It is always a challenge to reach out to people of our own community. I have been blogging for a couple of years now and I have learned that many of my articles can be much more tuned to reach an even larger audience.

Discussion in progress at the Center for Internet and Society (pic courtesy: Omshivaprakash H L )

I attended a discussion on 29th March at the Center for Internet and Society at Cunningam Road. The session organized by some of us from the Sampada Technical Group in association with the Center for Internet and Society to learn more about  "How to write technology, science and agriculture in Kannada?".

Well respected names of publication, media and journalism were present – Nagesh Hegde, a writer known for his writing in Kannada on topics related to science and technology and highly respected for the creative journalist he has been for several decades, Ravi K Hegde, Executive Editor, Kannada Prabha, journalist NAM Ismail, media person Chamraj Savadi from Suvarna news channel, Sampada founder Hari Prasad Nadig with his tech team from Sampada and a few other Kannada bloggers and other community people joined us in this discussion.

First half of the session was initiated by NAM Ismail and technical users from Sampada community. Lots of questions asked and answered revolved around the difficulties faced by new writers and bloggers, confusions related to "necessity to translate technical terms in ‘English’ while writing in Kannada", coining new names for technical terms et cetera.

Writer Nagesh Hegde and Ravi K Hedge joined us during the second session in the afternoon and fueled our souls with more energy and power to continue our talks. We discussed about technologies available, how to make better use of it. Why we should write in Kannada about science, agriculture and technology? Ravi Hegde and Nagesh Hegde pointed out what we are missing out on by just blogging on the Internet and how it is not reaching out to the people who really need it to start their contribution to communities. They even explained us how we can make use of traditional media and television to reach out to masses for spreading awareness on science and technology and made us realize how this could open up a lot of opportunities for people who are totally unaware of the power of Internet and related technologies? How do we create political implications and how could we see the practical applications of all? These questions were asserted by Nagesh Hedge.

We also discussed on RTIBangalore.info which aims at spreading knowledge to people about "Right to Information".

It was a fruitful event for young technology writers.

About Sampada

Sampada, a community portal dedicated to Kannadigas, the Kannada speaking population, was started at the end of July, 2005 to promote usage of the Kannada language on the Internet. It is a strong community with close to 5000 registered users.

Those interested can write to tech-volunteers@sampada.net to get involved with various events organized by Sampada.

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