A R Rahman the music maestro will be performing live on  May 31, 2009 in Pune, at  Balewadi Athletic Stadium. Its a unique opportunity for music lovers from Pune, Mumbai and Maharashtra to listen to this legend. The Academy Award winner for Best Music and Best Song, AR Rahman comes to Pune for the first time.  

This is a charity show and the  proceeds of this event would be donated to Lata Mangeshkar Medical Foundation and the Alandi Dehu Parisar Vikas Samiti which is the holy temple town of Alandi, near Pune.  

The online ticket booking for this show is available at www.arrahmaninpune.com

 The ticket booking link for online ticket booking of the show is http://www.arrahmaninpune.com/tickets.aspx . Online ticket booking provided by www.laxmiroad.in , and the web technology partners are Dimakh Consultants

A.R.Rahman is the first Indian to win two oscars. He has been a winner of the Best Score for Slumdog Millionaire and Best Song for Jai Ho from the same film  Slumdog Millionaire. 

BJP has been making use of Web 2.0 and especially  of google adwords and making sure of its presence across the internet by spending heavily every day. The entire online campaign seems to be inspired from Barack Obama’s online campaign. The major difference in both the campaigns lies with the persons for whom the campaign is being run.. Obama is tech savvy and is able to speak the language of youngsters and the online trend but in case of L K Advani the picture is dark as he himself never seems to be in touch with technology. The age difference obviously is the deciding factor and another major factor is, Not just online but Barack Obama also used his technology offline and during his speeches and he made sure to refer to his website or address the youngsters in his social gatherings.

In person in all his speeches or social appearances L K Advani no where speaks about technology or doesnt even seem to refer to his website at anytime. Also surprisingly no other BJP politician seems to be even bothered about this web technology except the BJP’s very own Shri Narendra Modi. Infact it seems that both of them are trying to compete with each other over the internet and trying to prove himself one notch above the other. 

Will this really help BJP to earn votes is a debatable question but the very use of web technology ensures that politics is now getting web friendly and our only hope is that whoever wins will try and make the real use of the web technology in successful e-governance.

As the elections are just round the corner we will see increasing use of social media marketing techniques and all possible ways to reach out to the young audience. It will be important for the BJP team to work out a better and faster response mechanism rather than just reaching out the everyone. The web is a interactive channel and if people write back on the website or participate with comments on the blogs of Shri L K Advani then its important that he himself gets involved at some level in technology and respond back in time. If this does not happen then the entire campaign will backfire and will end up just like another “India Shinning” campaign which cost dearly to BJP earlier. 

So final success of this entire campaign will depend on how many youngsters and tech savvy people really come out to vote on the election day.

Fortunately a few days back I got a chance to meet with the man himself Mr.Narayan Murthy. He is so simple and down to earth to speak with, that it took me a few minutes to realise that I am really talking to the man who has reached a position in the IT industry where every IT entrepreneur can dream off. He gave valuable inputs for an entrepreneur like me about business and global scenario. He spoke about his schedule and how he spends a week in India in different Infosys offices, 1 week in the US and 1 week in Asian and other countries.
He was in pune to receive the 2008 Life Time Achievement Award given by Pune Vyaspeeth and in his speech after accepting the award he narrated his nostalgic memories of the past and his strong connection with pune. It was an amazing experience to listen to him when he told about his courtship days with sudha murthy and how he used to wait outside mahila niwas and then go to poona cafe on JM Road in pune and darshan hotel on prabhat road in pune before proceeding to east street pune to have a chinese dinner at Rs.9 only.
As a concluding remark his humble acceptance speech ended when he politely assured the audience and the organizing committee that he was very happy to receive this reward and that he will work hard to keep up to every ones expectations. This was an amazing gesture where a person with such an authority politely says that he will work harder even after retiring and handing over the reigns of infosys to others. This shows the commitment and values a person has to have to reach this position.

This reminds me of another event that happened recently where a chapter in IT industry came to an end when Bill Gates stepped down from his position at Microsoft. I never got a chance to meet him so don’t have any personal experience to write about him . But will try and put something together.