Endnotes
by Paras ChopraAs some wise man has said, “The most important thing in world is not the work, but the initiative taken for that work.” The initiative to launch yet another life sciences magazine was, therefore, as important as the magazine itself. The responsibility we had as the first Biotechnology Engineering batch at our college has made us mature and capable enough to handle projects such as this magazine.
Nevertheless, this task was not so easy. In December 2005, suddenly, mountain of ideas started springing up in both of our minds. We knew we had to do something, something significant. The possibilities were immense: write a research paper, do a bioinformatics project, join some research lab or start a magazine. Luckily, we chose the magazine option.
Our initial plan was to launch a print only, university level magazine. We thought of collecting articles on biology, find some sponsors and then print & distribute it among university students. But more we explored this option, more it seemed non-feasible. This was because of two reasons: firstly, hassles such as printing, distributing, etc. would eat up most our energy; secondly, we were not confident enough to raise funds for printing the magazine.
After much of brainstorming, it was finally decided that we would now launch an online magazine. We would have an international reach, automatic publicity and most importantly, we could focus on content. Everything looked perfect! After this, we started looking for articles. A lot of articles from the whole college were collected.
But, before the call for articles, the layout of the magazine and its name were explored. A lot of names were suggested, but mine suggestion ‘Jeev’ clicked. It is a simple and easy to remember name. ‘Jeev’ means an organism in Hindi language. It also goes with our philosophy of promoting talent in biology.
Finally, as I write this endnote, I must say that the experience of this initiative has been a great teacher for me and Anshuman. We have learnt that every good project is worth the hard work put in it. Now, we sincerely hope that you people will appreciate the magazine. And please don’t forget to mail us your suggestions, criticisms, articles or anything under the biological sun.
Warm Regards,
On Behalf of Editorial Team,
Paras Chopra
Managing Editor
P.S: Don’t forget to popularize the magazine through word-of-mouth publicity. :)
April 2006, Jeev
http://www.dce.edu/jeev
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