Stories of Humans, TRULY meeting technology

Two 16 year old college drop outs. 

Set up their own company that provides parents an app to monitor the health and growth of their child.

Harsh Songra (now 19 years old) 1 of the founders was diagnosed with Dyspraxia & realized the importance of discovery & treatment of Learning & Developmental disorders in their early stages.   

In India around 13% children of all school children suffer from some kind of learning disability and most of it is largely undetected due to lack of awareness. 

3 years later the app has funding of $100,000 and is used in over 135 countries!

Overcoming the taboos and stigma around Menstruation.

A social stigma that plagues India even in the 21st century! Taboos that refuse to die down, myths that nobody is allowed to question. 

1 woman - decides to tackle this head on. 

Aditi Gupta. Hails from a semi urban town Garhwa in Jharkhand.

From a conservative middle class family at that.

To help women deal with not only the physical pains of menstruation, but also from out menacing society, she launched her website - Menstupedia

Using comic books & social media, she is spreading awareness & ensuring her friendly guide helps women have a healthy period. 

Today her book is used by over 50 schools, 10 NGOs reaching over 25,000 girls across India &7 other countries.  Not to forget the thousands who visit her website.

Today we will #SaveWhitefield. Tomorrow, lets #SaveBLR

What happens when the civic authorities who are entrusted with the job of maintaining the infrastructure around you, turn a blind eye to your woes. Where there are roads around potholes & not vice versa. 

When your children get stuck for 2 -3 hours in traffic every day while trying to get home. And your 9 hour work day is more like 13 as you wait for that log jam to clear.

YOU RISE!

A startling story of how the common folk of Whitefield, Bangalore decided, enough is enough.

In organizing an extremely peaceful protest to HIGHLIGHT to the government the lack of basic civic amenities and infrastructure, they gathered over 7000 people using nothing BUT social media. 

Today, there is progressive change with much more to follow.

All thanks to 1 team's sincere efforts to make a difference and their use of Social media to reach out.

All this & more is just some of the inspiring stories one got to experience at Social Media Week, Bangalore (2016). A globally affiliated event that is organised in India by the very passionate team of R Square Consulting. They also host these in other cities like Mumbai & possibly Delhi thereafter.

Social Media week is a leading news platform and worldwide conference that curates and shares the best ideas, innovations and insights, into how social media and technology are changing business, society & culture around the globe

If you closely see the above 3 examples they actually showcase real instances of the same.
From Menstrupedia that is changing society, to #SaveWhitefield that focuses on a culture of not giving in & accepting poor civic amenities to a whole new way of doing business where a 19 year old college dropout can help parents in the field of healthcare.

Stories of inspiration, courage, thought leadership and most importantly of the people brave enough to take the plunge. Who had the courage to stand up for what they believed in & not get pressured into following the herd.

According to me every one of these success stories, stems out of a common thread - most people go through problems & live with those. Then there are those who want to find a way to solve the problem. And find they do. With technology being the perfect enabler they go on to evangelize the solution so the world can become a better place to live in. These are the earnest, genuine few who deserve to have their stories told.
1 will hear of numerous start up stories that fail. In my opinion those are examples of people wanting to use technology as the force to setup a business and rake in the millions but how many times will greed over come goodness?

Just as the great ad man Prahlad Kakar said during the keynote speech that kicked of SMWiBLR 2016 - stories are what humanity is made of. If you can tell a moving story then your story will become legend. He highlighted how in today's hyper connected world where people increasingly have a plethora of information and sources, it is vital that whatever do you becomes interesting and relevant to them. It was 1 of life's privileges to get to hear the great man himself.

To share how vision converts into action, we were also privileged to have Sandy Carter (General Manager IBM Developer Ecosystem & Start ups) deliver 1 of the most insightful key note sessions on how IBM is using Social Intelligence and partnering with businesses to provide better, customized and highly personalized service to consumers by accessing their social profiles. Using proprietary tools, they can analyse a person by viewing just 500 tweets of theirs and provide for a personalized solution. And they are just getting started. 

The event also gave us a glimpse into IBM Watson's development of the Humanoid Robots. These humanoids are being designed to work at leading Hotels and Banks apart from other purposes & could soon be the customer service personnel you meet. They can talk and respond to queries just like humans. I had fun chatting with one and he did a little dance to showcase his talent. It was also interesting to see India's leading Mind Reader, Nakul Shenoy, play a card trick with Nao, the humanoid.

Watch the video below:

There were many interesting sessions but I have highlighted my favorite ones. From discovering apps like Blippar (Click to know more), to hearing about how technology has enabled a women to travel to numerous countries with tremondous ease and an extremely cost effective budget.
Other sessions also highlighted on how the future of communication will evolve into multiple mediums, will be highly customized and most importantly, personalized for people. One also got a glimpse of the power of Snapchat and how brands are increasingly finding it as a smart tool to reach out to their customers in a unique and time bound manner.
Another stand out example was how the promoters of the Kannada Movie - uTurn used only social media, which is completely unconventional in the industry, to promote their film and saw it go on to become a major hit. .

Social Media week, Bangalore is also well known to bring in social causes to the event. This time they joined hands with Respect the Road in order to promote safe driving, especially to not drink & drive. It also highlights other common issues that drivers create & urges them to inculcate safer driving habits.

Another feature of the event, is 1 also gets to meet some very interesting people. Who are on the verge of writing their own stories. Who have ideas, thoughts and sometimes just need that final ingredient to attain success. I call it engaging with the future because am sure many of them will be success stories and be featured at SMW in the years to come. 

SMW - where you can learn from the masters & champions and engage with the Future!

Also guaranteed to build your network, meet interesting folks and fuel your passions.

Finally a big shout out to the social media team that works with R Square to bring you live feeds of the event on Social Media and interact with viewers from across the globe. Their hard work, focus and undivided attention to every topic and session are beyond commendable. To be able to concentrate endlessly, pick the right and post powerful pieces of wisdom and then share it to the world at large requires special talent.

And lastly to R Square Consulting and team for their wonderful efforts in organizing the event that went off to absolute perfection. I wish them immense success and look forward to many more experiences stemming from their stable.