A Collective Achievement – KaVita 200 – past, present, future

Kudos KVites. Together we made it to 200. It is a definitely a memorable milestone. And a fine example of community blogging that we have set for all the other communities out there. There cannot be a better family than this one.

I divide my post into 3 sections : past history, present challenges, and future vision

The Past:
We had started the concept of KaVita approximately in Jul 2005.

Here is the first email on KaVita sent July 8th 2005. KaVita#1 was on Jul 15th 2005.

Trying out an experiment to see whether we can form a good online
community (just like we are in the offline world).

Introducing KaVita –> A Kutchvalley newsletter with articles
contributed from members. (The name is not important and can be changed,
but the concept is). (Vita means curriculum vitae or a short account of
a person’s life).

http://www.kutchvalley.com now has ability to submit articles which will
appear instantly on front page. Articles can be on anything : news,
travel trips, jokes, recipies, film reviews, religion, etc. Anything
under the sun. Whatever is submitted can be distributed via email every
10 days (or every 15 days depending on how many enthusiastic writers we
have). There are 2 sample articles already on the site.

kutchvalley.com also now has ability to add your blog link, if you
maintain one. For time being any kutchi blog link (anywhere in world)
will do. We have 2 right now.

Lastly there is a general messageboard also on frontpage (with no
specific purpose right now).

Other tools may be added in near future. (Please suggest some additional
content ideas if you have them).

Hope that we get some enthu response and a good online community will be
created soon.

For time being, first issue will be distributed on Jul 11 (followed by
Jul 21, Aug 1, etc). So go and submit something on the site. 🙂

-prashant

If you still want to go back in history, there was an attempt in Nov 21 2002 for the same:

Hi Kutchvalley
Was wondering wouldn’t it be nice to have a website for us Kutchis here in the Bay Area. “Why we need a website” you ask?

Some of the reasons:
– Consolidation of the wealth of information that each one of us has
– One stop source for various things related to Kutchis in Bay Area

Some of the content of the website could be:
1) Various Jain resources (bakeries, food, caterers, Indian Pizza) in the bay area.
2) Personal Recommended Favorites (Fav. Place for Falafels, Good Picnic Spots, Fav Camping Sites, Favorite Ski Resorts)
3) Newsletter giving news about Kutchis in the bay area.
4) Links to past events. Photos about past events.
5) Information on future events.
6) Information for Visitors (Visitors Medical Insurance, Good places to visit here in the Bay Area, etc)
7) Having a Master Database in kutchvalley yahoogroups that contains Name, Addresses and Phone numbers of members. (Yahoogroups is already password protected. So there will be no fear of spammers getting access to emails/phone numbers).

I am sure this SMART and INTELLIGENT kutchi gang can come up with lot of content suitable for the website. We can start out with a free site on geocities.com and if it becomes turns out to be useful then we can secure a domain name.

I can start out with the website and deliver a working version by Dec end.

-prashant

KaVita – The Challenges:
As you note the email on Jul 8th 2005 said “Trying out an experiment”. Recently I often wonder whether the experiment can be considered successful or not. There are definitely times when I think the experiment is not going so good. There have been times when people are hardly contributing and website looks stale and old. I sometimes wonder how many people really open the “KaVita” email. Here is a list of current challenges:

Folks have a treasure chest full of knowledge but its not making its way online to be shared with others. We have only a small percentage of total members contributing most of the time.

Not as many people are putting up their events online or organizing community wide events.

Newer members to Kutchvalley are absent from the content creators list.

People who have moved back to India contribute very little to the content.

With each of these challenges there is a positive side as well. For example even though we have few writers we have many readers. And that is normal with most social networks. Even though people are not putting up events they are supporting existing ones which are put up with good attendance. Some of the offline events are seeing a good involvement with newcomers and people from India do check kutchvalley occasionally and have not totally blocked it off.

And some of the above challenges are due to limitations of the website. Like the lack of ability to edit content, lack of security in who can view the content, lack of editor features whereby anyone can assume role of main editor for a month, lack of other community features, lack of incentives to KV members on content creation, lack of notifications, etc. Hopefully we can deliver on some of these limitations in coming months.

However the experiment has definitely thrown up more positives than negatives and that is a good reason to aim for 300 and then ask this question on success/failure again.

The Future: The Vision for KV:

Now this could be very ambitious but dreams are what keeps creativity alive and creativy is what keeps a human alive.

KV goes global. Provides local chapter websites for places like Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, USA, UK for Kutchi NRIs to communicate no matter where.

KaVita becomes the modern Patrika for the current generation. Almost like a newspaper. To be referred at least once daily.

Many of the deficiencies mentioned w.r.t website in above section get resolved. We have rotating editors who can curate the content on top page. A robust search interface ensures that our past content is available to KVites for reference.

Ratio of contributors to consumers increases

Events are shared often between members. Members come up with new and innovative events

A stats interface for members to know about how much content they have contributed.

An incentive system that somehow rewards them for the contributions over the past year.

In the end, I do consider myself very fortunate to be in the midst of this family. With KVites around its always One Big Party. Three Cheers to KV and Onward to #300.