project (tentatively named – Allegro Fudge) that is making some very interesting music, to playing with old friends at Opus and other places around the city to the lovely ‘Raghu Dixit Project‘, its been a time when I grew a lot as a musician and I hope that will continue right through.

February 26th, 2008 was when The Raghu Dixit Project’s debut album was launched and from there its been a crazy ride with the band this year. From being MTV’s artist of the month, to seeing our album for sale in stores, to playing all over the country and some parts of the world, being part of the Roots Music Festival tour of the North East of India, to travelling around 5 countries in South Asia, to being part of a superhit movie score, my journey in music with Raghu has been tremendous this year! And I only hope next year will top it and will see me get better with the bass guitar!

This is my favourite picture of the band on stage taken this year. This was taken by Sayan ‘The Red Bantoo’ Datta, who is one of the best concert photographers I have met in the country!

The trip to the North East of India that I went on with the band, was more than just the music for me. It was a great lesson in management and I learnt more on that one trip about how to organize concerts, negotiate with people, delegate work, get work done, and just manage things than I have learnt in the past 25 years of my life! From the accident to having to set up promotional deals with radio stations in the North East and making sure things were on track in a place I have never been to in my life, in a language I don’t understand was quite an experience!

It was on this trip that I spoke extensively with Vijay Nair about the various things that we can in the realm of Indie music in India. Many of those ideas are being brought to fruition as we speak . This was also the trip that fuelled my leaving IT and eventually landing up where I am today. We’ll come to that in a bit.

2008 was the year that I was finally able to do music and work in the music biz a little more seriously and a large part of that was because of winning the IYME award for India. That was one of the best experiences I’ve had all year. I got to go to London, Liverpool and Manchester and see how the music industry works there and make friends and contacts that will be invaluable to me as I continue on this path in the music biz.

2008 was in many ways, the year for travel! Most of this was not purely travel, but I did get to see a LOT of the world and I am thankful for it. I will seriously invest time and money in travel over next year and the years to come. Its just the best thing in the world I should tell you! I used to be this person who completely disliked travelling on IT work because you are going to be stuck in an office in another country like you are now and it will only be a change of location. But I strongly urge you to travel when you can and do it NOW! go to as many places and see the world .. there is a lot you will learn

2008 was the year I finally quit IT! to pursue a life and career in the music industry and as a great first step, a series of co-incidences and great timing made me the VP for MuckWork and getting to work with Derek Sivers can be a great start to a career in the Music Biz and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am for it. More updates on how everything progresses will be made as things happen. But I am finally doing what I LOVE from my heart and its a great place to be and I am determined to make this count

There are a lot of interesting projects I am part of in the Indie Music scene in India and I will tell you about them as they happen. Right now its all just concepts but they will come together soon.

The project that started it all was relaunched late this year and I am really proud of what we have got here. The brand new RadioVeRVe now has more music and a LOT more features. I strongly recommend that you check it out and tell me what you think about it. This is just the start for the new RadioVeRVe. There is more that will go there and it will happen soon!

Another great project that I was part of late this year was FOSS.in. It was haphazard to start with, ambitious when it came close and finally when it happened, it was grand! there is a lot we did right this year, a LOT we didn’t and we learnt with everything that din’t go as planned. The team ‘bash’ after the event was quite an event and I hope that it makes us strong as a team together because there is a LOT of good that will happen with the event next year

Finally, Shilpa and I have been together for almost 5 years now and I could not have been happier about it! this has been the year when we grew a LOT closer to each other. When it was smooth sailing almost all year long The year when we started respecting our own space and learning or rather getting used to each one doing our own thing and not having to be around each other all the time. In many ways, that has been the secret to how close we’ve become.

This was also a year when I reconnected with a lot of old friends, made new ones, started many new projects and got qutie a bit of work done and enjoyed every moment of it. In a tremendous number of ways, this has been the best year of my life yet and I see a lot of good happening in 2009 as well. There have been many things I have forgotten to mention and I am sure they will come back to me soon and I’ll probably make new posts about it!

For now, cheers to a great year and here’s another one hoping for an even better year ahead

Possible Muckwork Logo

Its the most fun I have had working in a LONG LONG time and the learning curve is tremendous but then, its only getting better every day. We are currently in the process of setting up various backend systems required to get this up and going and also have been talking with various people for partnerships and collaborations for when we start. And we should start soon!

Like it has been mentioned before, and I love this way of explaining it, when the music industry started becoming an industry a little earlier in this century, the musician just made music and played gigs. The people around the musician took care of everything else that was to be done. We then in the last 10 years or so moved into the phase of the DIY musician who started doing things himself / herself.

The DIY musician eventually ended up spending more time doing the things around the music than the music itself! So now we are at a phase where, technology has made it so easy for many things to be done which previously required a LOT of people doing a LOT of work and as a company we feel that a musician should concentrate on doing the music side of things while they smartly use a lot of resources around them for the rest of the work.

This is where Muckwork comes in. We plan to be the people to go to for the rest of it! The dream is to be able to become a company where a musician comes with whatever vague requests for work, right from “create my press kit” to “make me famous” and we have some way to do that! Though “make me famous” will depend a LOT on your music and many other things

So we start small and start sometime soon and then take it as it comes! its going to be a brilliant new year! so watch this space ..

Lets get the announcement out of the way – The Brand New RadioVeRVe is Up and Running! – http://radioverve.com

About 4 years ago, Shreyas and I started out with a little experiment that eventually became (cutting a long story short) RadioVeRVe. Today I proudly announce the latest version of the site which we have been working on frankly for too long! Its time to let this one out of the bag and add to it everything we want it to become! And it is meant to become something special!

The past year has been very slow for RadioVeRVe and a lot of “real life” and “career” caught up with it and I haven’t given it enough time or nurtured it as much as I could have and should have. But it was a project too close to my heart to just let slip away!

What you see on RadioVeRVe today is the start of something that we have planned and as the weeks pass, you will see a LOT more stuff being released and announced there. So keep your eyes on the site and more importantly, your ears glued to it!

This site would not have been possible without the help of a LOT of our friends who put their time and money behind it, just because they liked the idea, or even at times, just felt bad for us! I would like to thank all of them for the help – Especially Jonathan, Praveen, Shilpa and Arjun. You guys made this happen! Thanks

For as long as I have known myself as a kid, I wanted to become this jetsetting, corporate suit type person who would have a swanky office, a fancy car and a beach house! I din’t really know what my profession would be and how I would go about things, but everytime someone asked me what I wanted to become when I grew up, the answers varied, but the image in my mind remained!

All this came to a grinding halt and my life took a completely new turn and path when I joined engineering college. While to many, the college I studied in was stifling and non-encouraging (it was in a way!), for me it was a whole new world that had opened up! And as the icing on the cake, I joined a band! a good one at that

From here on, I wanted to be a musician and a person on the field and not at a desk, I din’t want that office anymore, I would love the car and the beach house, but I could not wear a suit to save my life! and I din’t want there to be a day when I would be forced to (I know *EXACTLY* what you are thinking!). Infact, I completely subscribed to the “Success is never having to wear a suit!” philosophy.

But when you graduate with a degree that reads, Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science, the most logical thing to do is to get a job that uses what they teach you and hope you will figure out life from there on somehow. And I did get that job, but I could never really figure life out!

I continued to do my music, started getting active online, and slowly, things outside my work life started to get a LOT more interesting! Even at work, I was probably the only person who joined as a software developer and then transitioned out of it! Everyone else was trying to do the reverse!

When I started playing with Raghu, a whole new world opened up to me and for the first time, I saw the possiblity to make a living with music and the music biz! It was through Raghu, that I met Vijay Nair, to whom I owe a large part of what is happening with my career today.

On a whim one day, I called Vijay and told him that I had enough with the IT industry, and that I would quit in a month and see what I can do, and if I did not do this now, there would be chance for me to try and I must give it my best shot atleast once! It was then that Vijay introduced me to Derek Sivers who was looking at that time for someone to head a company that he was looking to start called ‘Muckwork‘.

Well, Derek was travelling at that time and we just started a prelimnary set of email discussions about what each of us was looking to do and I got busy with a tour of South Asia with the band and perhaps as a sign of how international this company was supposed to get, my first real phone call with Derek happened at 2 AM in a hotel in Vladivostok, Russia when he was calling me from the US of A! And it was partly on my hotel phone and partly on Skype .. Perfect

Well, that call went on for 2 hours and was followed by over a month and a half of emails and ideas bouncing around and finally led to both of us feeling like it was a perfect fit that I work for Muckwork.

The rest of it was just procedure with the paperwork getting done and me finally getting out of IT and on December 1st, 2008, started work as the Vice President of Muckwork.

This is the basic gist, in a very random and rambly way, the story of how this twist in my career came to be.

The job itself is a learning curve like no other, but I have never loved the concept of ‘working’ as much as now! so it looks like a fun exciting time ahead from here. Wish me luck

This is still work in progress and a lot more updates are to happen. Please do write to me and let me know if you find something amiss!

This is a design that I put together with my meagre design skills and I must thank the brilliant Deep Ganatra and the entire Web1 team for bringing this to life! They are a complete pleasure to deal with and will go the extra mile to make sure that your site is delivered to you the exact way you want it!

Infact, after a point of time, I was feeling bad to ask for more updates because I thought it was making him do too much, but Deep was ready with the solution for any problem on the site and was sitting up with me into the wee hours of the morning tweaking this site to perfection!

If you are looking for someone to work with a CMS and get your site designed, do look them up, I completely recommend them!

So there it is, the site that I always wanted, or atleast my first shot at it! there are updates to come and changes to be made as usual, but for now, its a start which I plan to build on.

Anyone have any idea what the issue is?

*UPDATE* – So there was an issue! and it was because of a bad code check-in!   .. The wordpress team rocks for actually fixing it that quickly and even more for admitting the error and being honest about it!! Thank you Grant for pointing it out!!

The photographer they had originally hired to do this din’t work out and so I stepped up to take some shots! This is one of our conference rooms / code rooms where general meetings and code evaluations etc are done .. This is completely staged but then, I started clicking much before they expected me to and so it turned out quite alright!

Today, its been about 10 years since I started with all these events and trying to do as much as I can and participate in as many different activities and events as I can and I would like to say .. ‘Its totally worth it!’

I was *far from ideal* as a student! I got good enough grades to stop people from questioning my other interests, but I certainly din’t fit into most teachers’ picture of a good student. Infact, a few of them clearly disliked me as a student and made sure everyone knew that!

But it was passion for these events that kept me and a few of us dedicated to various co-curriculars in our student lives. At that time, I’m sure none of us knew if that would ever help us in the long run or would even be of use to us, but that was not why we did it!

Today, when I look at the number of different things I am doing and how not even *ONE* thing I am doing is what I was trained for in college professionally, I am glad I did all the other things I did and with the passion that I followed it up!

True, its been a huge dollop of good fortune and being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people etc that has helped along the way, but like Paulo Coelho says .. ‘If you want something really bad … the universe will conspire with you to help you get it!’

Quite a few people ask and admire that I manage to do a variety of things or rather in their words ‘find time’ to do all the things I do .. Its not that, I make time to do things I want to .. there is a difference!

Reminds me of my favourite quote as a kid ..”Don’t let school interfere with your education!”