Brown Around Town
Brown Around Town
I made some time to attend my first meeting of the Network of Indian Professionals. This year's event was in Chicago and man was it a blast!
Some highlights include the following:
- Premal Shah - President of a new social entrepreneurship company - I didn't get a chance to hear him speak but he told me things are coming together very well, good luck to him!
- Raj Mathai - NBC sportscaster in the Bay Area - showed his enthusiasm for many new up and coming Desi sportscasters around the country.
- Suchita Vadlamani - host of Good Day Atlanta - gave her perspective on showing her Desi side on her show.
- Roop Raj - the local news anchor during Katrina - spoke about how he refused to air a story regarding some iconification of Indian culture.
- Vijay Uncle - stole the show with his straight from the guy talk, colorful metaphors, and overall knowledge of both 1st generation American Desis and their parents.
- Krish Menon - the president of a new consumer marketing think tank - gave a progressive guy's point of view of the Desi executive women.
- Ruby Dhalla - one of the first Indian women in Canadian Parliment - chronicled her rise to power and answered questions of bold, confident, Desi, executive women.
- Azim Jamal - inspirational speaker - he convinced us that we were all freaking eagles.
A notable mention to the club in the Hyatt Regency that calls itself "Hard Drive" with a lounge called "Networks" ... that's just awesome. Funkadesi gets an honorable mention as their live set really got the crowd going!
I wrapped up the weekend with a trip to the Field Museum which was a treat in its own right. The museum has beautiful exhibit called the "Evolving Planet" which definitely taught me a few things. Not the least of which being that geologic time and evolutionary time are on the same scale. In other words, they showed how movements of continents corresponded to evolution of species.
I had a great time in Chicago, met both old and new friends and would definitely go back :-)