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With over 250 young aspiring film makers, television achors, news readers and all other available professions in media, the chennai version of Footprints 2004 was a roaring success, yesterday. Usually in such day-long seminars, either just one session would be the highlight or every other program is as boring as the other. But the dudes at Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication did bring in the variety at the seminar which made the whole day whiz past us in minutes.

K Balachander, who inaugrated the seminar said, did come with a written speech something our present day film makers lack. Though it was a short speech and he had to leave, he did give a good start by defining creativity and it’s spread. It would been a pleasure to listen to him, more.

Krishnan Menon from the advertising giant Ogilvy and Mather, started off the first session named Does creativity in advertising kill or build brands ? He started off with the Simon says game and did get to the crux of the issue soon. He was probably the one who stuck to the topic thoroughly. Attribute it to the industry he comes from, Krishnan, was able to get the attention of the crowds so easily. His presentation had more ads than slides which probably made it seem so lively. Who doesn’t love ads. It was with groups of such ads he distinguished between the good idea and bad idea, the strong idea and the weaker ones. Using the Hutch [Dog and The Kid] campaign, that O & M handled, he explained how a strong idea helps boost the brands. And finally, he did play a audio clip of clients abuse them in advertising through which he communicated, think before you jump. But jokes apart it was a session so gripping just like the ads.

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Last night, when I was at the Shakes & Creams, Adayar, noticied a poster called Footprints 2004. It said a day-long seminar named Creativity and Redundancy: The Two Sides of a Coin, would be held on October 30[tomorrow] at the GRT Grand Days Hotel. Conducted by Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication (SIMC) Pune, it is a series of lectures on creative trends in films/TV and advertising.

Interestingly, the guest speakers were media personalities. Most of them my favorites including, Gautam Menon [Kakkha Kakkha], Writer Sivasankari, Madan, Janaki Vishwanath [award winning movie Kutty] and our own K Balachander. Adding up the list was Krishnan Menon from Ogilvy & Mather and Anuradha Ananth. This article on Chennai Online adds more details.

I planning to check-in tomorrow and listen to these guys. BTW, here’s the number you should get in touch with for more details – 9841657841.

Always sunday mornings are either spent with a Hindu and filter coffee or they are shared along with sunday morning television. Today was a little different. A friend’s marriage in the early hours at Porur and a meet with Prabhu later at Barista. Prabhu had come down from Bangalore and suggested we would meet. For the first time. All along we have been talking through gmails and blog comments and now we did meet.

While we initally planned to meet in my fav joint of Woodlands Drive in, we feared the rain/traffic and thought we could make it to G.N.Chetty road Cafe Coffee day. At GN Chetty Road, I was surprised to see Barista replacing Cafe Coffee day, at the same place. So we barged in and I suspected that we would be the bonee [first business of the day] there. Already there was a kadalai kutchery there and we placed ourselves at a corner, ordering smoothies(don’t go by the name. it was a cold drink. hee hee).

We had a lively chat on tamil film music, cinema, blogs, doordarshan and finally about the paani-ka-panga at chennai. Prabhu has tons of neat ideas for blogs and will start a blog soon. A music/sports/mobile phone freak, he did amaze me saying that he visits my site from his ultra-pompus handheld Nokia darling. Was amazed by what that tiny little thing can do. It can take videos, pics(those pics above are from his Nokia), GPRS and what not. I am thinking hard of changing my stone aged mobile to this one and start clicking with that mobile camera.

After a while, Prabhu suggested we would checkout the bookshop located at the corner of Barista. A corner means a real corner. The store was as named as The Corner Book Store. With just 4 feet on the diagonals, this book store has an attitude. It had some of the best books of all time including Ayn Rand, Betrand Russell and Dilbert Omnibus to Alchemist, Da Vinci fiction which were best sellers.

Interestingly, the guy who was taking care of the shop did show us a book which was looking like a Anti-Da Vinci Code. He told that the book was released well before Da Vinci Code and was it was now making hay out of the Da Vinci popularity. Not just that but also he did started telling us about other books and it’s authors. I was completely taken back by his knowledge on books and authors. Asked him if he has any more book in shop that was left without being read by him. He said so politely that there are many and he is unable to keep in pace with them. Probably the first time, I did see a book store guy being such a passionate book-lover. We did take a pic of that guy as a respect for the fellow book lover. He is the one in the pic above. Later, I learnt even Prabhu shared a similar thought like me about the guy.

The Corner Book Store seems to be promising especially if they can hook on to such book worms. A true haunt for a book lover. Not forgetting the full mug of south indian flavored Cafe Latte at Barista. Not the usual coffee-bar music that plays noisy this thing that thing music. They only play the children channel POGO on the television with a mute. And on a sunday it was Barney and the kids on POGO. What a peace, it was !!