Theme: Fluid

We are deeply human.

Inclusive. Passionate. Open. Curious. Evolving.

These are the traits that define us and our search for purpose, and though the challenges of daily life may mire us in process and rigidity our intrinsic desire to be fluid remains. An exploration of the human ideal for the modern world has thus become essential and we are hoping that what we discover about ourselves will spur us into action.

SESSIONS:

OPENING: COCOON
Any space which inspires a sense of safety in us is critical to our long-term success because it allows us to slow down, introspect and address difficult questions surrounding identity, equity, purpose, integration and self-worth.
A cocoon is the perfect, natural manifestation of this physical and ideological space because this is where we shed our former selves and use all resources that are available to us for the singular purpose of growth, progress and evolution.
This is where old ideas die and new ones are born.

CRESCENDO: REIMAGINING POSSIBILITIES
Albert Einstein once rightly said that “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. All progress thus isn’t necessarily incremental or evolutionary and so sometimes the only viable option is to wipe the slate clean and start afresh. How would we tackle our grandest challenges if we didn’t have to rely on earlier marginally successful solutions? What would we do if we moved from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance?
This is where our dreams become reality.

CLOSING: DIGITAL ANALOG
The future we are creating for the next 50 years is going to be wildly different from any other era in human history. This future is one that is being built around the vision of a technology fuelled utopia where all of humanity’s needs will be taken care of so that a second renaissance can finally arrive. However, there are very real consequences to this choice and we must take a long hard look at how this union of physical and digital will ultimately manifest, and affect those who are not a part of the decision making process.
This is where our future resides.

Infosys Conference Hall
Service Road, Konappana Agrahara, Electronic City
Bangalore, Karnataka, 560100
India

Ashwiny Iyer

Passionate about telling stories, Ashwiny Iyer, who worked in an advertising agency for 16 years, found her love in direction. Editorial Photography is her other interest and this has taken shape as a facebook page called ‘No Makeup story. Her current film ‘Nil Battey Sannata’ has just finished with rave reviews and now she will be found somewhere near mother earth smelling the flowers, meditating and living the moment. She strongly believes in women empowerment and is also involved in revival of art and craft in India.

Bani J

Christian Schlüchter

Christian Schlüchter graduated in Geology from University of Bern. After a Postdoctoral year at Brock University, Ontario, Canada, he was at The Institute of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, ETH Zurich, where he submitted his Habilitation in Engineering Geology. In 1993 he was elected to the chair of Quaternary and Environmental Geology at University of Bern. His main professional activities are in fundamental and applied glacial geology. Christian has done extensive fieldwork in the Alps and on all the continents, including 8 expeditions to Antarctica. As a result, a number of his papers have been published in peer reviewed journals. For many years, Christian has been actively engaged in the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) for which he organised the International Congress in 2011 in Bern. Christian Schlüchter is Emeritus Professor of University of Bern and a consultant to the Swiss Government.

Gabriel Daniel

Song Writer, Singer, Musician

Gabriel Daniel is an independent singer, songwriter, and musician based out of Bangalore, India. He has been singing for as long as he can remember, but he only understood storytelling and writing as a core part of him, whilst also picking up the guitar, a few years back. He is a motor enthusiast and a mental health advocate, and loves talking to and figuring out people. He was born and brought up in Chandigarh, but moved to Bangalore in 2014, in pursuit of more, and has since fallen in love with the city. Gabriel hopes to eventually be a part of ‘the solution’, and wants to see the world sing in harmony, as a compassionate and wholesome community.

Magician Sharan Kuttappa

Sharan is a magician, calls himself as an enchanter. Putting smiles on people's faces is why he does magic.

Manil Rohit

Artists and Founders - The Creative Indians

ManilRohit is a collaborative brother-artist-duo of Manil Gupta and Rohit Gupta. Their works have been experiments in various media like, paintings, photography, sculpture, installation, and design, including converting their own car into the popular Public Art Car project called ‘The Holographic Love Machine’. The duo have recently launched the second season/avatar of a first of it’s kind show on mainstream television, conceived, curated, hosted, directed & produced by them, called The Creative Indians, on NDTV Goodtimes. Through their upcoming incubations, ManilRohit envision to reshape and revolutionise the creative space in India.

Mustafa Ghouse

Once a Tennis Player, always a Tennis Player, Mustafa Ghouse, represented the country between 1996 and 2008 in Tennis and is currently the CEO of JSW Sports, an organization committed to the development of sport in India and the COO of the current, I-League Champions of India, Bengaluru FC.

Pamela Malhotra

SAI Sanctuary is the first private wildlife sanctuary in India being the fulfilment of a lifetime spent in protecting wildlife and the environment. Both author and subject of several articles and films receiving national and international exposure, and a popular speaker on environmental topics like climate change, watershed protection, biodiversity and species extinction, Pamela's recognition for her work is reflected in the awards given to her over the years

Rohith Subramanian

Rohith is on a solo bike journey covering 46 countries, 600 days of travel, 1,00,000 kilometers of journey. Has already travelled for 120 days covering over 25,000 kilometers of this journey across 24 States in India and will be starting off the international leg of the journey from Europe and then the South East Asia.

Romana Sigl

Ms. Romana Sigl is the founder of Coworking Salzburg, the first co-working space in the region of Salzburg, Austria. Coworking Salzburg is a network and physical space that rents desks and organizes numerous events for entrepreneurs and small business owners in the region, and provides childcare support for coworkers and working parents. Her philosophy is of doing what you love and how that can power a whole new generation of entrepreneurs, particularly women entrepreneurs in the future.

Saurabh Arora

FOUNDER AND CEO, AIRWOOT

Saurabh is an entrepreneur and machine learning researcher. He dropped out of his doctoral program in 2012 and founded Airwoot. A company that brings artificial intelligence together with customer intelligence to help businesses drive customer delight. Airwoot is now acquired by Freshdesk where Saurabh continues to build the technology that can teach machines to learn about human emotions. He completed his M.Sc. from DTU Denmark and was pursuing his Ph.D from Hasso-plattner Institute, Berlin.

Sonalde Desai

SENIOR FELLOW AT NATIONAL COUNCIL OF APPLIED ECONOMIC RESEARCH, NEW DELHI

Sonalde Desai (Sonal) is a demographer whose work deals primarily with social inequalities in developing countries with a particular focus on gender and class inequalities. Sonalde Desai and Reeve Vanneman, in collaboration with researchers from NCAER in New Delhi, have just completed a multi-sectoral survey of 41,554 households titled IHDS across India which provides a rich resource for research on the relationship between poverty, gender inequality and public policy on the one hand and different dimensions of human development on the other.

Swati Subodh

Swati is the founding member of two organisations, 1M1B Foundation and Aadyantara. One is driven by her cross disciplinary approach to healthcare solutions as a scientist in the field of genomics and the other by her natural bent as an artist of performing arts. Swati is a believer in translational science research for application in the clinics. She is now expanding this work to enable faster cross-disciplinary solutions for better healthcare delivery. Her expertise is sought by many national level institutes and councils in whom she is a member in various capacities. She is a proponent of technology in healthcare and has written extensively on this field for reputed national dailies and magazines.

Syed Sultan Ahmed

EDUCATOR, ENTREPRENEUR, NATIONAL FILM AWARD RECIPIENT

A first generation entrepreneur Syed set up EduMedia, an organisation that touches the lives of over 2 million children in South Asia through progressive initiatives using media. He is the promoter & publisher of Mentor Magazine, India’s most respected monthly print and online magazine focused on school leadership. His creation School Cinema is a revolutionary learning module on life skills, taught using short films and thought provoking workbooks. A chemical engineer he has done his Entrepreneur Masters Program from MIT-Boston, is a qualified NLP practitioner & a master trainer from Dale Carnegie USA. Syed Sultan Ahmed is a brilliant speaker, researcher, respected event manager, publisher, filmmaker, educational blogger and biker.

Tirthankar Dash

Dash is the founder of Quantum360, a design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organisations innovate and design for a more human future. He is also the co-founder of StoryCompany, a company that serves as a search engine to find meaning at work and in life. StoryCo. is devoted to humanizing workplaces and helping each person explore themselves, their beliefs, behavior patterns and indeed their own story to arrive at their own unique answer to a fundamental question - “What makes my life meaningful?”