Let’s celebrate global Bihu in April 2009

Concept and appraisal

SM Computer Consultants Pvt. Ltd., Guwahati, Assam is envisioning a concept for presenting and showcasing Bihu, the national festival of Assam in a global platform using the Internet and high tech multimedia gadgets for the coming season, i.e., in April 2009. Please find below a synopsis of the proposed event, the background of the Presenter Company and scope of your participation, in brief, as non-local presenter.

The event

It will be a techno-cultural evening on a certain day during the 3rd week of April ’09 when the company will make attempts to present Bihu performances (songs, dances, deliberations or other related presentations) from various Assamese communities across the globe in a singular virtual location. Communities residing outside Guwahati will be scheduled for a maximum of thirty minutes presentation per unit/location. The distant even will be webcast LIVE in streaming video and audio into a predefined URL/website for the Internet; it will be picked up centrally in Guwahati for co-ordination, scheduling, center stage exposure and inputs to satellite TV channels. The central unit at Guwahati will be staging LIVE inputs received from across the world in giant screens along with local presentation comprising leading cultural personalities of the state to create an envelope of events back into the Internet which everybody can view. Thus, one will be able to participate in a Bihu festivity LIVE from across the world in a single platform and in the process possibly make it the largest celebration of a festival on an Internet backbone – a true techno-cultural scenario unlike a multicasting TV presentation where many professionals are involved. We are constrained by global time changes and therefore, locations in the eastern globe will be scheduled for presentation for early evening in Guwahati and for those in the western globe during late night or early next morning making it a 10 to 11 hours of Bihu celebration for that particular evening. Not more than 10 international locations will be picked up for presentation. All technical support will be provided to interested presenters.

Our background in brief

The company has its presence in the areas of computer operations, sales and service, training, software development, web designing, hosting, video web casting and electronic data processing. The company has a lot of experience and success in these areas. The company has been engaged in areas of computer consultancy and implementation since the year 1990. It is also associated with a number of reputed and leading national and multinational companies in the process of providing computer based turnkey solutions, be it in computer aided design and photo-typesetting, computer aided engineering, computer based video post production, etc. More than 80% of the business is related to state and central government organizations and leading public sector undertakings of India. The company is a major service provider in Guwahati for distribution of network services and the Internet (ISP) over fiber optic backbone facilitating gigabit data transfer to thousands of connected users. The company is a pioneer in web design and hosting in the entire North East region of India and also the first in the North East to web cast LIVE EVENTS on the Internet

One of the company’s web sites, www.vedanti.com, which is a fully functional first e-commerce portal of the Northeast, also has other challenging professional facilities. One major activity was the LIVE presentation of Rongali Bihu of Pub-Guwahati Bihu Sanmilan, Chandmari, Guwahati during April 2001 and April 2002 for a total of 260 hours, which attracted different media exposure in Assam and India, and drew the attention of the world wide Assamese community. It was considered as one of the major events of the state during those years. Quoted by almost all media and newspaper houses in Assam and India with acclamation, the company was elated to have undertaken these‘LIVE Bihu’ events on the net. We received scores of feedback emails from across the globe. The activity was a complete success and will remain in the history books as the first public events of NE India being beamed LIVE across the globe carrying the cultural sentiment of Bihu all over. Among the other major LIVE web cast events include Cotton College Centenary Celebrations and Guwahati Trade Fair

The company offers Turnkey Solutions in units or multiple of units of the following categories:

• Complete data handling including EDP, software development, report generation, analysis and forecast.

• Data sorting, validation check, distribution and security control for both magnetic and stationary media.

• Total on-site corporate training on office automation, executive management, administrative and basic operations, advanced programming, implementation in office environment, systems setup, systems maintenance and productivity analysis.

• Systems Design and budget control.

• IT consultancy on project development, implementation and stability.

• Multimedia authoring, field video capture, dubbing, editing, movie production and post-production activities.

• Web authoring, archives and study of references, budgetary analysis, implementation, hosting, video web casting, marketing and promotion, web business forecasting and inter-related services.

• Sales, services and maintenance of hardware, implementation of software, manpower training, procurement of associated office equipments for computer activity, networking installation, installation management for optimum productivity and related services.

• Field data acquiring, manipulation, statistical analysis, delivery of computer data, reports and justification.

Your participation

Since Assamese communities worldwide celebrate Bihu in some form or the other, it is possible to arrange an international forum for a single day performance to be webcast LIVE over the Internet. Every single location can arrange for a 30 minutes programming as per its competence and choice but related to Bihu, depute an executive for co-ordination and management, institute the schedule on a pre-defined time-slot indoors or outdoor, use camcorders to webcast the event live onto a pre-defined URL being provided by us and watch yourself, us and the world Bihu performances on a pre-configured website. You may interact with distinguished personalities in Guwahati watching center-stage presentation on giant screens amidst Bihu crowds in an open exposition, or with others from elsewhere across the globe also participating in the celebration and let it all go to the satellite TV channels. This is an initial communication for appraisal. If you are interested in the above, you may either present yourself or any one you think can execute the program or may be your association that can make it happen. Since, a lot of work needs to be done before April 2009 Rongali Bihu sets in, kindly write back with your complete contact information and your plans at the earliest (by the end of November 2008). You can write to us even if you are not interested in creating any programs to be webcast.

Sanjib Barthakur, Guwahati <sanjibbarthakur@rediffmail.com>