The Truth About Wind Energy

You must have been following the news on the recently concluded Paris Climate Change Conference earlier this month. The pressure on India to reduce its carbon emissions has been mounting. Instead of focusing all our energies on getting more leeway, we can look at this as a challenge to find cleaner ways of running the country. There are many alternative sources of energy, but my focus today is on wind energy.

This source, however is rather underutilized in India. We are blessed with a lot of land (being the 7th largest country in the world in terms of area) and good wind speeds in many empty fields. Despite this, we haven't harnessed the true potential of winds. We must take a leaf out of the book of the Dutch and learn to install windmills where we can. Unfortunately, there are some myths associated with windmills, which has contributed to the lack of focus in this direction. Let me tell you some truths:-

• Wind Energy is not as expensive as it is assumed to be. Technology has improved by leaps and bounds and windmill design has also undergone a lot of transformation. It is as cost effective as generating electricity from coal, and is set to get cheaper.
  
• Wind turbines don't make as much mechanical noise anymore, thanks to improved designs and better wind farming technology.
  
• Wind turbines last about 25 years, and are one of the cleanest renewable sources of energy.
  
• Wind turbines have been historically infamous for causing deaths among birds. But the climate situation today has proven to be far more harmful for birds!

The benefits of using wind energy is manifold. You can watch this video to know some more:-

It is evident from the clip that India stands to save a lot on foreign exchange expenses if it can become self reliant by producing its own energy through wind farming. We won't have to incur such huge debts importing crude oil from oil-rich countries. This will help us shore up our FX reserves and make the Rupee stronger. In addition to that, if we manage to produce excess energy, we'll be able to improve our export-import ratio. Job creation will also increase and our power bills will come down! :-)

To know more about wind energy, visit Windergy India - a digital platform to increase awareness on the Wind Energy sector in India.

INK Live 2014 - An Incredible Experience!

Last Saturday, I was at the most exciting place for technologies and ideas in the country! INK Live 2014. I was lucky to be among the few chosen bloggers who were sponsored by Blogadda to attend this incredible event.

Held at the American School of Bombay, INK Live ran the live telecast of the INK Conference. I picked out a good seat to listen to Ramesh Rao who talked about the "dance of the heart". He has researched extensively on the variability of heart rate. Interestingly, most active and successful people in society have a "variable" heart rate (as opposed to a regular heart rate). And contrary to what you might assume, it is normal to have variability in your heart rate.

This "variability" is called the "vegal tone intensity" of the heart. Dr. Rao's research shows that the intensity of vegal tone is directly proportional to the subject's social connections. In plainspeak, this means the more socially active you are, the more variable your heart rate will be (and as per statistics, the more successful you will be! :-) ). Social connections are not a 21st century fad. We have Facebook today, but there was satsang then. People would gather in groups to chant devotional and religious songs. 

Dr. Rao studied this phenomenon a little further, and came upon NNSO events, or instances that see increasing variability in the heart rate. He studied these NNSO events under various situations, and plotted the "dance steps of the heart".  His work reveals that chanting holy prayers and meditation result in the highest number of NNSO events, and therefore, more variability in the heart rate. This means - the secret to success lies in meditation and social interactions! That's a gem of an information I will carry with me.

I skipped the next couple of talks to attend a workshop on crowdfunding. Anshulika from Wishberry delivered the workshop that covered a lot of important things about this innovative way of raising funds from the general public. 

First things first. Crowdfunding is not the right tool to generate perpetual funding for a business. It is for you to start up your idea when you don't have even the bare minimum for a prototype (for hardware-related products). Once you create a prototype or gain some traction in your business, you must look towards venture capitalists and angel investors, who will ultimately pump in the big bucks.

There are four basic types of platforms for crowdfunding:-

1. Equity Platform: You reward your investors by giving them a stake (or equity) in your business. Note here that the Indian Government does not allow you to raise funds through equity crowdfunding online. You may only do this offline, i.e., knock on the doors of VCs & angels for the actual transactions after you've attracted them online. This is a good platform if you already have some sort of a small business and wish to scale up. Let's Venture is an example of the equity platform.

2. Debt Platform: This platform is a good way to take out a loan for your project. You are expected to return the funds with 0% interest in most cases. This is good for businesses which are sure to generate monetary returns in a couple of years after starting up. Milaap is an example of a debt platform. And may I ask you to contribute to my campaign on Milaap which aims to bring clean water and safe sanitation to the rural women of Tiruchilappalli?

3. Charity Platform: This is a platform to crowdfund for charity events and causes. Ketto is widely popular and also used by celebrities.

4. Reward Platform: This is the most popular platform for raising startup funds when you only have an idea and need money for a prototype or to start working on your project. The fundraising periods don't go beyond 6 months or a year. This is because any idea which has wind will make news only for a few months, after which it will fizzle out. If your idea can't raise funds within those months, maybe you need to rethink its feasibility. This platform expects you to reward your funders in some way - it could be early access, exclusive previews or behind-the-scenes access, etc. Wishberry, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc. are some popular reward platforms.

The key to good fundraising is to select the right platform, then make a strong sales pitch. Your sales pitch could be a video or pictures and description, or a combination of all. The more interesting and appealing your pitch is, the more people would want to fund your pet project.

The final step in crowdfunding is to share your campaign on every corner of the internet/social media you can lay your hands on! You must never be shy to ask for funds. The most shameless campaigner gets the maximum funds!

I could go on and on about crowdfunding, but then I wouldn't do justice to the broader theme of INK Live. (I will perhaps write a full post on crowdfunding someday if you pester me enough.) After the workshop, I went back to watch the live stream of the conference. That's when I met Partha, a human rights blogger from Bengaluru. I realized then how far people had travelled to attend this conference. I met some more people from smaller cities who were bunking in Mumbai so they could attend on all the 3 days.

The next talk was by Ben Nelson who propounded on the importance of analytical approach to education and shared his ideas on reinventing the system and bringing in disruptive education.

I wasn't prepared for what I'd witness next on the screen. 13 and 11 year olds - Melati and Isabel Wijsen, the sisters from  the Green School of Bali, took centre stage as the youngest eco-environmentalists. They delivered a powerful speech on the importance of waste management. These two feisty kids founded 'Bye Bye Plastic Bags' and persuaded their government to ban plastic bags from Bali. They also showed everybody how significant little kids could be. We cannot ignore them because (in their words) - "Kids maybe 25% of the present. But they are 100% of the future!"

The stage was then set up to resemble a science lab. Shashwat Ratan, a technology educator, demonstrated some entertaining and interesting toys designed by kids who used multiple science-concepts in creating them. He wanted to drive home the message that the traditional Indian education system discourages students from venturing beyond the prescribed syllabus, whereas kids learn best when they "do" and "see".

I'll remember the experiment that Hannah Roodman, a Jew from Brooklyn, New York conducted as she made the world's first Google Glass documentary. She was disturbed by the rift between the Jews and the Blacks in her neighbourhood. So, she got volunteers from both the communities to wear Google Glasses and record videos of what they saw. In the end, it was discovered that people are all the same, irrespective of their religion, color or ethnicity. They all have similar struggles and dreams. Her video was shown to the neighborhood and they have started embracing one another.

The final talk I attended was that by Preeti Shroff-Mehta who introduced us to CQ - Cultural Quotient. In the interconnected global village that we live today, we cannot expect to work smoothly simply by possessing IQ and EQ. It is imperative that we are sensitive to other cultures to work in the most efficient way possible.

I think it was a Saturday well spent for me. What do you think? If you would like to read about more of such interesting thoughts, please follow my blog and leave a comment below.

My First Blogging Conference

Yesterday was the most amazing Saturday I had all month! I attended two exclusive events that I had been yearning to go to since time immemorial. I'll talk about the second event in another post, but first, let me tell you where I spent the better part of my day on the 20th of September - WORDUP!

The honeycomb seating area at Blue Frog

This invite-only conference was hosted by IndiBlogger and BigRock for bloggers in Mumbai. It was scheduled to start at 9AM at Blue Frog, a popular clubbing place in Lower Parel, but the traffic situation in my part of the city ensured I got late. :-( But my day got better as I entered the room full of bloggers, eager to improve their craft. What first struck me was the honeycomb-shaped seating-booths that went all around the space and framed the centre-stage.

Here comes the fashionably late Oindrila!

I luckily found myself an empty seat to the side of the stage and saw my gravatar-photo pop up beside me! I was sitting in front of the right screen, and the sidebar announced that I had "arrived"! :-D I was impressed to see they displayed live tweets with the #WordUp hashtag. I immediately pulled my phone out and sent out a tweet to see it come up on the big screen. (Sorry if I come across as bucolic. I've never been to any event like this before.)

Lakshmi Rebecca of the "Chai with Lakshmi" fame. (Can you spot me in the corner? :-) )

Anshul Tewari was halfway through his session on Blog Promotion when I entered the spacious nightclub-turned-conference-hall. Next on stage was the effervescent video-blogger, Lakshmi Rebecca. She took us through her journey of launching 'Chai with Lakshmi', a platform where she interviews the interesting people behind small startups. She interviewed Sunit Singh, the Lead Designer at Cleartrip, and got him to share some valuable tips on user-experience and aspects like font, text-size, design and blog-customization for portable-devices.

We broke for lunch at one-thirty and I was smiling at the exquisite buffet spread. Too bad I forgot to click any pictures of my plate, but I will compensate by describing the vegetarian preparations I indulged in! ;-) The salad bar had poached peaches with pak choi and stuffed button mushrooms for appetizers. The entree table offered a polenta-dish and farfalle with more mushrooms drenched in cheese. There was, of course, a bread basket of assorted buns, whole-grain ciabatta and nachos. For dessert were banana-caramel pastry, chocolate-cake and some vanilla ice-cream. I can't tell you how much I relished the lunch yesterday! I can almost taste the dishes again as I pen this post right now.

I'm listening in rapt attention to Varun Krishnan

Next up was Varun Krishnan from FoneArena who told us all about blogging ethics and monetizing our blogs. Shree Krishna Chepuri made an interesting entry with his funny news-grabs from The UnReal Times. He spoke about the legal aspects of blogging. The most important session for me was the one on SEO by Harsh Agrawal. He pointed out some easy steps to improve search engine optimization for blogs.

Selfie with a fellow blogger

Did I tell you there was a selfie-corner outside Blue Frog? And a prize for the best selfie? (No, I didn't win that.) But the next session was a prize in itself! It was all about a day in the life of Scherezade Shroff, a beauty-blogger. They served us some tea and sandwiches at this time. And trust me, the mushroom sandwiches just blew my mind! I had three! There were also purple kraut sandwiches for those who're not as crazy about mushrooms as I am.

Snigdha Manchanda and a glimpse of the backstage

The final blogger on stage was Snigdha Manchanda, a tea sommelier, who illustrated how to tell a story through your blog. She says, there are seven basic frames that the pattern of any story can essentially fit into. Right after the creative writing session, there was Bhavish Ailani's stand-up comedy act. He had all the serious bloggers in splits! Just before the closing ceremony, I ran into another blogger I have known for the past two weeks now - Gauri (I hope you are reading this).

The treasures I brought back from the bloggers' meet

I probably didn't tell you, but after every session, there was a twitter contest, and guess what! I WON me a Flipkart voucher for tweeting the correct answers! This was not all I brought back home. BigRock gave us a complimentary laptop-bag and one year's worth of free website hosting facility! Inside the bag there was one more goodie - a Wave near-field amplifier (which I tested this morning on all our cellphones, and works wonderfully, by the way). The best thing was laying my hands on my first Blogging-DNA T-shirt by IndiBlogger! :-)

Prizes and freebies apart, I haven't seen so much respect for bloggers! My parents just laugh it off when I tell them I want to consider a career in blogging. My colleagues think it's just some kind of "hobby" I pursue in free time and ask me if I can write about random office-events. *Sigh* However, I have now found a new group of people I admire and who understand what it means to be a blogger. I see a silver lining.