CouncilSpeak – A Potion of Technology!

– Rajdeep Gupta

I am going to start off by narrating an incident, which took place with a friend of mine, who apparently fresh from abroad picked up a pressure cooker from one of the many shopping malls in Bangalore. To his ill luck the product turned out to be defective. Poor customer service added to his woes, but he was pleasantly surprised as his tweets received many responses from users citing similar experiences.

Within a few moments, he received an update from a rival dealing in pressure cookers that they would be thrilled to provide him with a brand new pressure cooker. And I said, “Wow! The Power of the Internet”.

Technology has made our lives faster and easier at the same time. We no longer wait in queues to get our work done, but simply use the internet for everything. We are unquestionably strong advocates of technology though there are few who might actually stand up and say, “Oh! I still love writing letters with a pen and paper rather than sending an email”, or “I prefer listening to a gramophone record rather than an mp3”.

But most of all Internet has gotten us to notice our time and yes it has connected us.

With the meteoric rise in demand for connectivity, the Internet has become a communication highway for millions of users. The Internet was initially restricted to military and academic institutions, but now it is a full-fledged conduit for any and all forms of information and commerce. Internet websites now provide personal, educational, political and economic resources to every corner of the planet.

Honestly, I was not aware of the potency of online advertisement till a few months back. But, today when we organize any conferences, learning sessions, and so on, we have so many mediums to network. We have the STC India portal, where you get a chance to post announcements and discuss opinions with the groups. If this is not enough and you want to reach a large number of networkers just tweet it using Twitter. Everyone is into social networking these days and there are groups centered on technical communication and so on.

I regularly use Facebook and Orkut to spread the news of the upcoming learning sessions and and have received responses from people who have never been a part of any group. Hosting events at a professional network of LinkedIn, I generate the required curiosity.

The only constant thing in life is CHANGE. Observe it from your quarters, STC India has embraced radical changes but with positive tidings all over. It is just the beginning where we have started participating, sharing, and developing assests, together which, in the longer run, would benefit technical communication.

I am confident of an exciting season ahead for STC India where there will be lots of exciting sessions on technology coming up. For the moment, I leave you with a question – will there be a day when we would say NO to technology?

About the councilman:
Rajdeep is the Vice President of the STC India administrative council. He can be reached via email.