TEDx Inspiring Ideas and Knitting Visions

Being a fan of TED Talks and a public speaker, I was very pleased to have been invited as guest to witness TEDx event at Bangalore. I must say the organizing team @NMIMS did a superb job of organizing it.

The theme of TEDx event was ‘Knitting Visions’. 10 speakers from diverse fields did exactly that... Knitted visions. I as a listener had my ROTI (Return of Time Invested) and in the TED spirit of ‘ideas worth spreading’, let me spread the gist of the talks through this post.

 Starting with the youngest speaker 9 year old Dev Shah who is a chess prodigy and for me was the star speaker. I could draw parallel between the corporate world and many things he said about chess.

Empower people - In Chess, the chess piece which moves more freely is more powerful. In the corporate world to me that’s like empowering people   - The more freedom and autonomy you give to people in doing their jobs, the better job they will do.

Appreciate unique skills - Each team member who has his or her limitations and unique skills is important to the setup in her or his own way. Like in chess, even the pawn which moves 1 step at a time has a power to become the knight and can come handy at any point.

 Shailesh Kumar who is a Data Scientist spoke about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it can/should disrupt field of education. He emphasized that today’s education system creates more skilled laborers than thinkers and is designed in a ‘one size fits all’ manner. The future will have more customized  ‘Teaching Machines’ for each student. This will be Big Data Opportunity and challenge in Education space. The challenge remains that today the machines/robots can be trained to ‘help solve’ problems but not yet to ‘help the students think’ like human teachers do. In the other words, today AI can be a great student by learning stuff (machine learning) but can it be great teacher?

The AI disruption in the education space would mean Internet will be our Library; MOOC(Massive Online Open Courses) will be our Classroom and AI ‘Teaching machines’ will be the school/teachers.

 Dr Kalyan manages an intellectual property firm and questioned the patent system. He argued that many patents are ‘useless’ and therefore every patent holder is not an inventor. Similarly many practices (like new methods of agriculture or new process of carrying out a surgery) cannot be patented. Therefore despite being extremely useful these cannot be patented and these inventors cannot hold patents.

 Other speakers –

• Disha Oberoi is a RJ at 94.3 FM and spoke about dying art of listening.
• Dr Abhas K Mitra renowned in the field of Astrophysics gave a talk on the Black hole paradox and how he disapproves the concept of Black Hole paradox which is also finding some support by some recent NASA findings.
• Vinita Bali is on the board of many large companies and has been on the FT list of top 50 powerful business women. She spoke about CSR – “Let's call it corporate responsibility and not corporate social responsibility" was her message.
• Sangeetha Menon who was from the Psychology field reflected on “who am I”. Shinie Antony who is a writer had a great play on ‘words’
• Jockin Sir was Noble Peace Prize nominee in 2014 and took the cause of people at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ and why they need to coexist with society. He talked about how the slogan of modern cities needs to change from ‘Slum Free City’ to ‘Slum Friendly City’ where every person should have access to clean water and sanitation.
• Vani Ganapathy, famous Bharatnatyam dancer (Indian Classical dance) conveyed her message through her dance. The message being we need to control of our 9 emotions (rasas) to eliminate negative energy and increase positive energy i.e. Love, Joy, Wonder, Peace, Anger, Courage, Compassion, Fear, Disgust.