Kiran Jonnalagadda | Photo: Shaz Mohd
Manipal: Kiran Jonnalagadda is a New media professional who specialises in Systems Administration, Web design, User interfaces, and is helping in e-governance. He helps extend digital interfaces to citizen. He is also an active blogger.
He has been a technology writer for the Indian edition of Chip magazine. He has also been a research trainee at the Institute of Genetic Medicine at the John Hopkins University . He was one of the experts who spoke on “Internet content and technology” during the Manipal Media Students’ Convention 2008.
Q. You are an active blogger and blog at ‘jace.seacrow.com’. For how long have you been blogging now?
A. I started this blog in the year 2001 and have been active blogger ever since. I created my first blog in the year 2000, but it survived only for a year.
Q. Your blog deals largely with Technology, Media, and Culture. How do you relate to each of them?
A. The use of Technology, New media and changing trends of the society have always been my primay areas of interest. Although I started my career in the media industry, I relate to technology in a larger way. Moreover it is my primary career now.
Q. You said you started your career in the media indusrty. Where and for how long did you work?
A. I worked as an independent consultant for the chip magazine for five years and I was also a technical writer for an online magazine.
Q. You are currently helping in ‘e-governence’. For how long have you been a part of this and how exactly do you go about it?
A. I have been doing this for the last two years. With the adoption and implementaton of technology, I extend a digital interface to the citizens which enables the government to provide services to the citizens like booking of tickets, paying up of bills etc, without having to run around government offices. I try to bridge the gap between the government and the people through information dissemination.
Q. You said you extend a digital interface to the citizens. Is it a computer interface or mobile interface or anything else? How exctly does this help the common man who hardly has access to technology?
A. It is a ‘human-computer’ interface. Here, the computer becomes a mediator between the government and the public. This changes the way the government interacts with its citizens for the convinience of its citizens. Putting it in the most simple words I would say I set up ‘computer shops’ in rural areas and make government services easily available to the people in general. Sounds basic, but there is an entire chain behind it, that is more or less invisible. Nemandi Kendra in Udupi has this facilty available.
Q. You have been a research trainee in the Institute of Genetic Medicine at John Hopkinks Unviversity and have also helped continue work at Institute of Bio Informatics on building human protien reference database. How does this relate to what you are doing today?
A. I took up the Bio informatics project purely because it was my field of interset. Then, there was an urgent need for database that did not exist. Hence, I sought to create a database by collecting information that was written in literature form and converting it into a query. Once created, this was extremely useful and was the first of its kind.
Q. You have been co-organising Barcamp, Bangalore which is one of India’s biggest bloggers’ meet. For how long have you been organising it and how was the experience?
A. I have been organising Barcamp from its inception in the first week of April in the year 2000. I have helped in organising four Barcamps till date. It was a fairly interesting experience, an experience that helped me learn things I didn’t know. I personally feel that there is a shortage of such events in India. Hardly anyone wants to deliberate over a new concept and learn something by discussing and debating. I look forward to such events where there is no restriction on discussing new ideas and learning new things. I have been a participant in blogcamp, Chennai too.
Q. After barcamp and blogcamp, what are your views on the Manipal Media Students’ Convention?
A. Although it was not flawless and could have been organised in a better fashion; for an event that has been organised for the first time, it is a fairly good job. It could have been made better by more content coordination. A delegate should know who his target audience are in order to deliver a lecture to benefit the audience. Delegates should be given a synopsis on talks by other delegates and should be informed of the level of their audience. Besides this, the event was a good learning experience.
Sub-edited by Ruchika Sharma |
