Careers in Social Media

I attended the Careers in Social Media session at the Social Media Week in Bengaluru today. The main reason I went for it was that I am frequently asked by youngsters, what jobs they can hope to get in online media.

Here below are some of the points I gleaned from the talks by the members of the panel and answers they gave to the questions from the audience.

Types of jobs

There are three types: Creative, Communicative, Analytic.
Creative jobs have got to do with design and visual appeal.
Communication refers to textual content.
Analytical jobs are about crunching numbers and analyzing them.

How do you know you will fit into this type of job?

Ask yourself if you have a passion for working on these lines. You should be comfortable with online social media. May be you should intern in one of the companies and check out if the job excites you.

What does the job involve?

It's about managing a company's social media presence. The generic designation is Social Media Manager or Director, who has a team that looks into various aspects of how business is publicized through social media, and how people respond to it.

What qualifications should an aspirant have?

A good knowledge of the domain area. If you are into creating textual content, then you should have good command over the language. A formal degree would no doubt add value; but what will matter is not the degree but how good are you at work.

How big is the demand?

Social media management is still evolving. The requirements of different companies are different. But the fact is that all companies are trying to scale up their social media presence. And, all of them are looking for competent hands. There is lot of opportunity out there. There is a huge demand.

How does one look for jobs?

Make sure you yourself have a good social media presence. Lot of recruitment nowadays take place via LinkedIn and Twitter.
Update your LinkedIn profile, with lot of details of what you do. Use the right key words, so that your profile shows up during search.

How good is the pay?

It's getting better and better. Right now, there are people who have been hired for around Rs 3 lakh. However, pay varies from company to company, and depends on what job you are actually doing. In about 3 years time, Social Media Managers can hope to be on a par with software programmers. 

Vanishing ballpoint pen refills

You don't get them in most stationery stops.

"That's weird," my friend exclaimed, when I told her about it. "Students still use pens, so you should get it everywhere no?"

Though near the place where I stay, there is a well-known college and a school, the stationery shops there don't sell them.


Lack of replacement refills has led to accumulation of unusable ballpoint pens in my house.

So, today I took them all to the Supreme store near Ulsoor bus stand. The shop is popular as they sell stationery and binding material at very affordable rates.

But, even he has only refills for Reynolds.

I asked my friend's question to the shopkeeper. This is what he said, "When there are cheap use-and-throw pens, no student will bother to go around hunting for refills. And many college students use Gel pens."

These one-time-use ball pens come for as cheap as Rs 3. And if you buy in bulk, you get it cheaper. These may not be stylish, but they are good, and serves the purpose.

So, no surprise it's very difficult to get ballpoint pen refills.

The flip side of use-and-throw pens is environmental degradation. But when did anyone put ecology ahead of convenience?

Book Review - Steve Jobs: an Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs: an Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson is a well-researched life history of a rare icon of the software industry. The author has interviewed hundreds of people -- ranging from Jobs' relatives and friends, to colleagues and competitors -- for this book, and not surprisingly the book has lots of details about Jobs: the person and entrepreneur.

My knowledge of Jobs was all picked up at random from articles on him, especially a surfeit of them that appeared when he passed away four years ago. But nothing to beat this book in terms of the depth of details.

The book is worth reading because of the innumerable anecdotes and quotes that reveal who the real Steve Jobs was.

I found Jobs a paradox. Because, he had traits that were quite conflicting. He had plenty of negative habits in his personality, that we all associate with sure disaster. But probably because of the strength of his positives, Jobs was able to not only get away with all that, but even reach commanding levels of success.

In many ways, Jobs isn't the typical role model. Rarely showered, and had a strange belief that if you are a vegetarian the body kept itself clean. He had erratic food habits -- sometimes he starved himself, sometimes he indulged in a few chosen food which he abandoned altogether later.

He had a fiery and unpredictable temper; and was very bad at managing people. Very often he was curt and rude. He could easily make people dislike him rather than like him. He curtly rejected new ideas for no rhyme or reason, but accepted them later when it came from someone else. Worse, he sometimes appropriated as his own, some ideas of others.

What made him successful in spite of all these, was his sharp focus and determination to achieve his goals. He wanted his creations to be different, and he was obsessed with details, with a sharp eye for design.

He was a shrewd businessman, and knew which side of the bread was buttered. He was fiercely protective of his products which he wanted to look good as much as efficient. He had near contempt for anything other than Apple. He wanted the users of his products to get everything from the Apple ecosystem. He hated to let anyone else in to the Apple Store.

Jobs differed with Microsoft's route of licensing Windows. He also had contempt and strong hatred for Google's philosophy of open source. That in fact laid the groundwork for one of the most intensely fought software battles. The world is divided on those lines: to be open and accessible to everyone, or be protective, exclusive and privileged.

The book also deals at length with Jobs's struggle with cancer. Even while he was losing the battle there was only one thing that brought a sparkle in his eyes: Apple.

Jobs was a completely complex personality. Definitely one of a kind. He knew often he wasn't being fair in the way he was dealing with people but he didn't know any other way to deal with people.

But at the end of it all, he created products that achieved cult status, products that dramatically changed the way people read books, listened to music, communicated with each other.

Isn't that a great legacy?

At the Harry Price Library again

A reading cushion full of witchcraft sceptics:
A first edition Weyer, Scot from 1584 and 1651, John Webster, Francis Hutchinson

A visit yesterday to Senate House to look at a selection of items from the Harry Price Library. This year, the curator, Karen Attar, had the 20 or so books I had suggested arranged by topics: Demonologists, Sceptics, Victims, Astrology, the last English witchcraft conviction, and some miscellaneous.

What a collection it is! I had been in Toby English's Antiquarian bookshop over in Wallingford two weekends ago, and had casually asked him what he thought a 1520 edition of the Malleus Maleficarum might fetch on the open market. His first guess was for prices that might start at £10,000. Karen indicated that the collection preferred not to think in such terms. I wanted, I admit in rather a crude-minded way, to stress to my students just what treasures they were handling.

Karen Attar explains who Harry Price was.

A briefing before beginning

Rose and Rebecca look at sceptics

 I had never seen a copy of Webster's 1677 book, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft, and was interested to see that it was so handsome a volume. But Webster was a bibliophile who assembled a very large library of his own (where did he get the money for those atlases he bought?), so one might have expected that he would not have cheap job done when he finally achieved permission for the work.

Jane, one of our visitors from Shanghai, and Priyanka look at the collection's pristine copy of Scot, 1584

How to use your magic powers to make one dance naked (suborn a poor boy to do it, stop him before the company take offence)

Some of Scott's exposures of juggler's tricks: the decollation of John Baptist.

An early owner added a motto in Greek. I didn't make a transcript, and have no idea. I will find a classicist.

Gemma, Taneth and Christine are looking at Lilly's defiant 'Christian Astrology', 1647.

Gemma is looking at one of my 'must get round to reading' texts, Addison's 'The Drummer'. Rebecca has pencil and paper out to take notes, in the proper research collection fashion. Bottom left is a copy of 'Monsieur Oufle' in the English translation: one of my 'well, I tried to read it' texts.

More or less everyone in view

Karen gave us generous and up close access to these wonderful books, and whole-heartedly encouraged student readers to come and use the collection.

After this, I briefly showed a smaller group of the students the English Literature open shelves, after that, we strolled up the road to ULU, the University of London student union, with me pointing out that for a complete mind-and-body day, it has a swimming pool in the basement. There seemed to be some thought that a young male reader who had escaped my attention, but who was in the library in a suit, might make a worthwhile tertium quid. I left my students as they headed for the ULU cafe, and thought that at the very least, they'd feel a bit more members of this huge university, and might even seek out another experience of research.

My thanks again to Karen Attar - a favourite moment for me was one of the students asking about printers using the long s - and finding out that one of Karen's publications was an entry on the duration of long s type in British printing.

Snow Days and sequels

Hello!
I'm currently sitting on my couch in my living room watching a random movie on my second snow day in a row and I just received an email saying we are having another one tomorrow. I have cleaned and reorganized my apartment, did laundry, caught up on work emails, wrapping three birthday presents, practicing make-up for a wedding this weekend, and spent endless hours researching endlessly about nothing and blowing up my boyfriend's phone so when he gets off work he has a bunch of dumb texts. What else are girlfriends for? Oh! I have also gotten my oil changed. I have gotten a little of writing down. I'll get more done tomorrow. I did a little work on End of the Line 2, which is slowly moving, I'm near the end, but I can't bring myself to write or focus writing right now.  I'm not selling that story probably considering how long it is taking me to write it. I just get distracted. That and it is sad to think that I will be saying goodbye to some friends again. I have a soft spot for Aaron and Lauren. They were my first published characters and they were based off characters in a dream I had for years.

I will be doing final edits on a short story that will be along side of Shadows from the Past! I can't wait to share that one, but once that is done I will be sending it to Amy to work her magic on. I don't publish much, but I hope they are worth the wait. This story it does not really matter if you read shadows from the past first or not, there are different characters, but in the same world. I had a few beta readers on it and they seemed to like it, and were interested to see if there will be a full length novel on the world. It's in the works is all I can say.

Now to Project US. My Aunt is doing edits on the second half of it and I got the first half back from my boyfriend since I accidentally left it at his place. She did the edits on a physical copy. I'm sure there is a forest out there that is plotting against me. This is my longest story up-to-date, 80K+. It's a little different, and I'm nervous to see what people will think, I've gotten some really positive feedback on it so that is helping my nervous. Of course I'm over thinking the cover and everyone I have asked liked something else. I'm going to have to go on my gut probably which will be fun of course. Can't you tell by all this writing that I've been locked up in my apartment for days?

I'll try to writing more soon. I have one of my best friend's getting married this upcoming weekend which means a trip back up to NJ this weekend! I haven't seen him in so long I'm excited to see him and his fiance tie the knot. This is my first friend to get married, and it is crazy to think that we reached this point in our lives. So grown up, yet, I'm still being mistaken for one of my students. Plus the boyfriend will be going with me to the wedding, our first event together. I'm probably more excited than I should be about that. That's probably because when it came to prom I always went with my friends never a date. I'll post pictures!
~Ottilie

AAP landslide victory: random thoughts

Surely even Arvind Kejriwal and AAP supporters never thought they would win all but 3 seats in the Assembly. That's almost 96% of seats. Is that a record for any election in India? Remember, AAP didn't win a single seat in Delhi in the Lok Sabha elections.

This is what the voters said: "Dear Aravind, you asked us to pardon you. We have done that. You said we didn't give you a clear mandate, last time. We have given you that now. Let's see how you deliver on your promises."

Kiran Bedi and BJP leadership in no small way contributed to the party's rout. She was crticising BJP and Modi till a few months ago. She walks in to that same party, heaps platitudes on the party and Modi; and gets anointed as the party's chief ministerial candidate. Huge goof-up by party leadership.

This is not the first time voters have spoken decisively. In 1977, Indira Gandhi was swept out of power, and totally untested Janata Party came to power. When people saw that the alternative simply didn't work out, in the first available chance, in 1980, they voted her back to government.

Another example is the defeat of the urban-centric trio of Atal Behari Vajpayee at the Centre, Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh and S M Krishna in Karnataka in 2004. Anyone following the media -- that was bristling with the India Shining campaign -- would have felt that these three would easily come back. But it was not so.

Even now, the voters have said that they know clearly the difference between Central government and State government. Many, especially the BJP thought that having won the Lok Sabha election, it should be a cakewalk in Delhi. Complacency has done them in.