Centre for Internet and Society

Free Arduino Workshop (For Beginners)

praskrishna — 2012-04-28T04:07:50Z

The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore invites you to a hands-on-free Arduino workshop in its office on 3 March 2012. The workshop will be held from 11.00 a.m. to 3 p.m.

What is Arduino?

Arduino, an Italian name meaning "strong friend", is a popular "open-source electronics prototyping platform based around a microcontroller. It accepts inputs, such as signals from sensors (light, temperature, moisture, etc.) or data from the Internet or wireless devices, and sends output signals to devices, such as LEDS, motors, speakers, MIDI sequencers, computers, and so on."

In simpler terms: It is a ready-to-use creative platform, designed to provide interactivity between humans, smartphones, PCs, sensors and the physical world. It is especially a boon for creative people who don't have a technical background and want to translate their wildest techno-ideas to reality in a snap.

A comic by Jody Culkin, introducing Arduino

What can Arduino Do?

Applications of Arduino could include anything under the sun, from making your LED lights glow in reaction to the weather to interactive punching bags: your imagination is the limit (besides the sensors).

Check what some folk did with a bunch of cameras for an amazing music video all in one day

For other examples, check out the Boing Boing listing

Who can Attend?

The workshop is especially meant for interaction designers, artists or anyone else enthusiastic to get started with creative projects and don't have prior experience with electronics, interfacing and all that hack talk. It would help to have a general understanding of instructional programming languages, but this shouldn't be a problem for starts as you will pick it up as we go along. Besides, we are super-friendly and patient folk who will assist participants to demystify geek code.

Apply Now

We have only 20 seats for this free workshop. Participants will work in groups of two. The workshop will last 4 hours, over a lunch break. All materials will be provided, and it would be great if you could get your laptop.

To apply please send a brief intro about yourself and why you think you will benefit from this to yelena@cis-india.org. Selected participants will be notified shortly.

A map, showing the location of CIS

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/free-arduino-workshop

Konkan Corridor Project — A Lecture by Vasant Gangavane

praskrishna — 2012-04-13T13:49:32Z

Well known social worker Vasant Gangavane will be giving a public lecture on the Konkan Corridor Project at Ashoka Innovators for the Public in Bangalore on April 16, 2012. The lecture will focus on the role of Information & Communication Technology for total rural transformation by inclusive integrated development with no change of land ownerships. The event is co-organized by Ashoka Innovators for the Public and the Centre for Internet and Society.

Citing examples from the 117 village clusters in the regions of Ratnagiri and Sindhudurga districts of Maharashtra the lecture hopes to throw light on questions like what is a village cluster, what does it mean to urbanize one village cluster and what do we need to do to urbanize one village cluster, how will we organize and coordinate the project. This apart the vision, status and action plans of the Konkan Corridor Project, the skills development in each cluster, intensive agriculture in each cluster, farm produce processing, water conservation in the project area, rivers in the project area, energy, transportation, industry, science communication, and self administration in each clusters will also be discussed.

Vasant Gangavane

In the 1970s Vasant Gangavane, a management graduate from Indian Institute of Management and Wharton, returned to his village in Konkan, Maharashtra, to give his people what he felt they needed most — the knowledge to manage their natural resources. In the process, he set up several models of rural development. Gangavane found that the rate at which people migrated out of the Konkan was very high, despite the fact that the area was rich in natural resources. He studied the area and realised that land improvement and watershed development were key issues. He conducted a series of experiments in agriculture, dairy and poultry farming before setting up the Gokul Prakalp Pratishthan (GPP) in 1978. With the Maharashtra government's comprehensive watershed management programme (COWDEP), Gangavane's Pratishthan afforested 400 hectares of land in Vilye village with mango and cashew trees. Gangavane then acquired 40 acres of wasteland in the village and built water conservation structures called Gokul bandharas. This resulted in the wells in the area being recharged and ensured enough drinking water for 25 families.This model was later adopted by the Indo-German Watershed Programme.

When Gangavane's project began, the village of Vilye was bereft of young people. Its young had migrated. Now there is reverse migration and 3,000 people have benefited from the programme. The village has been transformed — water runoff has been arrested and afforestation has changed the look of the village.

After the watershed programme, Gangavane formulated a theoretical plan for model villages called the Gokul project. The aim was communication and knowledgesharing. A participatory rural appraisal is also done to explore natural resource availability, potential and use. The awareness is meant to empower people and convince them that watershed programmes can address problems of poverty and inequity. Gangavane believes that with this knowledge, and with the resources available, a small family in the area can live sustainably.

Gangavane's Pratishthan has set up an Ashramshaala at Laanja, Ratnagiri district, which is a tribal residential school, where 300 children are provided free boarding and lodging up to the secondary level. GPP has also introduced computer education in schools. For his work Gangavane was awarded the Vanashree award, Vasantrao Naik Pratisthan award and the Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra award.

Download the presentation here [PDF, 228 KB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/talk-by-vasant-gangavane

Habits of Living: Surrogate States, Bodies and Networks, Bangalore

praskrishna — 2012-09-28T12:40:30Z

The Centre for Internet & Society is organising the Habits of Living Workshop in Bangalore from September 26 to 29, 2012.

Schedule

26^th September, Wednesday

9:30 – Registration and Tea

10:00 – Introduction – Wendy Chun, Nishant Shah

11:00 – Pecha-kucha presentations followed by Q&A from all the participants

13:00 – Lunch

14:30 – Akansha Rastogi, Shiv Nadar Museum, New Delhi

16:00 – Oliver Lerone Schulz, Post Media Lab, Lueneburg

19:00 – Welcome Banquet @ Jaymahal Palace with other invitees

27^th September, Thursday

10:00 – Radhika Gajalla, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green

11:30 – Saumya Pant, Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad

13:00 – Lunch

14:30 – Deepak Menon, India Water Portal, Bangalore

14:00 - Joshua Neeves, Brown University, Rhode Island

16:30 – Eivind Rossaak, National Library of Norway, Oslo

19:00 – Trip to down-town Bangalore (optional)

28^th September, Friday

07: 30 – Bangalore Heritage Walk (optional)

11:30 – Maya Ganesh (via Skype), Tactical Technologies, Berlin

13:30 – Lunch

14:30 – Rijuta Mehta, Brown University, Rhode Island

16:00 – Wendy Chun, Brown University, Rhode Island

19:00 – Dinner at South Indies, Infantry Road

29^th September, Saturday

09:30 – Maesy Angelina, AusAid, Jakarta

11:00 – Renee Ridgway, NEWS, Amsterdam

12:30 – Lunch

14:00 – Gita Chadha, SNDT Women’s College, Mumbai

15:30 – Open Board: Habits of Living

17:00 – Wrap up and next steps

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/habits-of-living

The DNA Profiling Bill: Developing Best Practices

praskrishna — 2012-09-17T05:54:30Z

On the 27th of September 2012 the Centre for Internet & Society invites the public to a meeting and talk with international experts Helen Wallace from GeneWatch UK, and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics from the United States. The meeting will take place from 9.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. at the India International Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi in Conference Room No. 2.

The public meeting and talk will focus on the proposed DNA Profiling Bill pending in Parliament and explore best practices concerning the collection, storage, and retention of DNA samples and best practices concerning the analysis of DNA samples and use of DNA samples as evidence in courts. Case studies from the US and the UK will be explored to understand what India can do better from the experiences of other countries.

Dr Helen Wallace

Dr Helen Wallace is Director of GeneWatch UK, a not-for-profit organisation which aims to engage members of the public in ensuring that genetic science and technologies are used in the public interest. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on the social and ethical issues raised by DNA databases and is widely quoted in the UK press. Helen provided expert evidence to the applicants in the case of S. and Marper v. the UK at the European Court of Human Rights, in which the Court ruled unanimously that the indefinite retention of innocent people's DNA database records was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. She has supplied both oral and written evidence on this issue to numerous parliamentary committees including the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee and the UK Science and Technology, Home Affairs and Constitutional Committees, as well as the scrutiny committee for the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. This new Act requires the removal of about a million innocent people's records from the UK National DNA Database and the destruction of all stored biological samples.

Jeremy Gruber

Jeremy Gruber is the JD, President and Executive Director of Council for Responsible Genetics. Jeremy joined CRG in March 2009. Previously he served as the legal director of the National Workrights Institute, a human rights organization dedicated to the rights of American workers. Prior to that he served as the field director for the ACLU’s National Taskforce on Civil Liberties in the Workplace. Jeremy has worked for over a decade on genetic non-discrimination legislation at the state and Federal level. He helped author and pass numerous state laws on genetic non-discrimination. Jeremy is a founder and executive committee member of the Coalition for Genetic Fairness, a group of 500 organizations that advocated for genetic non-discrimination legislation on Capitol Hill and played a major role in the recently passed Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA) by Congress. He worked closely with members of Congress and staff on GINA language as well as strategy and support. He is a prolific writer on privacy issues and is often consulted by state legislatures. He is regularly featured in print, radio and television. Jeremy holds a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from St. John’s University School of Law and a B.A. in Politics from Brandeis University.

Forensic DNA: A Human Rights Challenge

The above video was originally posted in YouTube

Click on the links below to download the files:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/the-dna-profiling-bill-developing-best-practices

Role of the US Tech Companies in Government Surveillance: A Lecture by Christopher Soghoian

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T11:03:19Z

Christopher Soghoian will deliver a lecture on the role US tech companies play in assisting government surveillance at the Centre for Internet & Society office in Bangalore on August 27, 2012, from 5.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

Your internet, phone and web application providers are all, for the most part, in bed with US and other foreign government agencies. They all routinely disclose their customers' communications and other private data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Worse, firms like Google and Microsoft specifically log data in order to assist the government. How many government requests does your ISP get for its customers' communications each year? How many do they comply with? How many do they fight? How much do they charge for the surveillance assistance they provide? Who knows? Most companies have a strict policy of not discussing such topics.

The differences in the privacy practices of the major players in the telecommunications and internet applications market are significant. Some firms retain identifying data for years, while others retain no data at all; some voluntarily provide the government access to user data, while other companies refuse to voluntarily disclose data without a court order; some companies charge government agencies when they request user data, while others disclose it for free. For an individual, later investigated by the police or intelligence services, the data retention practices adopted by their phone company or email provider can significantly impact their freedom.

Unfortunately, although many companies claim to care about end-user privacy, and some even that they compete on their privacy features, none seem to be willing to compete on the extent to which they assist or resist the government in its surveillance activities. Because information about each firms' practices is not publicly known, consumers cannot vote with their wallets, and pick service providers that best protect their privacy.

This talk will pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding these practices. Based upon a combination of Freedom of Information Act requests, off the record conversations with industry lawyers, and investigative journalism, the practices of many of these firms will be revealed.

Christopher's Personal Experience

In the year 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided Christopher’s home at 2.00 a.m. seizing his personal documents and computers. Two attorneys, Stephen Braga and Jennifer Granick came to his defence. With their expert assistance, Christopher was able to get back his possessions within three weeks, and FBI’s criminal and TSA’s civil investigations were closed without any charges being filed.

Jennifer Granick came to Christopher’s assistance once again (joined by Steve Leckar) in 2010 after the Federal Trade Commission’s Inspector General investigated Christopher for using his government badge to attend a closed-door surveillance industry conference. It was at that event that Christopher recorded an executive from wireless carrier ‘Sprint’ bragging about the eight million times his company had obtained GPS data on its customers for law enforcement agencies in the previous years.

To know more, read Christopher Soghoian’s dissertation titled "The Spies We Trust: Third Party Service Providers and Law Enforcement Surveillance". [PDF, 1056 Kb]

About Christopher Soghoian

Christopher Soghoian is a privacy researcher and activist, working at the intersection of technology, law and policy. He is a Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union and is based in Washington, D.C.

Soghoian completed his Ph.D. at Indiana University in 2012, which focused on the role that third party service providers play in facilitating law enforcement surveillance of their customers. In order to gather data, he has made extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act, sued the Department of Justice pro se, and used several other investigative research methods. His research has appeared in publications including the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and been cited by several federal courts, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Between the years, 2009-2010, he was the first ever in-house technologist at the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, where he worked on investigations of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Netflix. Prior to joining the FTC, he co-created the Do Not Track privacy anti-tracking mechanism now adopted by all of the major web browsers.

He is a TEDGlobal 2012 Fellow, was an Open Society Foundations Fellow between the years, 2011-2012, and was a Student Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University between 2008 and 2009.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/role-of-us-tech-companies-in-govt-surveillance

Technology Evangelists and Religious Evangelists — A Talk by Katherine Sydenham

praskrishna — 2012-09-04T10:44:34Z

Katherine Sydenham from the University of Michigan School of Information will deliver a lecture at the Centre for Internet & Society office in Bangalore on August 10, 2012, from 5.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.

Abstract

The current investigation explores the possibility of comparison of techniques used by technology evangelists and religious evangelists. The study sought informants from three major categories: proprietary software evangelists, proponents of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and religious evangelists of several religious traditions. A preliminary analysis of qualitative data indicates that there are enough similarities in strategies used by members from each group to make the inquiry relevant. Early data also reveal significant differences in each group´s strategy that may inform and shape future efforts on behalf of technology evangelists to reach a wider audience for their products.

Katherine Sydenham

Katherine is a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Information. Her research in the Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) field focuses on technology adoption by marginalized communities. Her background is in Religious Studies and Library and Information Science. Her summer internship at Microsoft Research is exploring the strategic similarities between technology evangelism and religious evangelism.

Click here to read more about Katherine

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/technology-evangelists-religious-evangelists

The Asian Edge: 2012 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Summer School

praskrishna — 2012-08-02T13:23:14Z

The 2nd Biannual Inter Asia Cultural Studies (IACS) Summer School will be hosted in Bangalore, India by the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) with the Inter Asia Cultural Studies Consortium. The event will be held in the first and second week of August 2012.

The IACS Summer School brings together South and East Asian experts from different disciplines as faculty for graduate and advanced research students to engage with key issues of larger social, cultural and political concerns in Cultural Studies in Asia. Any student registered in a post-graduate degree program is eligible for the IACS Summer School. There are limited seats and students will be selected based on their applications. Students registered at universities participating in the Consortium of Inter Asia Cultural Studies Institutions will be given first preference.

The Summer School 2012 proposes to integrate the teaching with core IACS faculty with the larger realities of change in South and East Asia. It proposes a 10 + 4 day structure.

Core Course: Methodologies for Cultural Studies in Asia: The Summer School offers a 10 day core course that works through seminars, taught classrooms, tutorials, open spaces, field trips and workshops. The core course shall address questions of Cultural Identity, Modernity, Nationalism, Gender, Class, Revolution and Asianism to frame an argument about relocating methods, concepts and ideas in contemporary Cultural Studies in Asia.

Day/Date	Time	Session	Instructors	Readings
Aug 02 (Thu)	09:30-10:00	Introduction to Course/Orientation
	10:00-1:00	Session 1: The Question of Knowledge	Instructors: Daniel PS Goh Nithin Manayath	The Epistemological Value of East Asian Perspective – Sun Ge Knowledge Production in the Era of Neo-Liberal Globalisation – Kuan-Hsing Chen Teaching versus Research? – Meaghan Morris
	3:00-5:00	Student Presentations	Choi, Ji Yeon Ajinkya Shenava Khetrimayum M Singh Vincent Chung Jaime Fang-Tze Hsu
Aug 03 (Fri)		Culture Industries workshop
		Workshop party
Aug 04 (Sat)	10:00-1:00	Session 2: The Question of Culture	Instructors: Asha Achuthan Ratheesh Radhakrishnan	Hind Swaraj – Chs IV, VI, XII, XIII – MK Gandhi Value Typology of Chinese Peasants and Its Transformation in Contemporary China – He Xuefeng An Elaborative Argumentation of a Nong-Country – Zhang Shi Zhao
	3:00-5:00	Student Presentations	Annisa Beta Ying-Tzu, Liu (Eva) Li, Yen-Chieh Sharib Aqleem Ali Li, Cho Kiu (Joseph)	Venue: 1 Shanti Road
	6:00-8:00	EVENING SALON	Tejaswini Niranjana and Kuan-Hsing Chen	Venue: 1 Shanti Road
Aug 05 (Sun)		HOLIDAY
Aug 06 (Mon)	10:00-1:00	Session 3: Nationalism and Modernity	Instructor: Milind Wakankar Student Presentations: Mai Thi Thu Baidurya Chakrabarti Zhang, Bing Musab Iqbal Meng Hsien Lu	On Nation – Zhang Tai Yan Nationalism in India – Rabindranath Tagore New Dominant Ideology and Changes of Urban Space in Today's Shanghai – Wang Xiaoming The Twilight of Certitudes: Secularism, Hindu Nationalism and Other Masks of Deculturation – Ashis Nandy A National Culture for Pakistan: the political economy of a debate – Saadia Toor
	3:00-5:00		Instructor: Madhuja M Student Presentations: Pan Yifan Zhang Zhihui Se Young Oh
		EVENING SALON	Stephen Chah and Ashish Rajadhyaksha	Venue: Centre for Internet and Society
Aug 07 (Tue)	10:00-1:00	Session 4: Culture and Economy	Instructors: Radhika P Raghu Tenkayala	In the Margin of the Capital: From ‘Tjerita Boedjang Bingoeng’ to ‘Si Doel anak sekolahan’ The Emergent Culture of Consumption – Chua Beng Huat ‘Bollywood’ 2004; When Was Bollywood – Ashish Rajadhyaksha Peasant Cultures of the 21st Century – Partha Chatterjee
	3:00-5:00	Student Presentations	Chan Ka Yi Kim Yoon Young Tanna Shilpa Shirishkumar Ruchi Jaggi Haesook Yong
Aug 08 (Wed)	10:00-1:00	Session 5: Gender and Culture	Instructors: Navaneetha Mokkil Nitya Vasudevan	Why Culture Matters – Tejaswini Niranjana Prostitutes Parasites and the house of state feminism – Naifei Ding Women and Freedom – Firdous Azim Letters to the Editor: The domestic violence act and conflict Spectralization of the Rural: Reinterpreting the labour mobility of rural young women in post-Mao China – Yan Hairong
	3:00-5:00	Student Presentations	Elmo I-Che Hsu Pang Ka Wei (Janet) Li-Fang Lai Kris Yu-Shiuan Chi Samia Vasa Shwetha D Ryu M-Rye Sabreena Ahmed
	6:00-8:00	EVENING SALON	Firdous Azim and Naifei Ding/Siddharth/Arvind in conversation	Venue: Alternative Law Forum
Aug 09 (Thurs)	10:00-1:00	FIELD TRIP	SURESH JAYARAM – Pettai Tour
Aug 10 (Fri)	10:00-1:00	Session 6: Understanding Popular Cultural Practice	Instructors: Namita Malhotra Nishant Shah	Hong Kong Action film in the Indian B Circuit – SV Srinivas Inter-Asia Comparative Framework: Postcolonial Film Historiography in Taiwan and South Korea Kim Soyoung Fan Bhakti and Subaltern Sovereignty – Madhava Prasad
	3:00-5:00	Student Presentations	Samhita Sunya Khatija Sana Khader Ayesha Maria Mualla Antoreep Sengupta
Aug 11 (Sat)		UNWORKSHOP DAY (Writing)	Evening: Final Party

Optional Courses: 2 Additional 4-days parallel Courses shall be offered to participants interested in specialised inquiries of their research practice.

Course A. The Digital Subject: Science, Technology and Society in Asia

Course Coordinator: Nishant Shah

Course Instructors: Nishant Shah, Lawrence Liang and Ashish Rajadhyaksha

Course B. Research Seminar on Technology, Culture & the Body

Course Coordinator: Nitya Vasudevan

Course Instructors: Tejaswini Niranjana, DING Naifei, Audrey Yue, Wing-Kwong Wong, Hsing-Wen Chang, Nitya Vasudevan

Nandy

A National Culture for Pakistan: the political economy of a debate – Saadia Toor

Nandy

A National Culture for Pakistan: the political economy of a debate – Saadia Toor

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/iacs-summer-school-2012

Bangalore Force.com August Meetup

praskrishna — 2012-08-09T13:59:50Z

Following the India Salesforce Platform Developer Hands-On Workshop in July, Bangalore Force.com is organizing monthly meetups in Bangalore, starting in August. The first meeting will be held at the Centre for Internet & Society in Bangalore on Sunday, August 19, 2012 from 2.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. John Barnes will be speaking on the occasion.

John Barnes

John Barnes, CTO Model Metrics will be the first speaker for this meetup. John has been working with Force.com and Salesforce.com since 2005. He is a frequent speaker at global conferences on Cloud Computing and Mobility (Dreamforce, Adobe MAX, Interop, Cloud Connect, Enterprise 2.0). You can follow his blogs here.

John will give an overview of the Force.com platform, benefits of Force.com, Heroku, etc., and an overview of the Social Enterprise. Siddhesh Kabe, Sr. Developer, Salesforce.com, will follow up with demos and hands-on coding.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/bangalore-force-com-cloud-apps-developer-meetup-event

Geekup @ CIS

praskrishna — 2011-12-26T07:39:53Z

CIS is hosting a Geekup tomorrow, December 27, 2011 in its office in Bangalore. Shyam Mani will be giving a talk.

Shyam Mani

Based out of Singapore, Shyam (aka fox2mike on IRC and most of the intertubes) is one of the folks on the Mozilla IT team outside the USA. A geek at heart, he’s a part-time Gentoo developer, loves photography and volunteers as a race official for Formula 1 races in Singapore and Australia.

A peek into Mozilla IT

Mozilla IT manages over 7 datacenters in San Jose, Santa Clara, Phoenix in the US and Amsterdam as well as Beijing and 7 offices in Mountain View, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, Paris, Auckland and Beijing with over 4000 servers and virtual machines. They support Mozilla's mission on a 24/7 basis by making sure critical infrastructure functions as expected and is always available (when they're not being BOFHs). The 45 member strong team is primarily based out of the US and has a person each in India and Singapore.

This talk will provide an insight into Mozilla's Infrastructure in terms of scale and the methods/tools used to manage the same.

We will open with lightning talks from Bangalore's geeks. That means you. Give us a 5-10 minute intro to the tools you use or how your organization's IT is structured. Help get the mood going before Shyam's talk.

Schedule

Welcome with tea, coffee and snacks	18:00 - 18:15
Lightning Talks	18:15 - 19:00
A peek into Mozilla IT	19:00 - 20:00

Register now

The venue has limited capacity

Fill out the form to confirm your participation. We have limited space at the venue and may not be able to accommodate everyone. Registration will allow us to keep you updated about the talk. Do tell us something about yourself so we know whom we are expecting.

Our privacy policy: We do not share your info.

Also see the HasGeek website

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/mozilla-it

Tweet a Review of Digital AlterNatives with a Cause Books

praskrishna — 2012-01-07T14:42:32Z

Essays from 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?' books are getting reviewed. We invite everyone to participate in this book review event! Deadline: January 31

Read one essay from the 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?' books published by the Centre for Internet & Society and HIVOS.
Download PDFs here.

Post a review on your blog

Tweet the review's link on Twitter using #TweetReview and copy @cis_india

For e.g. "Unpacking the shiny packaging of Digital Natives" Book 2 To Think #TweetReview http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/unpacking-from-shiny-packaging @cis_india
Send us a link to your view

For more details about the event and the essays you want to review, email: nilofar.ansh@gmail.com

Tweet-a-Review is a monthly event organized as part of the 'Digital Natives with a Cause?' project.

Read previous reviews here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/events/tweet-a-review

Whose Data is it Anyway?

praskrishna — 2012-04-28T04:12:15Z

Tactical Technology Collective and the Centre for Internet & Society invite you to the second round of discussions of the Exposing Data Series at the CIS office in Bangalore on 24 January 2012. Siddharth Hande and Hapee de Groot will be speaking on this occasion.

Like countless others, this title is a convenient adaptation of a 1972 play by Brian Clark, Whose Life is it Anyway?, a meditation on 'euthanasia' and the extent to which governments or the law can determine the private life of an individual. In a similar sense we use the title to help frame the second set of conversations in the Exposing Data Series, to zero in on the idea of data and who has the right to decide what happens with it. Philosophically, and also at the level of code, computing and the law, the ownership of data can be a somewhat odd and a contentious thing to grapple with. The only other understandings of 'ownership' we really have are those of property and identity and these get imputed onto the intangibility of data. And, in some senses now, many aspects of one's identity exist as data.

There are a range of experiences of data ownership that we talk about and experience daily. On the one hand you can hoard hard disks with favourite content to retrieve memories and experiences. On the other end of things, you can aggregate your experiences and memories with that of thousands of others, that then gets treated almost like a private hard disk belonging to some mysterious X. Who is this Mysterious X? Is there a Y? Or an XY? What is the trajectory of data in its movement from the individual to a larger, shadowy infrastructure that harvests it? What happens to our idea of data in its reconfiguration from intangible code to an idea of politics and rights? To introduce another provocation, do our existing ideas of data ownership objectify individuals? What does this objectification imply for the notion of personal privacy? For example, does the fetishization of 'things' called data obfuscate the idea of personal privacy?

One of the ways in which we may consider looking at open data initiatives for transparency and accountability is to assess it as discourse, and in relation to what happens when communities aggregate data. Open Government Data usually involves a top-down approach in terms of how it is aggregated, collated, shared, whilst community based approaches are more particular, contextual and local. What do these different approaches give us when we bring them to the same table?

The second event in the Exposing Data Series will focus on data ownership, looking into open government data and community-based data aggregation, to explore the various levels of data collection, the movement of data and its exchange, its representation, and dissemination in different contexts.

Speakers

Siddharth Hande, Transparent Chennai
Hapee de Groot, Hivos, Netherlands

This event is free and open to everyone. However, we would appreciate a confirmation of attendance ahead of time so as to ensure that your space is reserved. To confirm your attendance please write to: yelena.gyulkhandanyan@gmail.com

Photo Source: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2000

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/whose-data-is-it

GeekUp with Alan Knott-Craig

praskrishna — 2012-06-29T11:11:52Z

HasGeek and CIS invite you to a lecture by Alan Knott-Craig at CIS office in Bangalore on June 30, 2012, from 5.00 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.

Alan is founder of World of Avatar and CEO of Mxit, Africa’s largest social network. Between 2003 and 2006, Alan co-founded five companies in the mobile services sector. In 2006, he was appointed managing director of iBurst, a broadband network operator in South Africa. In April 2008, he published Don’t Panic, a best selling book aimed at persuading emigrant South Africans to return home. In June 2008, he founded The Trust, an NGO focused on assisting charities access skills and capital. In 2009, he was named as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In June 2012 he published Mobinomics, the story of Mxit and mobile in Africa. Alan is a qualified Chartered Accountant (SA).

The Story of MXit

MXit (pronounced "mix it") is a free instant messaging application developed by MXit Lifestyle (Pty) Ltd. in South Africa that runs on multiple mobile and computing platforms. According to a 2011 study by consultancy World Wide Worx, MXit currently has about 10 million active subscribers, making it the largest mobile social network in Africa.

MXit allows users to send and receive one-on-one text and multimedia messages to and from other users, and in general chat rooms. MXit also supports gateways to other instant messaging platforms such as MSN Messenger, ICQ and Google Talk.

On 1 April 2009, MXit released an open-source plug-in for the libPurple library. This allows applications using the libPurple library such as Pidgin and Adium to connect to the MXit network. This coincided with the release of the MXit Developer Zone web-site and documentation on the MXit client protocol. MXit has been included as a standard protocol in Pidgin since version 2.6.4.

Agenda

17:00 - 17:05	Welcome with Tea, Coffee, and Snacks
17:05 - 17:15	Lightning Talks
17:15 - 18:00	The Story of MXit
18:00 - 18:30	Q & A

For registration, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/geek-up-with-alan-knott-craig

DML Conference 2013

praskrishna — 2013-03-04T03:54:58Z

The Centre for Internet & Society and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central are jointly organizing the DML Conference 2013 in Chicago from March 14 to 16, 2013.

Conference Theme: "Democratic Futures: Mobilizing Voices and Remixing Youth Participation"

The fourth annual conference - DML2013 - will explore the shifting contours of participatory democracy with a focus, for example, on the role of networked publics in mobilizing social movements; the remixing of civic engagement; and youth-driven forms of social innovation and community transformation. This conference is meant to be an inclusive, international and annual gathering of scholars and practitioners in the field, focused on fostering interdisciplinary and participatory dialog and linking theory, empirical study, policy, activism, and practice.

The Digital Media and Learning Conference is an annual event supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the UC Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine.

Nishant Shah has a featured session at the DML Conference. See http://bit.ly/13zhpmz

Feature Session: Whose Change Is It Anyway? Futures, Youth, Technology And Citizen Action In The Global South (And The Rest Of The World)

Whose Change Is It Anyway? seeks to explore new entry points into the discourse on youth, technology and change, with a specific focus on (but not restricted to) the Global South and the last decade of citizen action. This conference track seeks to fashion frameworks and structures that provide new ways of interpreting and understanding outcomes that technology mediated citizen action has to offer, as well as the future of citizen led interventions: What enables, catalyzes and moves young people to reinvent themselves as citizen actors? What are the interventions and narratives of change that fail to fit into a ‘success’ rubric, but are still significant in the processes of change they initiate? How do we understand these ‘new’ events as hybrids, connecting with existing histories, contexts, media and technologies in their regions? Is there an alternative discourse that does not necessarily adopt frameworks arising from the knowledge centers of the West? Do these discourses help challenge and rework global vocabularies by offering new ways of looking at citizen action and change? The track will invite provocative hypotheses, in-depth analyses, dialogues and contestations around these ideas, through innovative interactive presentation formats. The dialogue will be informed by experimental and new methods of information and knowledge production, focusing on the Global South and its larger transnational contexts at the junctures of youth, technology and change.

Organizer(s):

Nishant Shah

Participants:

Radhika Gajalla

Kavita Philip

Ramesh Srinivasan

Nighat Dad

Contact:
Email us at dmlhub@hri.uci.edu or subscribe to our mailing list at http://bit.ly/dmlhub-l to receive up-to-date information regarding the 2013 conference.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/dml-conference-2013

Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad

praskrishna — 2012-10-25T08:42:56Z

CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad Campus are organizing a hackathon for their tech fest — ATMOS on October 26 - 27, 2012, from 6.00 p.m. on October 26 to 6.00 a.m. on October 27.

An all night hackathon to get started in contributing technically to the world’s largest source of free information – Wikipedia. The code that you write (and eventually deploy) will be viewed/used 7,938,026,125 times a month! Write user scripts that fix annoying little things with the way Wikipedia functions. Write bots to import (and accurately maintain) large amounts of information from various sources into Wikipedia. Write tools to make it easier to maintain Wikipedia’s standards and fight spam. Most of all join the awesome Open Source community and have fun!

Pre-requisites:

Preferable working knowledge of HTML/CSS/Javascript *or* python.

Laptops, which you will have to carry with you.

To register for the event, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-hackathon-bits-hyderabad

Design!PubliC — Event in Delhi

praskrishna — 2012-04-11T11:45:04Z

Centre for Knowledge Societies in partnership with IBM, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, HeadStart, India@75, LiveMint, and the Centre for Internet & Society is organizing the third edition of Design!PubliC event in Delhi on April 19 and 20, 2012.

Design Public is a high-level conversation among a select group of thinkers, decision-makers and opinion-leaders who seek to transform India into an innovation society. It brings together influential actors from all sectors of society to deliberate the best ways in which innovation can serve the public interest. The larger goal of the Conclave is to serve as an enabling platform for building the necessary partnerships and consortia that will bring this agenda to practical realization.

This third edition of the Design Public Conclave is focused on issues of trust and participation and how they relate to innovation. We will be addressing key questions like:

How can we overcome deficiencies in trust and participation to better facilitate innovation?
How can we better imagine India as an innovation society?
How can we build smarter cities and ensure sustainable urban development?
What does rural innovation really mean and how do we do it?
What are the necessary consortia and cross-sectoral alignments for driving innovation?

The Panelists

	Aditya Dev Sood Aditya Dev Sood is Founder and CEO of the Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS), an innovation consulting firm that provides design services of a kind that Indian industry never thought it would even need — User Research, User Experience Design, Design Strategy and Innovation Management. Through his consulting work, and also through his writings and his public presentations, Aditya offers a compelling vision of the central role of design and innovation for emerging economies such as India. The focus on his firm has remained on lower income and rural groups, and through contractual consulting engagements it has sought always to bring about market successes as well as the greater societal good. Dr. Sood is a Fulbright scholar with two doctorates from the University of Chicago and a wide range of disciplinary competencies, gained through a long and diverse education, including Architecture, Art History, Critical Theory, Comparative Literature, Sanskrit Philology, Philosophy of Language, Cultural Anthropology, Social Theory and Political Economy.
	Arun Maira Arun Maira is a Member of the National Innovation Council, a part of the National Planning Commission of the Government of India. In addition to being a prolific author on leadership and organization transformation, as well as the future of India, he has worked as an experienced consultant for companies all over the world and for a diversity of industries, from automobiles and pharmaceuticals to international agencies for economic development. Prior to joining the National Planning Commission, Arun Maira worked with the TATA Group in India, the Boston Consulting Group, Save the Children in India, the Axis Bank Foundation, and CII’s National Councils, among many others. He received his M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Physics from St Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
	Aditya Mishra In addition to leading a sales team for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Ltd., Aditya Mishra began his own not-for-profit company to promote entrepreneurship in India called Headstart. Headstart is run by volunteers dedicated to creating space for and promoting innovation in India by fostering individual entrenpreneurs, research, and the adoption of new technology. Aditya advises early stage start-ups and incubators through Startup Saturdays events to aid in the development of products and service, busines planning, and sales and marketing. Headstart is headquarted in Bangalore, but through the Headstart Network of entrepreneurs, academics, and industry professionals, activities are carried out in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and Kolkata.
	Sukumar Ranganathan Sukumar Ranganthan was a founding member of Mint, a business paper of the Hindustan Times in association with the Wall Street Journal. Launched in 2007, Mint brings “Clarity in Business News” to readers across the country. He has worked in several capacities in business news, from Marketing Editor at The Hindu Business Line to Managing Editor of India’s leading business magazine, Business Today. In addition to a Master’s degree in Business Administration, Sukumar holds a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and another Master’s in Mathematics.
	Bhairavi Jani After graduating from Miami University, Ohio, USA, and working with KPMG Consulting in Washington D.C., Bhairavi Jani returned to India in 2001 and began her career in business. After setting up and scaling up a fourth party logistics company, Bhairavi accepted the role of Director for all companies under the SCA Group in 2005, which manages shipping, customs, warehousing, logistics, and IT. As Group Director, she works with different teams from the respective companies withing the Group, providing them strategic advice. In addition to being a successful businesswoman, Bhairavi has worked closely with the late C. K. Prahalad on India@75 of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), a grassroots initiative for realizing an inclusive, sustainable, and developed India by 2022. It works to accelerate India’s transformative into an economically vital, technologically innovative, and socially and ethically vibrant global leader. Having served as a National Chairman of Young Indians, CII, Bhairavi has since 2011 taken a five year hiatus from her own businesses to serve as Executive Director for India@75.
	Ashwin Mahesh Ashwin Mahesh is a professor of Public Policy at IIM Bangalore, but his innovative ideas and dedication to service has brought him outside academia. In 1998, he co-founded India Together, an online magazine of public affairs, policy, and development in India. He has also started Mapunity, an independent R&D company designed around reversing the trend of government lagging behind technology. Ashwin Mahesh has a PhD in atmospheric remote sensing from the University of Washington, and he does research in exploring the expanding role of technology & IT in urban traffic management.
	Yamini Aiyar Yamini Aiyar is the founder and director of the Accountability Initiative, an organization working to strengthen accountability and engagement in Indian governance, which has received praise from Indian government officials and even President Obama. She is also presently a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, focusing on understanding accountability tools in order to institutionalize accountability methods and strengthen public service delivery systems. Prior to the Accountability Initiative, Aiyar worked at the World Bank and the Ford Foundations in New Delhi. She holds a MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics, and M.A. in Social and Political Sciences from St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge University, and a B.A. in Philosophy from St. Stephens College, Delhi University.
	Scott Burnham Scott Burnham is a creative director, writer, and designer who has worked on strategies for cities to use design to reprogram relationships. He has created several projects for European cities including Urban Play for Amsterdam with Droog Design and Bairro Criativo for Porto, Portugal. Currently, Burnham directs the Trust Design project for Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design, exploring the relationship between trust and design from products and shared urban spaces. He is the editor of a special 4-issue publication series with Volume Magazine, and a guest lecturer at Design Academy Eindhoven. In addition to writing and speaking, Burnham worked as the Creative Director for the UK’s Urbis Center for Urban Culture from 2003-2006.
	Samanth Subramanian Samanth Subramanian is a journalist who has written pieces for The New York Times, Mint, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Hindu, and many others. Though he prefers long-form narrative articles, he also has written several shorter pieces, as well as a non-fiction book Following Fish: Travels around the Indian Coast, which won the 2010 Shaki Bhatt First Book Prize. He currently writes for the New York Times’ India Ink blog. Subramanian completed his undergraduate degree from Pennsylvania State University in journalism and received his Master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
	Sunil Abraham Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of The Centre for Internet and Society, which aims to criticaly engage with the interaction between the internet and the public, including concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability, adn pedagogic practices. While serving on the board of directors for CIS, Sunil has worked on many projects exploring the internet and information. He has been elected an Ashoka fellow, where he explored the democratic potential of the internet, and was granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship as well. For the United Nations, Sunil managed the International Open Source Network for the Asia-Pacific Development Information Program between 2004 and 2007. The next year, he managed ENRAP, Knowledge Networking for Rural Development in the Asia-Pacific region, which worked to share knowledge amongst the projects and stakeholders of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
	Shanker Annaswamy Shanker Annaswamy is the Managing Director for IBM India Private Limited, and Regional General Manager of IBM in India and South Asia. He is responsible for all sales, marketing, services, and delivery in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In addition to holding a senior position in IBM, Annaswamy has been President and Chief Executive Officer for GE Medical Systems in South Asia, Managing Director of Wipro-GE Medical Systems, and Adviser with the Ministry of Health for the Sultanate of Oman. He currently serves as Chair of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) National Committee on Intellectual Property Owners, having previously co-chaired CII’s advisory committee on its National Innovation Mission. In 2009, BusinessWeek listed Annaswamy among India’s 50 Most Powerful People. He received his Bachelor of Engineering degree from Madras University and a Diploma in Business Management Education from the All India Management Association, New Delhi.
	Ashok Alexander Ashok Alexander is Director of Avahan, the Global Health Program’s HIV prevention initiative in India, which was founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2003. As Director, he works with India’s federal and state governments, NGOs, and corporate partners. Before joining Avahan, Alexander worked in Hong Kong, the United States, and India for 24 years. After joining McKinsey & Company in New York, he moved to India to become the head of its New Delhi office. In addition, he has extensive experience working with NGOs, being a leader in the creation of the American India Foundation (AIF) and serving on the Board of Advisors. Alexander holds graduate degrees in economics and management from Delhi University and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
	Jeby Cherian Jeby Cherian is the Strategy Leader of IBM in India and South Asia, and also serves on the India Leadership Team. He provides guidance to IBM’s Corporate Development team in India, leads and positions IBM’s Security solutions portfolio to the Government of India, and provides executive sponsorship for growing the High End Server business in India. Before this, Cherian worked in Bangalore with IBM’s Global Solutions Delivery Center and with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Finance Transformation services. Cherian is a CPA with a Master’s degree in Accounting from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
	Pankaj Jhunja Pankaj Jhunja, now General Manager of Design for Tata Motors, has had the opportunity to work in a diversity of businesses each with different responsibilities and complexities of products. Before Tata Motors, Jhunja worked for Dilip Chhabria Design (DC) specializing in Custom Built Cars, Homeflow Inc. in Pune as Product Manager, and with Renault Nissan India in Mumbai as General Manager Design. Jhunja holds a Bachelor’s degree from the National Institute of Technology, Silchar, and a Master’s degree in Design from IIT Mumbai.
	Chakshu Roy Chakshu Roy is a lawyer who heads technology initiatives at PRS Legislative Research (PRS), New Delhi. PRS is a unique initiative that provides non-partisan analysis to all Members of Parliament in India. Chakshu is developing a comprehensive technology strategy to engage large sections of the population in the policy process. He has conceptualised and developed India’s only online database of all state laws. Chakshu has conducted capacity-building workshops for over 1000 journalists on tracking the work of legislators. He specialised in real estate law and commercial agreements before joining PRS. He has earlier worked in corporate law with the Chamber of Law, New Delhi. He holds bachelors degrees in Commerce and Law from Delhi University.
	Ekta Ohri Ekta Ohri is the Head of Project Operations at the Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS). She holds experience of applying ethnographic and user experience research methods as well as principles of design thinking for addressing a variety of innovation challenges in emerging economies – ranging from improving rural public health delivery systems, providing financial services to the poor and bridging their information and communication gaps through telecommunications to enhancing urban mobility and luxury experiences. As the head of innovation at CKS, she works with different teams providing them strategic advice around innovation approaches, developing context (urban or rural) specific research methodologies and analyzing research insights in ways that leads to concepts that create maximum value for the users, as well as disseminating some of these ideas in the public domain through publications. Ekta has multi-disciplinary background in Architecture (Sushant School of Art and Architecture), Visual and Critical Studies (California College of the Arts), and Anthropology (Northwestern University) and is particularly interested in exploring linkages between design, culture and lived experiences.
	James Crabtree James Crabtree is the Mumbai Correspondent for the Financial Times since November 2011. He covers Indian corporate news and social and political trends in the country’s financial capital. James joined the FT in 2010 and was previously the Comment Editor based in London.He was previously an editor and essayist at Prospect. Before returning to journalism, James worked as policy advisor in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and also for various think tanks. He has also spent a number of years living in the US, first as a Fulbright Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and then living in Washington, working as a senior policy advisor at the New Democrat Network, another think tank. James is a trustee of the charity mySociety.org, one of the UK’s most innovative technology organisations.
	Theo JJ Groothuizen Theo JJ Groothuizen is currently the Counsellor for Science and Technology at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New Delhi India. He is member of the steering committee of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2008. Born in 1949 in the Netherlands, he graduated in industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, and is since 1986 principle of Landmark Design Holding (Netherlands and Switzerland). Groothuizen served as executive board member of International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) and the Association of Dutch Designers (BNO) and as advisor for the Bureau of European Design Associations (BEDA). He was active in several international advisory boards and was tutor in international design workshops, initiated international exhibitions and has been invited as speaker, guest lecturer and jury member all over the world. He is fellow of the Foundation Design for the World, advisor for the European Institute for Design and Disability (EIDD) and honorary member of the BNO. He taught at the Delft University of Technology and served as member of its External Research Advisory Board. He also taught at the Design Academy and functioned as international curator of the Gwangju Design Biennale 2005.
	Sam Pitroda Sam Pitroda is an international figure known for his strong support in India’s communications revolution and redefining the role that technology can play in India by linking it to better delivery of services to the underprivileged. He has long worked in government, business, and innovation in India. He served as Technology Advisor to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, is founder and CEO of C-SAM, Inc., with offices worldwide, and chaired the National Knowledge Commission from 2005-2008. Now, in addition to Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information, Infrastructure & Innovations, chairman of India’s National Innovation Council, charting the roadmap for India’s ‘Decade of Innovation.’ Pitrota completed his Master’s in Physics and Electronics from Maharaja Sayajirao University and subsequently received another Master’s in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. In 2010, he also received and Honorary degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
	Darshana Gothi Chauhan Darshana is an architect and urban designer. She has varied experience in designing new towns, regeneration of town centres, transport action plans and urban extension projects. She is passionate about participatory planning and the approach of empowering local people to create better cities. Darshana is currently working at Urban Initiatives in London as a Managing Consultant. Her recent works at UI include Southall Big Conversation, a public consultation process in a culturally diverse area in London . Darshana is also the Chapter Development Manager of INTBAU India, a charitable organisation promoting traditional architecture and urbanism in India . As part of INTBAU India, she has been instrumental in organising public consultation events backed with intensive baseline and capacity building work for the regeneration of the inner city of Pune in India. Darshana has simultaneously worked on projects for other consultancies such as The Max Lock Centre, London . Her works at Max Lock include a Spatial Planning Framework for Kaduna , a city of 3 million people for the Central Government of Nigeria. She has previously worked with the Ministry of Works and Human Settlements in Bhutan to develop the master plan for a new administrative capital in East Bhutan as part of Christopher Charles Benninger Architects.

Agenda

Day 1: Certificate in Innovation Management

Venue: CKS House, New Delhi: 19th April, 2012

09.30 a.m. Icebreaker Dialogue
Participants will introduce themselves briefly and talk about their perceptions of innovation and its application in their work. A CKS member will aggregate the thoughts that emerge from the audience in order to articulate the multiple definitions of innovation that emerge. This will be followed by a quick call out on the value of innovation.

10.30 a.m. Analysis of Innovation Case Studies
CKS Innovation Experts will present various case studies of innovation in order to present the different tools, approaches and stages of innovation.

12.40 p.m. UDE Approach to Innovation
CKS Innovation Experts to present the U-D-E approach to innovation and demonstrate different uses of the Innovation Cycle.

01.15 p.m. Wrap Up and Invitation to Innovation Consultations
CKS Innovation Trainers conclude the morning's session and invite participants to sign up for Innovation Consultations post lunch at the Chaia Innovation Campus.

02.15 p.m. Innovation Consultations
Participants meet mentors on a one to one basis to receive consultation on how they can apply this approach in the specific context of their work or a particular challenge? Where are the opportunities to apply the approach and what value can that have?

Day 2: Design Public Conclave

Venue: National Museum, New Delhi: 20th April, 2012

09.45 a.m. Word of Welcome
Aditya Dev Sood, Center for Knowledge Societies, gives a word of welcome and short introduction to the logic of the conclave.

10.00 a.m. Crises of Trust are Crises of Creativity, Design, and ultimately of Innovation
by Samanth Subramanian, Scott Burnham and Yamini Aiyar
This opening panel will address questions of trust and participation in the wake of the global spring. How can institutions respond creatively to include the networked public? What are the inter-relationships between trust, creativity, design and innovation and why are these important for our future?

11.00 a.m. Participation, Collaboration, Innovation
by James Crabtree Ekta Ohri, Sunil Abraham, Ashwin Mahesh and Aditya Mishra
Crises of trust are often linked to failures of participation and inclusion. How can activists and critics of institutions be more creative in their approaches so as to restore and repair the public trust? What channels for feedback and more substantive modes of participation must be created so as to promote innovation through dialogue and collaboration?

12.00 p.m. Imagining India as an Innovation Society
by Aditya Dev Sood, Ashok Alexander, Shanker Annaswamy, Sukumar Ranganthan and Arun Maira
This panel brings together industry and government experts to imagine the values, behaviors, ways of working, societal institutions and diverse other dimensions of society that would have to change in India to transform it into an innovation society. But first, what is an innovation society? Do we understand this correctly?

02.00 p.m. Breakout One: Smarter Cities
by Darshana Gothi Chauhan, Ekta Ohri and Jeby Cherian
Jeby Cherian of IBM will lead this breakout session on smarter Urban Management and Civic Administration.

02.00 p.m. Breakout Two: How can we do Rural Innovation better?
What should or could we mean by Rural Innovation? Is this the same old thing as jugaad, indovation and tinkering? This panel brings together designers and innovation experts to talk with management thinkers to describe the specific steps and stages involved in innovation processes and how they could apply in rural areas. What do steps individuals and organizations need to take to reeducate or empower decision makers at all levels in different sectors in India to bring about an awareness, understanding and orientation towards innovation?

02.00 p.m. Breakout Three: 50 Steps to an Innovation Society
by Theo JJ Groothuizen Bhairavi Jani
Bhairavi Jani will lead this thematic breakout session on specific steps governments, corporations, social agencies, academics and individual citizens can take to better imagine and then build an Innovation Society.

03.30 p.m. Mutual Presentations
Breakout sessions will cross-report to one another.

04.00 p.m. Concluding Plenary: What Do We Need to Do To Build an Innovation Society?
by Chakshu Roy Aditya Dev Sood Bhairavi Jani
This plenary session will include leading thinkers from government and media along with sectoral experts to discuss specific steps we must now undertake in order to work towards innovation in different domain and activity areas. In some ways this is the most challenging and important session of the day, for it will lay out the next steps and future path of the Design Public process.

06.00 p.m. Wrap-Up and Word of Thanks
Aditya Dev Sood gives a few concluding remarks and concludes the day with a vote of thanks to all advisors, sponsors, partners, speakers and participants at the Design Public Conclave.

07.00 p.m. Dinner
All participants are invited to a dinner and celebration of 10 years of CKS at the Chaia Innovation Campus in Chattarpur Enclave, New Delhi. Transportation will be provided.

For registration, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/design-public-delhi