[Ed Note: Krishna Mehra is an IIT graduate turned researcher turned entrepreneur. His latest passion is his startup - Capillary which focuses on mobile based reward programs for small enterprises. Being a Calcuttan (if that is even a word), his craving for milk sweets is legendary. More about him on his blog.]
I was in Chennai from 18-22 Dec, esp. for PAN IIT 2008. As I already pointed out earlier, we covered all the SMS based notification and search applications for PAN IIT, and hence had to be there well in time to setup the system etc.
The way the event had been structured was that there were 5-6 tracks: Research, Rural, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and so on, and a galaxy of speakers was lined up for each session as a panel. Although unfortunate that you couldn't be at two places at the same time, it left something for everybody.
The event started with a bang. We participated in the Business Plan Conclave so didn't get to see the Opening Ceremony, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was streamed from New Delhi. The highlight of the day had to be Hema Malini. I remember as soon as we sent out the notification about Hema Malini being around, half the place got deserted and people crammed into the hall to catch a glimpse. It almost seemed that the alums who'd passed out two decades ago, couldn't resist the sight of Dream Girl ;-) A big disappointment was the Cocktail party being cancelled in the wake of protests from the political lobby about IIT Madras being used as a bar. A bunch of us left for the nearby Besant Nagar beach, cramming 11 people in an Auto!
The second day had some interesting sessions by Raghuram Rajan, Steven Cohen, and the COO of P&G. One thing that kept coming up was the current economic crises and the recent Mumbai terror attacks. The highlight of the second day has to be the Cocktail party at the Chennai Trade Center - some 30 Km from IITM from what I heard where we all filled up in buses and went.
Similarly, the last day started with quite a few activities at the Students Activity Center (SAC) - Steven Cohen and Kishore Mahboobani, and a session on social networking by Orkut Buyukkokten of Google. The closing speech by Amartya Sen, however, took the cake thanks to his scholarship and well prepared rhetorics. The question and answer session was extremely entertaining and informative, with Sen completely overshadowing the ceremonies - one classic was (not verbatim):
Q. How do you think India can become a superpower?
A. I don't wish for India to be a superpower. I hope Indians can be happy and reduce poverty.
It seemed a little ironic that both the opening ceremony of a ballad on IIT was done by alumni of Delhi School of Economics - but overall, it was a great show in terms of content. The organization, however, was lacking. There were hardly any volunteers to ask for help, nobody seemed to be accountable for the proceedings, people were denied food -- it seemed there were too many delegates and too few volunteers.
Overall a great show. One thing really humbling was seeing celebs from the business world (and some outside) at a extend-your-hand-and-touch distance. I almost bumped into Nandan Nilekani en route to his book signing session, and we found Chetan Bhagat ambling near Gurunath's Canteen with his family. It was above all a celebration of IITs and their contribution, and in this, the event fully succeeded.
So long till Chicago 2009.
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