PanIIT 2009: Keeping the Spirit of Last Year Conference Alive

Posted by OMShare

at June 21, 2009

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PanIIT 2009 is around the corner now. The preparation, speakers list and the enthusiasm just reminds me of my experience of PanIIT 2008, extremely content-rich conference with the pleasure of staying in the Hotel with Students. It’s been 10 years since I graduated from IIT Delhi. Spending a night in the same kind of room with the students allowed me to relive the good old Hostel life.

Dr Manmohan Singh at PanIIT 2008

The conference began with inaugural speech of Prime Minister. The PM’s message was a shot in the arm for all PanIIT alumni, as he sounded all the right notes about IITians’ impact on India. He highlighted 3 key areas where IIT Alumni body needs to focus its attention:

Strengthen faculty and Research
Include current Social Issues
Take the current work to the masses

PanIIT 2008 had exhaustive content with 6 parallel tracks in the area of Research, Entrepreneurship, Rural Transformation, Infrastructure, Education and Innovation.

I also happen to talk to few of the delegates as part of taking feedback on the conference. Two things that were common across all the feedbacks were:

Networking@ PanIIT 2008

Quality of speakers and the sessions.
Networking

These were exactly my takeaways form the conference as well. I mean where else can you have Prof Prahalad moderating a session with all the Tata companies CEOs as the panelist. By the way this is just one session I am talking about. Other sessions were no less. We had speakers like Dr.Raghuram Rajan, the noted Economist, Bob McDonald, COO of Proctor & Gamble, two noted strategic thinkers-Stephen Cohen and Prof. Kishore Mahbubani, Nobel Laureate and leading Economist, Prof. Amartya Sen.

Regarding Networking, I just felt like I know all of them. No matter who I was taking to, I felt like talking to my hostel mate. Whether the other person is from 67-batch or 2007 passout; it really doesn’t matter.

During the 2008 conference, I also was delighted to see that PanIIT is not just limited to Annual conference. As an organization, it is doing lots of work in the areas like Woman empowerment and Rural development:

Regarding Rural Transformation PanIIT has taken an initiative, Reach 4 India – basic skill training for rural youth in welding, housekeeping, driving, etc. It is a major step forward in the direction of rural transformation project taken up by PanIITs.
Training of Facility across the country: IUCEE, an initiative of PanIIT, is a major step in training the faculty of other institutions. 600 faculty members of other institutions were already trained till 2008 event. IUCEE plan to train 80,000 faculty members in future.
Regarding Empowerment of women and initiative taken to eradicate poverty, lots of discussions have happened during PanIIT 2008. In the conference we highlight the need to start thinking of creating the policies around that.

At PanIIT 2008, nearly 2000 IITians had shown interest in being the volunteers during the event. This number really makes me wonder, what kind of behind the scenes work must be happening right now and I am really looking forward for next level of surprises at PanIIT 2009.

In case you are intrested in knowing more about PanIIT 2009, check out http://www.panIIT2009.org.