Spring 2024

What’s new with Superbloom?

After a short hiatus and a well-deserved break to recharge our batteries, we are back with our newsletter.?

And do we have news to share with you all!

We have had an eventful first quarter with speaking at events, promoting tech and having very many conversations with entrepreneurs who are developing inclusive AI based solutions.

Events & Workshops

Superbloom Studios was invited as a partner to promote inclusive development of AI at the largest AI conference in India ‘AIDAYS 2024’, organised by Swecha Telangana . We had been approached by the Swecha team after they had heard about our Hidden Voices program. One of their focus was on having more women included in the AI ecosystem. Of course we said yes to being partners. Our efforts at Superbloom added five women speakers to various panels.

Our co-founders Kalaivani Mattern (Vani), Aruna Seshadri and our colleague Abinaya Mahendiran our colleague and the project manager of Hidden Voices took part on both days.

Vani spoke to budding AI specialists on why inclusion is our collective responsibility.?

Aruna led a panel on career transitions and underscored that in this age of AI, constant upskilling is going to be the only constant. She encouraged young professionals to not fear change but to look for challenges that they can tackle. We were even able to add a last minute addition of a Superbloom friend who encouraged students to be open to all possibilities that are opening up in the world of AI.?

Abhinaya (Project Manager of Hidden Voices, a Superbloom Studios project) captivated the audience with her talk on how contributing to open source AI development led her to her successful career. Her talk resonated even with many of the seasoned professionals present in the audience.?

Our advisor Usha Paliath was on the main track on a panel on AI for society and pointed out that business opportunities abound when more sections of the society are included.?

We would like to thank Swecha Telangana for the opportunity and applaud them on their drive to create an inclusive AI for society.

Please scroll below for excerpts of an interview with the founder of Swecha Kiran Chandra .

WEHub:

Vani and Aruna also conducted a workshop on “Communication at the Modern Workplace”. The women entrepreneurs who attended the session appreciated Vani’s workshop on elements of communication such as communication styles in global context, virtual communication and presenting a pitch, along with valuable insights from business strategy from Aruna.?

Women Leadership

Vani spoke on women leadership at an event organized by SIETAR Deutschland e.V. Stuttgart chapter. The following lively discussion brought up many facets of leadership roles that are challenging when the layer of cross-cultural and gender elements are added to the mix.

What we are tracking:

Superbloom is always thinking of ways to serve women of all ages and stages. One of the stages that is shrouded in unnecessary mystery and taboo is menopause.? As more and more corporates realize the importance of retention of their valued employees, well-being of their women team members in all stages of life has become a priority.

Watch this space for more news on advancement in this area and how inclusion driven development is addressing some of the challenges facing women at the workplace.

Whom we met and ended up talking hours to:

Meet Kiran Chandra , General Secretary of the Free Software Movement of India (FSMI) and founding Chairman of Swecha, a non-profit organisation that develops free & open-source software (FOSS) solutions for social and economic empowerment. We spoke to him on various issues facing inclusive AI. This is an edited version with his kind permission. Please read the full version here:

1. Thank you for talking to us Kiran. Let us start with what made you focus on inclusive IT ecosystems??

In a country like India, access to technology means more while having last-mile connectivity and affordability, which are necessary but insufficient. Tech would be accessible at the last mile when available in the language one speaks and thinks…

2. What is Swecha? Please share two success stories with our readers?

Swecha means freedom in Telugu! It was the name of the Telugu Distribution of the GNU/ Linux Operating System, released in 2005. The first distribution, "Swecha" in Telugu, was a result of the effort by a handful of enthusiasts who localised primary user interface(UI). Through multiple hackathons and with help of more than thousand participants in each, we developed a 100% gnome UI in Telugu, all through community participation. (You can watch here the video on what this helped achieved in Govt. run schools).?

In the new domain of AI, Swecha has released the first small language model for the Telugu language, the Chandamama Kathalu. The success is about the democratic way corpus collection was done. Close to 10K students in different engineering colleges were aided by developers & academics in creating high-quality datasets needed to train the AI model. This datathon was completed in less than 6 hours, converting nearly 40,000 lines of text into properly labelled datasets. These datasets are now?being used?by all the LLMs released by the tech giants to provide solutions in Telugu.

3. Based on your experience, what are some of the mechanisms that contribute to long-lasting involvement of professionals in inclusive development?

A clear purpose of democratising access to tech and democratising the development of tech and a vision around it(that is inclusive) has been the key to our long-lasting involvement of professionals. The free software development model has provided the base and enabled us to build inclusive development models.

Thank you Kiran for your time! We will be eagerly following the establishment of the new Center for People-centric AI.

We at Superbloom Studios are thrilled to end the first quarter of 2024 on an absolute high note. And we have more in store for you dear readers! Watch this space!