Neville Lahiru
It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these. Well, nine months in fact. But I thought it’s time we give you, our ardent readers a brief update on how things have been going with ReadMe, especially with everything that’s been going on with Sri Lanka. But before we get into that, we want to touch on a few things first.
Some of you may recall that we were offline for some time between late 2020 and 2021. Then last October, we came back/relaunched with a new team heading the platform, under a brand new company. Yes, there’s a lot of context to what happened behind the scenes prior to 2020, but we see no point in wasting your time detailing the drama like some sort of CW show.
The current situation
To say that we’re in troubling times is a gross understatement. The economic crisis has decimated whatever normality Sri Lankans had in the past few years. There’s no gas, no fuel, no medicine, no transport, and the list just goes on. For industries like tech, things have been more than challenging with quite a few finding the situation demanding to retain and serve clients, particularly those that work in the international arena. To make matters worse, finding talent hasn’t been the easiest endeavor for many, thanks to a noticeable chunk looking for opportunities overseas.
But that’s not to say the industry’s down and out. There’s still some glimmer of hope, a silver lining if you will. For instance, back in December, hSenid became the first tech company to list on the Colombo Stock Exchange, followed by Kapruka a few months later. Then there was WSO2 which got a USD 93 million funding in its Series E round. Even some startups seem to be actively looking to forge partnerships to survive the current conditions. We’ve also seen entities like Uber adding bicycles and PickMe adding e-bikes to its services.
Though unfortunately, the industry can only go so far without solving the core problem in the country. So while the tech space looks to thrive despite the situation, how long that effort will stretch under the present circumstances, only time will tell.
What we’re up to
ReadMe is now back in full gear under a new management. Throughout the decade of our existence, we have gone through our fair share of rollercoasters, volcanos, earthquakes, and everything chaotic. But what remained a constant need was to ignite stories that matter in tech, and we want to continue doing just that.
Prioritizing our stories
The current situation has made us rethink how and what content we should be offering on our platforms. We want to make sure how best we should use our platforms. If you’re wondering why you’re seeing less product-oriented and international stories on our site, that’s partly why. So, while we continue to talk about everything from government digital projects to tax implications for tech, we also want to amplify stories on startups and even other non-tech initiatives that we believe is worth bringing to light.
Sinhala is coming back
We’ve tried Sinhala before and unfortunately, we had trouble sustaining it back then. We want to make sure we get it right the second time. So, in the coming weeks you’ll start seeing a few Sinhala articles along with our regular English content.
To be clear, our goal is still to expand our footprint beyond Sri Lanka. But at the same time we know well that localization is just as important. Further, there’s plenty of room for covering important tech stories in Sinhala and not enough attention is still given to this area in general media, other than the occasional sensationalism piece.
We’re still working out the kinks for the Sinhala site. But expect to see it up and running on sinhala.readme.lk soon.
Contributors
We want to actively engage with more talented writers. So we’ve also made a few minor changes to our contributor platform and thought of formalizing this space. Moving forward, all accepted submissions/pitches will be compensated at a rate of LKR 12,500 per 1,000 words, with the exception of opinion pieces. We hope to up this rate in the near future. But for the moment, we want to keep things at a sustainable rate.
So in case you’ve got a pitch you think would make for an interesting story on ReadMe do feel free to drop an email to [email protected]. If you have any suggestions, complaints or death threats, you can reach out to my email [email protected].
Partnerships and other business arrangements
We also thought this is the best time to share a few specifics on how we’re going to operate and work with other companies, organizations, and key stakeholders of the tech industry.
First off, we’re moving away from event coverage. There was a time when tech events were interesting and meaningful. But over the years, we got carried away and up ended diverting too much of our energy on tech events. Unfortunately, the actual RoI of covering tech events makes little sense for us as a tech media organization. Besides, at that point we might as well have started an event management company. That being said, we won’t say no to worthwhile initiatives, particularly ones that function to serve the tech industry and the society at large.
With regard to paid engagements on our platform, we will continue to explore and hopefully grow this space gradually. But these will be independent and distinct from our usual content. Not to worry, it will still deliver the same high-quality flavor of tech content. For the reader, we will demark this type of content if and when they ever appear on our site, just so we’re transparent about it. You can find more info here.
Okay, who’s doing ReadMe again?
Speaking of transparency, we know we haven’t really mentioned anything about the people behind the brand since the relaunch. So, for your clarity here are the faces you should remember.
1. Andrew Jebaraj (Chairman and Managing Director)
Andrew’s one of the original founders of ReadMe.lk, back when it started in 2012. He’s usually a behind-the-scenes character, often preferring to working behind a computer system as opposed to smiling in front of the camera or shake hands with strangers at random events all the time. Currently he handles the operations and the technical side of things. He’s our resident CTO, but I don’t think he likes that.
2. Neville Lahiru (Editor in Chief/ Director)
For those of you who don’t know me, I originally joined ReadMe in November 2015 as a social media guy to handle a few of its social media clients (yes, we used to do social media for other institutes). I moved on to writing shortly after and I have been doing so for over six years. I left ReadMe early 2020 and came back in October 2021 to head the editorial team.
3. Dhivaagar Kumarvel (Head of Social Media)
Dhiva has been with us since the early days. But now he’s taking an active role in our work, building our social content. He has ample experience working with hair-pullingly frustrating digital marketing agencies, so he knows his way around the space. Dhiva is also helping the team with our branding, efforts that extend far beyond what we do on social media.
4. Professor X (Director)
No, we didn’t hire an actual mutant and no, he’s not an actual professor either. Rather, he prefers to keep his name away from the spotlight. What you should know is that he comes with years of experience in business reshaping and strategic leadership, and entrepreneurial coaching, along with his diversified impact-focused investments across multiple industries. So it’s a long list. Speaking of lists, he probably has the most interesting contacts on his phone out of everyone from the team. All in all, he brings in some much-needed wisdom and stewardship while always ensuring business stability during any crisis with a smile, literally.
Just in case you were wondering, no, he had no association with the brand prior to this.
What we hope to do
Something that’s in the pipeline that we hope to push through soon, is our podcast. Some of you may remember we had a short run at a podcast a few years ago. We’re hoping to restart that , but perhaps in a bit more engaging format. The current plan is to do a weekly/bi-weekly 20-30 minute conversation on Twitter Spaces, which would be later added to our podcast channel. So nobody will miss it that way.
We’re also looking to revamp (restrategize?) our social media. You might have noticed that our Instagram channel has been pretty active as of late. Well, expect to see more of that on our other channels too.
We also have writers, contributors, designers, photographers, and developers as part of the team. But as far as the “who owns and manages it” conversation goes, you can point all fingers at the four faces above.
Wait, that’s it? Yes that’s it. ReadMe.lk is an online media platform, not a large-scale enterprise. There’s no point in building teams of 50-60 people when you can get the work done with a few highly capable individuals. But who knows, maybe it will change, and we might end up going on a hiring spree. But that’s not the story right now. We would rather build the platform properly, slowly instead of getting caught up in our aspirations.
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