IMT students get a ‘unique’ perspective at the TEDxIMT

Indian Shreyas Srinivasan, co-founder of NH7 that is India’s biggest platform for independent artists, believes in serendipity and simplicity. “I think simplicity is the biggest sophistication, and everyone who wants to do something must believe in serendipity.

Believe that there will be something or someone out there who believes in something as passionately as you do,” said Srinivasan, speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of youngsters at the TEDxIMT event organised at the Institute of Management Technology, Dubai (Academic City campus) on Wednesday.

Speakers at the TEDxIMT (From L-R): Ebin George, Mahender Singh, Phil Bedford, Alaa Gard, Fayeq Oweis, Ramakrishna N.K. , Shreyas Srinivasan and Karl Haddad. — Supplied photo

TEDx, created in the spirit of TED’s mission, ‘ideas worth spreading’. TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation. The theme at the TEDxIMT was ‘Lateral Perspective’ and the aim of the talk was to broaden views and analyse things from unique perspectives.

“Our theme, “The Lateral Perspective” is the ability to approach an issue from a novel viewpoint and it involves generating alternate solutions to common problems via unorthodox methods,” said student organiser of the conference Jiju Vijayakumar.

TEDx, an independently organised event, is designed to give communities, organisations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. The entire event was organised, conceptualised, and executed by the students of IMT, Dubai.

Apart from Shreyas Srinivasan, the other speakers included - Arab American artist, educator, and linguist Fayeq Oweis; Phil Bedford, the Middle East franchise-owner of The Referral Institute, an international referral training and consulting company; Karl Haddad, a serial entrepreneur turned social entrepreneur; Ramakrishna N K, co-founder of Rang De, which is India’s first crowd funding platform that supports rural entrepreneurs and students from low-income households with access to low cost capital; Alaa Garad, co-founder and chairman of Organisational Learning Conference Mena; Mahender Singh, Rector at the Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation and executive director of the MIT Global Scale Network in Asia; and Ebin George, a student who holds a place in Limca Book of Records for playing 27 musical instruments.

Vijayakumar, a student who is pursuing her MBA at the IMT Dubai, holds the licence of the TEDxIMT Dubai.

“The process of obtaining the TED license is a long and winding one. I had to present my credentials, the audience strength, list of speakers and the durations of the talk. But one of the reasons that I decide to procure the TED license is because I very passionate about the TED concept. So many of the TED talks that I’ve seen have inspired me throughout life since the time I was introduced to it and I wanted to share that experience with the student community here,” said Vijayakumar.

“Our speaker line up was very diverse and the response was really good. A lot of corporates and students from other universities also turned up for the event,” added Vijayakumar.

Karl Haddad, the last speaker at the conference said: “If people are provided with the opportunity to do well, they will step to the act. But the impetus must be provided.”

Ayush Kumar, another student organiser who is pursuing his MBA at IMT said: “I could actually embrace the power of the vision that TED holds. I’ve been following TED for 5-6 years now and after seeing the speakers speak at the event, I felt a sense of inspiration and solidarity.”

The core organising team of TEDxIMT Dubai consisted of Jiju Vijayakumar, Ayush Kumar, Karishma Hans, Eshu Kalra, Kartik Srinivas, Aridman and Nupur. They were mentored by professor Dr Krishnadas Nanath.

dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com