Red X iconGreen tick iconYellow tick icon

Thursday 29 November 2018 9:41pm

Anindya-Sen-image
Dr Anindya Sen is getting used to seeing himself on the screen after shooting a series of videos for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

While more accustomed to addressing a class of students, one Otago Business School lecturer is getting comfortable addressing the world through a camera.

Dr Anindya Sen, who holds a joint appointment in the Finance and Executive Programmes departments, recently spent a day in Wellington, shooting a series of videos explaining finance content and jargon for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), after a brief video filmed earlier in the year had more than 20,000 hits.

Dr Sen is one of six internationally-sourced panel members on the MBIE Small Business panel, inaugurated by Hon Stuart Nash in March. The panel aims to help small businesses - which account for 97 per cent of all the country’s businesses – to reach their full potential.

Each panel member was required to front an introductory video, which included some brief advice on “a couple of concepts”.

"As an academic you can work for years to get a paper published in a journal and even then, only a handful of people are likely to read it. My existing video was five minutes of work and it’s been seen by 20,000 people."

That brief advice from Dr Sen has now been viewed thousands of times, leading to him being “shoulder tapped” to front more videos for the Ministry.

“The team at MBIE told me I have had over 20,000 hits and even some of my former students from India contacted me personally telling me they have seen them,” he says. “As a result, MBIE asked me if I was interested in making more videos and I was more than happy to do so.”

The new series of five videos, which cover introductory themes in financial statement analysis, was shot and produced by a professional company in Wellington last week and are in the process of being edited.

While a script was provided, Dr Sen decided to improvise on the spot rather than “stick to the script”.

“I told them that the videos would sound much better if I ad-libbed, while taking care to hit the main points they wanted. I think they were a little concerned at first, but we did one trial run and they loved it. So, after that we decided to do them all with me improvising on the spot.”

Dr Sen is humbled and somewhat surprised by his internet success.

“As an academic you can work for years to get a paper published in a journal and even then, only a handful of people are likely to read it. My existing video was five minutes of work and it’s been seen by 20,000 people. Hopefully, this new series will impact and help many more.

“The whole process of making these videos was an eye-opener – very interesting and professional. I really liked doing it, but I’m not going to give up my day job,” he laughed.

Back to top