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From the Beehive

by Queenbee
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Hello! Is There Anyone Out There??

Hey! You! Facebooking bang in the middle of a workday! Shut that tab and read this off screen for a bit. You might be a smart young IITBian climbing the corporate ladder armed with improbably complex Excel spreadsheets and dense PowerPoints; or maybe you have already broken through the glass ceiling to CEO/CTO rank and decided to open this mag on a business class flight to your next meeting. Whoever you are, don’t skip the editorial for a change.

Instead of pretending that all is toodlicious in Fundamatics land, I have decided to do a quick reality check. The reality is that most of the bees have fled the hive. The few that remain are going to sing sayonara soon. And while Word Press and Google Analytics assure me that the magazine is being read more than ever before, for us it is as if we are sending out issue after issue into the great big void.

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Image credit: Frits Ahlefeldt

Seriously, where are you all?

I wish I could pose this question with the right blend of curiosity and befuddlement, rather than like someone who has been driven to Prozac.

Comments in the E-zine and Letters to the Editor dried up long ago. The Ad collection tanked soon after. Now, scoring a good article from ‘request for submissions’ is tantamount to winning in a treasure hunt.

I know getting my readers peeved with a quasi-querulous rant might not be the best strategy to engage them. But as I self-combust with the anxiety of running an Association with ever expanding operations and a steadily eroding balance sheet, I need to burn your eyeballs with a naked truth.

Good content does not emerge magically out of the ether! Fundamatics was never meant to feature solicited pieces. Rather, it was started with the hope that over time it would come to represent YOUR voice, the thinking IITB alum/alumnae with a unique point of view.

Has the apple dropped from the tree and hit you on the head yet?

We are still ready to slog it out if you are. Many of you are avid bloggers, illustrators, photographers and what have you. Share it with us along with your comments and critique. Praise is passé and what we are really keen on is to hear your honest opinion.

So here are the themes for all the upcoming issues: Education and Skills, Energy, Environment/Water, Make-in-India, Information and Communication Technology, Healthcare, Infrastructure and Smart Cities structured around the Special Interest Groups of the Global Business Forum. Be serious, sarcastic or facetious as your mood or muse demands. We promise not to compromise on quality, so in case you get featured you will know that what you produced was the very best of the best. So go ahead, surprise us; better still, delight us.

We miss you.

Queenbee
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2 comments

Sudhir Sharma August 28, 2015 - 11:31 pm

Hello Queen Bee: Here are my two cents! To your question of “Hello! Is There Anyone Out There??” , I would say we are all here and eagerly wait for the next issue of Fundamatics once we have seen/read a few articles of the current one. Maybe not enough of us are writing to you in the comment section but that should not be discouraging as there is a loyal band of us, albeit large or small, who are vehemently supportive of yours and the entire beehive’s super effort in collecting the honey for the benefit of rest of us.

Indeed, if the readers don’t provide you with enough pollen(articles), it gets difficult to produce the honey(Fundamatics) but perhaps the problem maybe many an alumni are not aware of the existence of Fundamatics and what it takes to produce a quality magazine – it’s difficult to believe but certainly possible. If not already done, Fundamatics should be widely publicized in other IITB publications, venues, etc. I would suggest publishing an appeal for the articles in the monthly alumni newsletter also, it could be useful.

So far, I haven’t seen any comments in response to your appeal here so I thought why not me do the honors. Perhaps, people are writing to you privately. But this seems normal judging from the lack of comments in the past issues.

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Sudhir Sharma August 28, 2015 - 11:56 pm

Here is an after thought, its funny how another idea always crops up as soon as you have posted your comments. Perhaps you should publish a column, “Letters to QueenBee”, consisting of the responses you get on various articles in the following issue of Fundamatics. This way readers will know what others are thinking of the previous issue.

That makes two and half cents advice from me!! Ha, ha,…

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