|
|
| |
| FIRST ANNUAL IAAC LITERARY FESTIVAL |
in collaboration with The South Asia Institute,
Columbia University and India Abroad
NOVEMBER 7-9, 2014
|
|
|
November 8th - Session 3A
Finding your digital voice
Moderated by Lakshmi Gandhi |
 |
| Sree Srinivasan |
 Sree Sreenivasan (@sree) is the first Chief Digital Officer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the Met, he leads a 70-person world-class team on topics he loves: digital, social, mobile, video, apps, email, interactives, data and more. He joined the Met in 2013 after spending 20+ years at Columbia University as a full-time professor at Columbia Journalism School and a year as the university's first Chief Digital Officer. In 2009, he was named one of AdAge's 25 media people to follow on Twitter; in 2010 was named one of Poynter's 35 most influential people in social media; and in 2014, was named one of the most influential Chief Digital Officers by CDO Club.
You can find him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sree and and on the web at http://sree.net |
|
|
| |
|
| |
Rashmee Roshan Lall
The Pomegranate Peace |
 Rashmee Roshan Lall has lived and worked in six countries in the last six years.
She was most recently in Haiti, the world’s first independent black republic and the second country after the United States to throw off the yoke of colonialism. From Haiti, she wrote for The Guardian, The Economist, Christian Science Monitor and Foreign Policy, among other outlets.
Before that, she was in Afghanistan.
Rashmee started with The Times of India newspaper in Delhi, made a foray into publishing as editor of Rupa and HarperCollins India and then took up broadcasting with the BBC World Service in London. She presented ‘The World Today’, BBC World Service’s flagship news and current affairs programme. She was subsequently The Times of India’s Foreign Editor based in London, reporting on Europe. Till 2011, she was editor of The Sunday Times of India, based in Delhi.Her e-novel 'The Pomegranate Peace' tells the inside story of American intervention in Afghanistan.www.rashmee.com |
| |
| Synopsis |
 Life on the American compound in Kabul in 2011, just weeks after the most audacious attack on the US embassy in 10 years of war. For security reasons, almost nothing – and no one – is allowed in and almost nothing - and no one - is allowed out. For one American diplomat it is akin to being incarcerated in a high-security Federal prison. Aching to feel, touch and taste Afghanistan she begins to explore the country through the food that Najim, an Afghan colleague, brings her from home every Thursday. In the vagaries of the Thursday chakah, Afghanistan’s signature yoghurt sauce prepared by Najim’s mother, she discerns elements of the ordinary Afghan’s life and the way it is lashed to American actions. She observes the absurdity of the American presence in Afghanistan – the isolation of its personnel and sheer folly of its expensive efforts to ‘stabilise’ the country. She works with a New York PR firm to ‘sell’ Afghanistan as a ‘brand’ after the foreign forces leave, complete with a catchy tagline and an image for the fridge magnets. She investigates an ambitious poppy-to-pomegranate crop substitution programme in southern Afghanistan, which is run from Canada. And she discovers the Aid and Reconstruction Complex, which pours billions into Afghanistan, only to leave it the poorer. Her boss quotes from Alice in Wonderland: ‘We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad. You must be or you wouldn’t have come here.’ And Little Sam, another colleague, churns out Stars and Stripes Haikus, ceaselessly rendering in 14 syllables America’s objectives for a war no one can properly explain any longer. |
| |
|
| |
Preeti Singh
Unravel |
 Preeti has worked as the head for content for Disney Publishing in India and wrote, edited and designed the Smart Beginnings Workbook program. In addition she created new content for Disney India movies in books and magazines . Preeti has worked as an Acquisitions Editor for Popular Prakashan with a mandate to set up an English Fiction List for 2011/2012 for them. Her published works include ‘Great Books for Children’ for Rupa Publishers , preschooler books for Navneet Publishers and articles on Parenting in Times of India's Mumbai suburban supplement, The Westside Plus. She blogs at preetiwhines.blogspot.com and is an active contributor to http://talkingcranes.com/contributor/august/2014 Preeti manages an online book review, interview and manuscript help site called thegoodbookcorner.com |
| |
| Synopsis |
 Set in Pali Hill , Mumbai, Unravel ‘s eight linked stories are tales of love, loss, heartbreak and revenge , against the backdrop of life doing what it does best - going on. A matriarch in coma unravels her life and its choices. Life unravels for a woman tired of her husband’s incessant infidelities. A mother loses her young daughter, and a beloved mother meets her ex who was the love of her life. A daughter tries to unravel her acrimonious relationship with her mother, and life unravels for a maid caught between her husband’s insatiable greed and loyalty toward her employer , while a married woman is left to pick up the threads after an unraveled extramarital affair. And it slowly spins back into control for a woman who is finally able to find closure after a traumatic marriage. |
| |
|
| |
| Mitra Kalita |
 S. Mitra Kalita is the ideas editor at Quartz, and behind some of the global economy site's most viral content. She worked previously at The Wall Street Journal, where she oversaw coverage of the Great Recession, launched a local news section for New York City and reported on the housing crisis. She also launched Mint, a business paper in New Delhi, and has previously worked for the Washington Post, Newsday and the Associated Press. She is the author of three books related to migration and globalization, and speaks seven languages (but only four of them well). She has taught at St. John's, Columbia and UMass-Amherst, and previously served as president of the South Asian Journalists Association. She is an adjunct fellow at the Poynter Institute and lectures around the world everything from digital journalism to diversity to India's role in the new global economy.
Born in Brooklyn, Mitra was raised in Long Island, Puerto Rico and New Jersey-with regular trips to her grandparents’ villages in Assam, India. She lives (and eats) in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of New York City, along with her artist husband and two daughters. She tweets @mitrakalita and her website is www.mitrakalita.com. She is spending this year doing a fellowship at Columbia and reporting a book on school choice through the lens of one New York City neighborhood. More of her work can be read at: http://qz.com/author/smkalita/ and http://mitrakalita.com/articles-page/ |
| |
|
| |
Ajit Balakrishnan
Wave Rider |
 Ajit Balakrishnan is an Indian entrepreneur, business executive and administrator. He is from Kerala. He is a resident of Mumbai, India. He is the founder and current Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Rediff.com, an internet company based in Mumbai. Balakrishnan is also the current Chairman of the Board of Governors of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM Calcutta).
He writes a column in Business Standard and has written a book published by Macmillan Publishers called The Wave Rider. He has co-authored a research paper, Generic Framework for a Recommendation System using Collective Intelligence, with Alkesh Patel which was presented at the International Conference on Internet Technology and Secured Transactions, 2009. |
| |
| Synopsis |
 Ajit Balakrishnan is quietly experimenting with the new and fascinating technologies of the Internet in 1995 when the dot-com fever grips the world. Venture capitalists, investment bankers and lawyers pound at the doors of his tiny office in a low-rent area of Mumbai, urging him to take his company public on New York’s NASDAQ stock market. Balakrishnan sets out on this enterprise, a path that takes him through the world’s financial centres of London, Hamburg, New York, Boston and San Francisco.
This story recounts how he battles adversaries many times his size; fends off avaricious lawyers who try to extort money through class action suits in the tough courts of lower Manhattan; rebuffs investment bankers who try to engineer the sale of his company; and tries to make sense of a world where technology and business models change every few months.
He steers his company through the financial crashes of 2000 and 2008; watches in awe as terrorists bring down New York’s World Trade Centre towers; puzzles over the decline of once famous names such as AOL and Netscape and the rise of new behemoths like Facebook and Google; wrestles with India’s legal system; and pushes to bring Rediff into the new world of the Internet. Gradually, he realizes that the battles he is part of are not just business battles – they signal the dawn of the Information Age. |
| |
|
| |
| Lakshmi Gandhi |
 Lakshmi Gandhi is currently the Jobs and Education Editor at Metro New York. As a freelance journalist, her work has appeared on NBC News' Asian America vertical, The Toast, NPR's Code Switch blog and more. She's always been passionate about South Asian issues and in 2013 she she co-founded the popular blog The Aerogram along with two colleagues. |
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
