Road to Hyderabad

That's the team, or at least a small part of it.  Our team that has gotten us to this moment, just 3 days away from the Tech4Society event.

It's about 1am here in Hyderabad.  A group of us are sitting in our guest house working, on about our 18th hour of the day.  You'd think it would be drudgery but its not.  Everyone is so tired that at this point, everything is funny.  Everything is hysterical.  The fact that it was suggested that we have a fortune-telling parrot at our event made us laugh so hard.  (The parrot won't be there, just in case you were curious).

Our Keynote speaker, Fernando Flores, arrived tonight and was brought to his hotel safe and sound.  We have volunteers and event planners at the airport and a fantastic-sounding line-up of presentations and activities for our Market Place Evening on the 12th.

Our videographer has landed, as has nearly the whole team.

Now is the time when we move from plans to action, from well-thought-out lists to quick-response phone calls.

3 days until a year's worth of work comes to fruition and hopefully something even better.

Can't wait to share the ride with you all!

***

Friends, this is my second to last Road to Hyderabad post.  That means we are less than 2 weeks away from the opening of the Tech4Society event.

To be honest, it still feels very far away.  There are lots of last minute arrangements and decisions to make.  Long ago I naively believed I would feel like we were “almost done” by this point.  Ha! At this point 10 days feels like both an incredibly long time and an incredibly short one.  It will be bizarre to write this post next week when we are truly just days away. 

This past week was an interesting one.  I spent time cultivating relationships, drinking lots of tea and coffee and coke (my neighbor at the apartment likes to buy me cokes for some reason).   I wandered around the city, I thought a lot about the details.  I had my first Andhra thali and criss-crossed the city by foot and by auto.

On one hand, I can’t point to any real tangible progress that I made; on the other, I feel like it was important for me to just be here.

And the surprising thing:  I really like Hyderabad.  I’ve lived in India before, I’ve even lived in Southern India before but this city is far different than the last one I stayed in (Chennai). 

Image Source: Bindaas Madhavi

Well, I'm in Hyderabad.

You know what that means.

We are less than 3 weeks away from the beginning of Tech4Society.

Today I met my colleague Vishnu briefly, saw our venue at the Indian School of Business (ISB), saw the very beautiful Ista Hotel where some of our guests will be staying and later helped my neighbor in my guest house get on the internet.

I've got my Indian phone number at long last after multiple negotiations and photocopies and I'm realizing I better pick up some Telugu to be more effective around here. 

And what is Hyderabad like, you might be asking. 

Tomorrow I'll explore the city a little more but the part I saw today—Hi-Tech City—was fascinating.  It's all steel and glass rising out of rocks and dust.  Dozens of big tech companies have offices there and new construction is everywhere. 

Road to Hyderabad Lesson 17: A Few Logistical Tips

Hello again AshokaTECH Readers!  I hope you've had as wonderful holiday season as we did here. 

Coming off of 2 weeks out of the office, I returned to work last Monday with a decidedly more "zen" attitude towards the big event we are hosting in India early next month. My fabu colleague K. did the same. K and her family went to Disney World, I went to Jersey and Wisconsin. You know, its almost the same thing.

So where are we?  its a month out from the event, what morsels of wisdom might I have to share today?

I thought today I'd leave you with a few random logistical facts and tips when it comes to arranging international travel.  No, these don't have anything to do with the content at Tech4Society, more on that later, but these are the sorts of things that can make or break your event if you aren't able to account for htem.

So without further ado, a short list:

Lesson #16:Going Green

I'm taking it a bit easier this week, hanging out in Wisconsin with my folks for a few days before the home stretch on our way to Hyderabad for the Tech4Society event.

So the topic and content for today's post comes to us from my partner in crime, volunteer extraordinaire, Adrian Ash.

Adrian is a volunteer member of our Tech4Society staff and her expertise lies in the field of sustainability. As such, she prepared a really fantastic presentation for us last week of her recommendations for how Ashoka can make our event in Hyderabad greener and more earth-friendly. I thought her presentation was so well-done that I wanted to share it with you here.

I think when you are planning a giant event with lots of people flying half-way across the world, "going green" is of course a complicated and sometimes futile effort. What I like about Adrian's recommendations though is her focus on what we can do and also on what guests themselves can do to make the event greener.

Lesson # 15: Capturing the Knowledge

Last week our fearless Tech4Society event team leader put together a day devoted solely to distilling all of the knowledge we have or think we have about the invention and technology space within social entrepreneurship.

It’s a brilliant idea and a rare opportunity here at Ashoka to turn off email for the day and reflect on how far we’ve come in our understanding of a space we just stepped into three years ago with the support of The Lemelson Foundation.

As is tradition here, everyone participates.  Interns, volunteers, senior leadership, junior staff—it’s an equal opportunity chance to share in some serious mind work.

We started out with a few presentations by the Ashoka Tech blog crew, the Youth Venture team, and a review of a recent flash dance in Chicago, just to keep things even more interesting.

The afternoon was devoted to free-wheeling brainstorming—first as a large group and then in small groups of 3 or 4. Ideas bounced round the room as people wielded smelly markers and Post-it notes like seasoned pros in the noble quest for Knowledge.

Road to Hyderabad: #14 On the Calm before the Storm

As the people who receive an ever increasing number of emails from me at 6am can attest to, our time on the Road to Hyderabad is rapidly winding down.

We are just 9 weeks and change from our February 11-13 event in Hyderabad, 9 weeks away from hosting 100 Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows along with business, academic, and policy leaders on the Indian School of Business campus. In the words of some action movie hero somewhere, "it's go-time, baby."

All of the lessons we've learned from our lead up meetings in Nairobi, Sao Paolo, Singapore and Chennai are part of our agenda.   The details are coming to the front and center and soon it will be time to start calling everyone up to make sure they've gotten their plane tickets and visa letters.  Soon we'll be talking strategy about room assignments and by the end of January I'll be blogging from a little flat (ground zero) in Hyderabad, spending nights lying away thinking about airport pick ups, av cables, and where I'll be able to get the 20 pounds of modeling clay we need for our interactive ice-breaker.

For the last time (at least for awhile) we are going to interrupt your regularly scheduled "Road to Hyderabad" programming to bring you this special segment showcasing entries from our Bloggers Competition which ends TODAY.

If you've been following the news over on Social Earth and Ashoka Tech, you know that we are running a blogger's competition to find our official blogger for the Ashoka Tech 4 Society event happening in Hyderabad, India, February 11-13, 2010.  You should also know you have onl 8 HOURS to get your blog post to us.

All you have to do is click here for more information, fill out a short application, and write us a blog post before November 30th.  Then, stay tuned to find out if you are one of our shortlisted finalists or even the competition winner!

So without further ado, here is this week's featured entry.  Today's entry comes to us from Ashley Metz Cummings.  You can read her entry below or on her blog here.

Again, we are going to interrupt your regularly scheduled "Road to Hyderabad" programming to bring you this special announcement:

If you've been following the news over on Social Earth and Ashoka Tech, you know that we are running a blogger's competition to find our official blogger for the Ashoka Tech 4 Society event happening in Hyderabad, India, February 11-13, 2010.  You should also know you have only 7 DAYS LEFT to enter the competition.

All you have to do is click here for more information, fill out a short application, and write us a blog post before November 30th.  Then, stay tuned to find out if you are one of our shortlisted finalists or even the competition winner!

So without further ado, here is this week's featured entry.  It comes to us from Emily Goligoski.  You can read the entry below and on her blog here.

We are going to interrupt your regularly scheduled "Road to Hyderabad" programming to bring you this special announcement: