June 2008

Outreach

Hyderabad

March 14th, 2008

Hyderabad was the venue for the first outreach program for the Chennai Global Conference. The Khemka auditorium at the chic ISB campus started filling up from 1830 hrs and by 1930 there were over 200 alumni from all 7 IITs waiting expectantly for proceedings to start. The lights dimmed and the curtain raiser AV came on with some cheering from the audience. It was played twice 'just in case' the audience missed it the first time - this elicited a roar of approval with some diehards shouting "once more"!

Santhanam did a passionate presentation on PanIIT and the 2008 event. In between the website came alive on screen and the presenter advised the gathering to navigate the same and Register ASAP.

The presentation was followed by a snappy Q&A session on 'Engendering Entrepreneurship' anchored by Sarath Naru with questions being thrown at the entrepreneur IITian panelists Raju Venkatraman (First Source), Ashank Desai (Mastek) & Pradeep Gupta (Cybermedia).

Dinner was served at 9 pm.

The act of Magic according to a magician is a carefully woven sequence of acts. And for others - difficult to believe it is real. Outreach 2008 at Hyderabad was in that category. But when feedback started pouring in after the event the "magicians" started wondering if it was truly "Magic" indeed!

The Outreach event let loose so many emotions. It spontaneously reflected the theme of the curtain raiser movie on this website. The emotions of belonging, the emotions of reaching out, the urge to give back, the outpouring of courage, the commitment to make a difference...

The performers tried to overwhelm the participants with all the jazz they could harness. Fancy location - the sprawling manicured ISB campus, great live dialogue on entrepreneurship by veterans, a spread to please the taste buds and an out of the world "mahol" under the atrium in low lights for dinner. But the participants were entirely on a different plane! They created their own private thrills ? meeting the guy from the batch, "wowing" spouse, the pluck to scare the dare devils...

The Outreach, without intending, renewed bonding, created new relations, lifted expectations, and left all wondering. Stepping back trying to understand what chemistry clicked and how!