@dvocable

My wife got me into a contact dance workshop today, organised by Choreotheque. And as reluctant as I was to participate, I couldn’t escape it.

When I went to drop her at the workshop venue, I had to wait and give her company till the workshop started. Then when it was starting, I was going to be the only one in the room not dancing. Then Anish, the dance instructor called out to me. So I thought what the hell, I should just play along for a while.

The workshop was on contact dance, a dance that fine tunes your senses and wakes up your ability to listen and respond to what is happening in the moment. What makes contact dance from other dance forms is that partners are often moving in and out of physical contact while rolling, spiraling, springing, and falling. The dancing is unpredictable and insipred by the physical and energetic contact the partners share.

We start off by ‘exploring our spaces’ which was something I have never experienced before. My space? I knew the hypothetic term but actually putting out my hands in air to explore my space was a different feel altogether. After this, you team up with your partner, join hands, and explore our space together, first you as the leader and then as a follower.

Then there was another session where we were made to roam around and sway while holding a pen using mine and my partner’s forefingers.  You and your partner need to press the pen from both ends with your fingers to prevent it from falling. And when you do that while you are having a sort of ballroom twist, then you need coordinate very well along with your partner.

We the had a number of exercises changing partners and between groups. The most important thing our instructor was repeating was that we need to keep our minds clear of any thoughts and concentrate on the movements. Work lessons?

The workshop quite refreshing, surprisingly, and I wondered where my tiredness was gone. Maybe it can teach us a bit of team work. Corporate HR folks who conduct a lot of innovative team plays for employees should give contact dance a go and see for themselves.

Can you rotate one of those big Ferris Wheel at parks yourself? That too with dozens of people riding on it. This guy at a Mussoorie Mall Road park sure did.

car travel from delhi to mussoorie

I was researching for an article for Mashable (where I write) on sites that let you share documents online like Scribd, Docstoc, Yudu Freedom, Issuu, and Calameo, when I saw an interesting piece of information on Docstoc. It says the documents you upload on Docstoc gets indexed by search engines and business can use this to their advantages by uploading relevant content with links going to their sites.

Remember how Wikipedia was being used by every PR agency in the world to upload their clients information until the site said they no longer want PR agencies to contribute. Wikipedia was also a target for webmasters as they could upload their content free of cost to the site and run links to their sites. Now the site has ‘no follow’ tags to make this practice redundant.

So with Wikipedia gone, is it the turn for the document sharing sites to be the next target for PR professionals and webmasters in their attempt to gain more visibility about their clients, brands, and sites. Let’s wait and watch.

Can our documents on Docstoc and other document sharing sites really get indexed by search engines? If that be so, I see that Docstoc is already a Page Rank 6 site. Can we get some real good juice from that? I plan to do an experiment and find that out soon. Will keep everyone updated.

I have been having some interesting observations in the last few days working for a client’s online programme.

You might not be using Google Local (India) and perhaps your friends are not aware of what it is. But if you are planning to have your business seen prominently on Google Search and Google Maps, then Google Local could be the way in.

Have a look at the following picture. The screenshot is the result of the search query ‘diabetes treatment in India’. You can see the map of Diafree Treatment Center coming out on top. Now where is that map coming from? Google Local Business Listings.

This second screenshot displays the search results of the query ‘web designers Delhi’. You will see that before the organic search results come out, there are 10 links on top clubbed under the category, Local Business Results…’ Yup. From Google Local.

This third picture displays the result of the query ‘movie theatres delhi’ in Google Maps. You can notice the three markers on the map displaying Paras Theatre, Eastwood Enterprises, and Movie Times. Again from Google Local. Though out here, it might not be necessary that if you register in Google Local, your company name will come out on top on the left hand panel. Maybe this needs to be supplemented with good SEO ranking.

These are just my observations and might not be entirely correct. What do you say?