The interview with Om Malik (Om), was taken by Nitesh Bhasin (NB) at the first Wordcamp in India held on Feb. 21-22, 2009. Om Malik is an Indian-American web and technology writer. He is the founder of Giga Omni Media, Inc. and executive editor for technology blog GigaOM. As well as a host on a former Revision3 weekly web-business centric podcast, The GigaOm Show.

NB: Nice to meet you Mr. Om, you have done a lot of blogging as an American but people might be surprised to know that you have done your graduation from St. Stephens, what course did you do there?

Om: I did BSc. In Chemistry, it’s a course not a lot of people associate with Stephens but back then it used to have sharpest minds.

NB: We know that last year you suffered a heart attack and your blog received a lot of get well soon and other caring messages. Tell us more about it.

OM: Well blogging is all about the community that develops around your blog, you start feeling the pressure when your readers expect a lot from you and yes I feel you are accountable to them. I like to work hard to keep my readers happy and then it puts a lot of pressure on you and then this happened.

NB: There was a lot of criticism which was linking excessive blogging with heart attacks and you were under a lot of criticism at that time. How did it feel?

Om: Well I have learnt from that event to take better care of myself, I have given up smoking / drinking and lot other unhealthy practices I used to follow.

NB: You are an Indian, so do you follow cricket?

OM: Well I like watching cricket and especially IPL, I think this new format of game has thrown in a lot of excitement to the game and is fun to watch, also being an American this is closest to MLB(Major league BaseBall) so it is more fun to watch.

NB: If Om Malik has access only to five websites which websites would those be?

OM: Google.com, Nytimes.com, WSJ.com, Cricinfo.com, MLB.com

NB: You are back to India after a long time, what is on your visit list?

OM: Nothing much, we went to visit Taj Mahal and I visited my parents, nothing else right now.

NB: You left the country long time back but now when you look back at it what changes do you see?

OM: First change I see that amazes me is Delhi Metro, I mean I saw it and I thought that we really have this, it’s wonderful. Also something that I notice now in Indians is something I would call as Attention Deficit Disorder, that is nowadays people do not have any patience they want instant results.

NB: Do you read Indian Blogs, name a few you like?

OM: Well I like Rajesh Jain’s blog, Labnol.org(Amit Aggarwal), Twilight fairy.

NB: What do you say about Broadband condition in India?

OM: Is there broadband here? It is insane that this country has almost no focus on making a broadband policy, other Aian countries like Korea are about to touch 1GBPS data transfer rate and here we hardly have 1MBPs. If we are not provided with state of the art broadband we will always follow western trends and imitate them when we should start and set our own trends but we can not.

NB: Did you watch SlumDog Millionaire?

Om: Yes, loved it and I can not understand why an Indian didn’t make that movie and why is there so much uproar over this movie.

NB: How did you arrive at the name GigaOm?

OM: well back then in 2001, Giga was a big unit and also that I myself was Giga-sized back then.

NB: well I think size does matter, thank you for sharing your views and taking time to talk with us.

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