Week in Review: Bridging ‘big tech’ and ‘little tech’

  • A new channel and a recent hire at DNA = a busy week
  • Like MWC, we’re out to bridge the gap between the two worlds of tech

Week in Review: Bridging ‘big tech’ and ‘little tech’HAS it been only four days since Digital News Asia (DNA) launched its Personal Tech channel?
 
I’m already exhausted, even if the bulk of the work is being done by the most recent addition to the DNA team, contributing editor Keith Liu, who like editor Gabey Goh, works out of Singapore.
 
Keith comes with some pedigree, having spent 12 years in the broadcast media industry (including CNBC Asia) covering current affairs and technology, and even eight years in the industry with tech giants Nokia and Lenovo. All this, while looking not a day over 30 years old. To this old grognard, at least.
 
(And a tip of the hat to another old grognard, Terrence V. Smith, an old friend of mine and one of Malaysia’s pioneering bloggers, who suggested we call our reviews ‘DNA Tests.’)
 
DNA founder and chief executive officer Karamjit Singh has already explained the rationale behind the new channel, so I won’t repeat it here, except to reiterate the fact that it was a long time coming, given that at our inception, DNA had set out to cover the entire tech ecosystem.
 
Observant readers may have also spotted our portal’s new taxonomy. We have collapsed some of our channels, combining a few, to give the site a cleaner look.
 
Our channels or sections are now: Digital Economy (which covers anything to do with technology as a whole, including public policy and social issues); Insights (analyses and OpEds); Business (including industry news); Mobility (including the industry); Startups (from the more obscure Sizzle/ Fizzle); and the new kid on the block, Personal Tech.
 
In the meantime, we have just embarked on a project to completely revamp the portal, so watch out for that in a few months’ time.
 
It was a crazy idea, but we decided to launch the new channel the same week as the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, if for no other reason than the rich stream of content that would avail itself to us.
 
But looking at media coverage of MWC 2015, including our own, it struck me that MWC was trying to bridge two different worlds: The consumer world, and the greater issues involving technology. On the one hand, it was about what cool new stuff is coming our way; on the other, it was about the impact new technologies was going to have on all our lives.
 
The ‘two worlds’ of MWC – the ‘big tech’ issues and the ‘little tech’ huzzahs – perfectly mirror the conversations we had internally when we launched DNA itself, and the conversations we have been having in the last few months over the new channel.
 
For some media outlets, MWC was only about the former; for others, it was mostly about the latter. We intend to bridge that gap. Who says we make things easy for ourselves here at DNA?
 
Do give us your feedback on the new channel.
 
Editor’s Picks:
 
Axiata’s bumpy IT transformation programme: Lessons learnt
 
Digi eyes top spot in mobile Internet space
 
DNA Test: BlackBerry Classic
 
Navigating the fragmented SEA of mobile gaming
 
BDA awareness growing, but not momentum: Teradata Malaysia
 
FashionValet the wiser second time around
 
VMware targets Microsoft and AWS with OneCloud
 
 
Previous Instalments:
 
Week in Review: Telcos aiming to be the hub of our digital lives
 
Week in Review: Does quality come through quantity?
 
Week in Review: Wisdom, delusion and the space between
 
Week in Review: One mega effort fades, another makes debut
 
Week in Review: Let’s benefit from Singapore’s strengths

 
 
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