"We are going to see what the wave and trend would be in the coming four-five years. We all know that after the TV revolution, the Internet revolution is the next and we cannot ignore the power of the medium.

But during the discussion, we are going to be surprised ourselves how big it can get. So, the need is to understand what exactly new media means. Where is it headed?"

"When I attended a summit in Mumbai around four years back, similar things were discussed at that time, although, there was nothing like Faceboook at that time.

There has been digitisation of life. Digital is not considered a medium as TV and newspaper. However, it is much more than a medium. Our smiles and winkings have been digitalised now.

Apple made a computer five years before the walkman. And now, when we all know who is leading in mobile music, the same company that made the walkman, is competing with Apple. This is digital.

My digital self is available on several places such as Facebook, Myspace, Flicker etc.

There are thousands of people out there. Life has permanently been digitalised. There is no going back.

Life has transformed as when we enter our office, we become marketers. There is a fight between human and marketer."

"I want to stress on the fact that it's the world of digital consumer. The consumer today has become more prominent. And due to it, the world has become more about personalisation. It's the world of screenagers. Consumer want to see only that content which they demand. Also, the language is changing. So, it's important for marketers to understand that language. Everyone has a story to tell. But the fact to be understood is - can you reach all of them?

Apart from these things, another vital factor is gaming. Several people are going on the virtual world these days in the form of avatars. So, gaming has emerged as a major platform to the New Media. And the important features of computer games that make it an ideal advertising arena are – passion, generating the stickiness to content, proliferation leading to multitude of interactive opportunities and peer or strong inter-personal bonding. So to be an effective digital marketer, we need to effectively exploit fields like these. And we must remember that brand should be where the TG is.”

Another major innovation gaining ground these days is the Adver Game, where a person can create monster from a scratch. Therefore, what we need is the right platform that will enable our brand to position itself in a better manner."

"I represent a client as well as the media itself. We have around 27 per cent penetration in India.

Most of the phones today have GPRS connection and this has made connection to the net far more accessible. It is how we adopt ourselves to the device.

Besides being connected to office and family, it has several other purposes such as entertaining and commercial. As a matter of fact, most of the marketers have not accepted the New Media.

However, if we take a look at what drives the digital medium, we find four elements into play. These elements are personalisation, expression, information or content and vital capabilities.

Besides, there are several inventions taking place with regard to it and they are - branded content, social media, search, mobile, online videos and gaming.

A major cause of concern is that there has not been much experimentation. However, it should come from all corners and not just marketers. The experimentation can help it reach its destination.

The whole challenge is about how we evolve and how we use this medium.

New Media is still new and specialists have still to evolve. Consumers are flirting and not really defining or creating these spaces and the marketers are still from the analog world."

“Before starting, I want to share the life of one of my clients. Meet Mr Rakesh Mathur – a digital marketing manager with a great resume. But he is not that successful. And there are reasons for it. And I start with those reasons only.”

“A person from online medium starts his day thinking ‘Where are my leads?’ ‘What are my page views?’ But what he does not realise is that he is slowly getting into a vicious circle of leaking bucket where he is ending up spending too much money without getting that much result. And as soon as this spending stops, page views stop. So, the need is to build your digital brand to gain stability and leadership.”

“Usually, a person creates leads, but is not able to maintain it. These are called 18-month brand manager. He is not thinking on long-term goals. He’s just bothered about near future. So, spend more money on analytics and build your brand.”

“Also, a lot of marketers do not focus on reputation. So, focus on online reputation management.”

“Digital world is moving so fast that there is a constant need of experimentation. So, invest in experimentation of the digital medium.”

“My humble request is please do not squeeze digital marketing agencies, as they are not a product. They are a set of people. So, spend on them wisely.”

“People may invest crores and crores on their showroom at a market place. But they forget their biggest asset --- their website. They do not spend enough money on it.”

“And finally, I would like to end my presentation saying that as we are 24x7 marketers, we must control our spending.”

"Convergence is now a reality, a great opportunity as well as a major threat. Smart companies that really want to lead the way in future will follow the consumers."

"Consumers today are impacting the mass media space and they themselves are being impacted by it. Audience is much younger and far more mobile than the past."

"There are many definitions to convergence and sky is the limit. It is about the converged lifestyle. The audience is changing and it is driving changes across the value chain. We drive the innovations along with the partners as well as the audience."

"There was a special mobile campaign strategy launched for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. A major content of the mobile campaign was a vanity short code which made it easily interactive with the voters. Besides, there were general text alerts giving updates on results or events in the campaign and party.

However, the most important part of the mobile campaign was giving location specific words, which helped relate to the people of different area.

To lure the voters further, content downloads and ringtones, specific to the Obama campaign, were available.

There were also some video commercials of Obama where the website domain and the mobile messaging number 62262 were shown.

The campaign witnessed the power of interactive text messaging, which enabled interaction with supporters in real time, target messages to specific location, drive traffic to other channels and ultimately, get out the vote.

This campaign with the usage of the new technology may give us a new US President in Obama.

There are few things that have happened with the evolution of the new media. There has been convergence between digital asset management and supply chain management. There has also been evolution towards the concept of Enterprise Workflow and Enterprise Search.

Besides, the new media has also witnessed the emergence of rights and royalties management. There has been an IPTV momentum around the world.

Major media organisations, in the present times, are adopting P2P technology and there has been slow adoption of mobile TV also. Besides, social networking is fast becoming a content destination as well.

And last but not the least, there has been a consolidation in the digital advertising space."

“My focus will be on what’s converging and what’s diverging in today’s world. To begin with, the media is definitely converging. For example its various subsets like games, music etc are being shared on a regular basis. We can also see a convergence of distribution networks like video games which are fast becoming access points of Internet. We also need to look at one more aspect of convergence i.e. convergence of creation which is blurring of roles of reader and publisher giving the publishing power to the user. So, I see this scenario as a convergence in divergent space.”

“Moving further, I will give you an overview of the major convergence drivers like broad pipes, an always-on connectivity, different Web 2.0 models, social networking etc. But at the bottom, it’s divergence. There may be different converging social networking sites but they are in divergent platforms and are based on divergent demands and choices. Thus, these converging platforms are providing different divergent content.”

“But our discussion will not be complete without knowing the emerging outcomes. The most important is TV and Net mash up. We use user content and publish it on our sites. These may be free today but can be paid in the near future. I also see turfs changing in the various paradigms of the new media.”

“And in this fast changing world of new media, our competitors are changing very fast. This keeps us awake in the night.”

“So, we need to understand the changes that are happening in today’s world. Like mobile is fast emerging as a convergent device. We also need to embrace open access and need to learn and live in social groups and realise the changing roles of our partners and competitors.”

Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman & CEO, Rediff.com.

"I am here to talk about the media industry architecture. But first, we need to remember the lessons from the past. The Lumiere brothers who created a 45-seconds film took the first step. It was a revolution in itself as nobody was able to create moving pictures before. Next was Robert Paul's movie clip. And then came Dante's Inferno.

But the distinction these clips had from those of today, was that all these were shot on stage. So, film had not found its birth yet. But in 1952, a new revolution came with I Love Lucy. Through it, TV discovered the episodic serial. It was in people’s home, so was revolutionary. Thus, we owe a lot to our past.

So, we need to understand that each medium has its own niche and is based on technological advances of that time. Let's now look at what's the trend these days? Duration of content is getting shorter. Movies are becoming 90-minute duration, serials are getting shorter. So, people want content on the go. And this gave birth to Mobile IPTV.

It may seem to be a return to the past. But the real challenge is to semantically encode the 45-second movie. And there are different protocols these days like FOAF, iCAL, RDFA, which enable journalists like us to create content easily.

So, content was always there. But the magic happened when you put a URL and made it findable. So, it's important how you define content and make it findable.

There are many things happening these days. It's easy to put URLs to content and so, various companies are springing up. And due to several formats and platforms, the industry is burgeoning day-by-day. And it is creating a whole new industry and creating new entrepreneurs day-by-day. Therefore, the new media is a thing of future and is here to stay."

Rajesh Sawhney, President, Reliance Entertainment.

""In my address, I am going to speak about what's driving the new media industry in India? The prime reason that comes forward is that the network has become denser in the last few years. Also, several players are coming in this field, including major players like Apple, which came up with iPhones. But still, where India is lacking is the convergence deficit, which is 3 per cent of the GDP. So, what we need is a digital renaissance. And I don't say that nothing happened in the digital field.

Ten years back, Indians hardly had Internet. But today, we have 45 million users. We have 10 million mobile users being added per month. So, there is a change and according to me, the change is becoming faster.

At this juncture, I remember a quote by Bill Gates. He said, "We always overestimate the change in short-term and underestimate the long-term change". So, it's very important for us to understand that the new media is evolving and it will emerge in a big manner in days to come.

And at the core of this digital renaissance are the Indian consumers. And that too, the younger generation who are tech savvy, want content on the go and believe in the word 'instant'. They are generating a lot of demand.

So, these days, there is the convergence of new media and social media. And we need to understand that the future is not about only new media. In the near future, social media and new media are going to converge for providing us a much better platform.

And in the content terms, there is a paradigm. From DD era, we have now moved to a 100 channel paradigm and million channel paradigm is not a distant dream. We will create new values and opportunities in the new media. So, the convergence of social and new media is going to redefine the media industry landscape.

In the new media, there is an interdependence of infrastructure, content and access devices. And in India, since there is a lack of infrastructure, we are behind many countries, especially China. But I hope that we'll come out of it in a short span of time."

Kim Reid, Chief Executive Officer, Mobile TV Platforms, MIH Group.

" Innovation, fast deployment, mass penetration and a sustainable eco-model make for interesting times"

"Reuters is analysing macro-economic figures to compare and accept consumerism. India has an edge that no other country in the world does in its desire to be global. We're experimenting with new marketing methods and touch points to keep pace with the domestic competition. We're accepting the fact that the consumer is fickle minded and promiscuous."

"Whatever you do, should be market driven and not idea driven. During a visit to the Silicon Valley, I came to know about the importance of advertising and connecting people through social network. And this gave birth to Live Journal.com.”

“Many people in the media accept the importance of social networks. But across the world, there are different communication patterns like in USA, pedophiles is forbidden and in Russia, neo-Nazis – these are the thoughts governing him in starting a social network"

MySpace is working towards displaying how cool the user is, or how cool his friends are. And Facebook is for people who have no work and nothing to do. So, it’s like who your friends are, their friends and so on.

You can start a blog, make new friends. It is a platform to create content and share it. You also have topic based communities here. So, people don’t just aggregate, they add and interact.

With agreements with almost all major media companies (like BBC, NY Times), we created a space (community) here and gave important news like incidents in Russia. Translated the news in Russian. There were torrent of opinions coming in.”

Yugal Sharma, Regional Director India & South Asia, Polycom.

"Environmental agenda is gaining momentum in the present scenario. The media, ranging from Times of India to NDTV, has been catering to the causes and issues of environment in the new scenario.

For instance, an article has suggested that air travel accounts for 2-4 per cent emission. It is getting significant worldwide awareness. Companies have been going eco-friendly. Almost 90 per cent of employees work in different locations from their headquarters and the decentralization of work floors are viable for the concerns of the changing scenario.

Polycom is a technology enabler and have bridged the gap between health, education and environment."

Dr. Jai Menon, Group Chief Information & Innovation Officer, Bharti Airtel.

"Convergence means an integrated holistic experience. The communication need of a person keeps on evolving – be it mobile or the Internet.

There are three industries that have been flourishing in the present times and they are – Telecom, IT/Internet and Media. Convergence is where these three come together.

There are four reasons why this is happening. This is happening because of better network, increased storage options, rapid increase in speed and the coming together of voice and data at one place.

These foundational trends have been leading to new paradigm. And now, the new media is no more a niche. It is for everyone.

Telecom is not just about voice and calls anymore. It is now about content, news and commerce. "