Page 9 - 9.February 2016

ಸಿಂಪುಟ ೬, ಸಿಂಚಿಕ್ ೨, ಫ್ಬ್ರವರಿ, ೨೦೧೬

Next Gen ¯ÉÆÃPÀ A TEDxperience - Nagaraj Archak

Oh! Hi there! Thanks for stopping by! If you want to read about Ideation. Innovation. Revolution, then you’re at the right place.
Well, that pretty much sums up the story of TEDxNITTrichy.

TED. TEDx. TEDxNITTrichy. Heard of them? Great! Go on.

1984. With the inception of TED, driven by a mission of spreading ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’,
holding an acronym for Technology Entertainment Design, has been a platform or I would
rather say, a conference held on a global scale, which hosts talks which are science, cultur-
al, technology oriented, but definitely not limited to these.
Okay, now what’s TEDx? It’s nearly the same. The ‘x’ here stands for ‘independently organ-
ised TED event’. These can be organised by anyone upon procuring a license from TED,
which enable you to host your very own TEDx event in your community, college or city.
These can be thought of as small scale TED-like events which hosts talk to spread ideas,
knowledge and bring about a change in an area or a community.

That’s exactly what we’ve done! With the license brought to NIT Trichy, an organising team
was formed and the journey began. Our first edition was scheduled for March 14, 2015.
With a month to go for the event day, all team members chose a portfolio of their interest, right from ambience, design, speaker
training, to sponsorships and media relations. I decided to work on branding and marketing, two areas in which I wanted to gain
an insight into.

TEDxNITTrichy or right from TED to any TEDx for that matter, being entirely based on ideas which spark discussion, our ideation
process began with 30 days to go for the event day.

First important task was to decide on a theme and the speakers to invite, as of course they define the core purpose of a TEDx
event. In an attempt to challenge the status-quo, we locked up on the theme of “Challenging Conventions”. Our list of speakers
included the following:

1. Satish Manchikanti: Founder of U&I, a volunteer driven charity organisation.
2. Akshat Mehendale: Alumnus of NIT Trichy, with a goal to bridge the gap between rural and urban education.
3. Nitesh Square: Photographer/Filmmaker, who undertakes penniless journeys.
4. Vinay Chandran: Executive Director, Swabhava Trust, a LGBT rights activist.
5. Siddhant Das: Alumnus of NIT Trichy. The Art-Science relation.
6. Mukund BS: Founder, RenewIT. Refurbishment of old computers, sold to the poor at nominal costs.
TEDxNITTrichy, being the first event-management opportunity for me, was a huge learning experience. The process of coming up
with innovative branding ideas for both social media and offline campus promotions, building a 3D TEDxNITTrichy logo during
late night-outs with the team, designing posters for branding, shooting of promo and teaser videos themed “Challenging Conven-
tions”, planning out and designing ambience props, designing audience application forms and selecting the audience, speaker
training, making calls to companies in order to establish fruitful associations was most enjoyable for me, all these paved a way to
loads of learning opportunities.
Finally, the big day! Event started at 9am after the registrations at the welcome desk. It was a half day event with 18-minute talk
by 6 speakers who inspired the audience, 100 in number, which included professors, students and professionals. The event was
filled with musical and dance performance by NIT Trichy students and audience engaging activities. It also included lunch, during
with the audience got to interact with the speakers to share ideas and thoughts. The event concluded with an ‘Interact with
Speakers’ session at Café Coffee Day in the campus.
The ideas and thoughts shared by the speakers did invoke discussions in the campus, and the event was well received by the
community of NIT Trichy. It would be clichéd to say that talks was inspiring and like no other, I would rather suggest you check
them out by searching TEDxNITTrichy on YouTube.
It was a memorable day for all of us in the team, and we eagerly look forward to our next edition.
It was truly a TEDxperience to remember!
You can check out further details and information about TEDxNITTrichy at www.tedxnittrichy.com. (a website which I designed
and developed).
Nagaraj Archak / 4th Semester - NIT Trichy

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