UnConference — Getting India’s Aspiring Changemakers on one Platform

This isn’t just a conference — it’s a social movement!

The problem: All of it started with our urge to meet people who want to do something about the country — people who are passionate about bringing change around us!

Idea: I talked with my friends Aashna, Oshin, Misbah, Yash, Vipul, Divyaand all of them had felt the same need. We decided we’d experiment with launching UnConference. Utkarsh, Anirvan and Sasha joined the bandwagon soon after.

We’re on a mission to bring young change makers on a single platform, to make a better India!

The UnConference we organized on the 25th January, Saturday at91SpringBoard (Delhi) to connect change makers from different fields on one platform was successful!

Pictures: http://bit.ly/unconjan

From journalists to entrepreneurs, tech geeks, designers and social activists, we are bringing together people from diverse walks to build a movement.

Our aim is simple:

1) To connect change makers and help them build synergy. This network can be tapped into when building teams to solve problems around us — maybe through a social enterprise or a startup.

The vision is to build a community of around 500 changemakers across India — people with the hunger to form teams of 5 each in the future to solve a problem. The problems could be any social good opportunity like inculcating technology in municipal governance, launching research think-tanks, teacher training in government schools — projects which create long-term impact to change India for the better.

Imagine how big an impact 500 changemakers (100 teams of 5 folks each working on 100 big ideas) can make! We feel that Change takes more than one person and that the perspective people add to the experiment will go on to make a difference. And, I must mention that we believe that unCon can not just be an Indian movement but an international one. We are open to changemakers world-wide to take up this cause.

We have started getting queries regarding an UnCon in different cities in India already. Here’s a case in point:

I’d humbly request you to get in touch (mailunconference@gmail.com) if you are interested in organizing an UnConference in your city.

Thanks to our supporters: 91Springboard, OYOStays, Strikingly, Draper University, and Youth Ki Awaaz.

UnConference Website

Email: mailunconference@gmail.com

Phone: +91-8750890864

Facebook | Twitter #uncDelhi14

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Cheers!

On behalf of Team UnCon!

Abhineet Kumar

Quotes that Have Changed My Life

I like the fact how a great quote can inspire us to be awesome! Whenever I’m down and out, I make sure I go through quotes from philosophers, leaders, entrepreneurs, my dad, and many more people I meet. Although I am not really good at memorizing them, I make sure some of the important ones which I relate to the most are stored in the Quotes section of my Facebook so that I could remind myself of the responsibility that lies ahead. I hope that they will inspire you too!

Here they are:

Life

• Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.– Steve Jobs
• Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.– Cloud Atlas
• Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.– Bill Watterson

Success and Productivity

• Focus on something that has high value to someone else, be really rigorous in making that assessment, because natural human tendency is wishful thinking, so the challenge to entrepreneurs is telling what’s the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking to them as opposed to pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn’t actually have merit, be very rigorous in your self analysis, certainly being extremely tenacious, and just work like hell. Put in 80-100 hours every week. All these things improves the odds of success.– Elon Musk
• I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.– Elon Musk

Leadership

• If not me, who? If not now, when?
• I believe that in each generation, there are about 50,000 young people who determine the future.– Admiral Bill Owens, Former Vice Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff
• I believe that you have the right to take responsibility. Get up, open your eyes, lend a ear, strike a smile. A fellow human somewhere might just need your help :)– Abhineet Kumar (I don’t remember how I drafted this, but something did inspire me to frame it in this way – some other quote which I cannot recall now)

TEDxDelhi: Are you attending?

I am a big fan of TED . Its videos not only tackle some of the problems infront of us, but they also motivate you to counter them with solutions. For all TED enthusiasts, probably, the biggest TEDx event of North India is here: TEDxDelhi

TEDxDelhi is an independently organized TEDx event operated under license from TED.
TEDxDelhi will feature speakers sharing unique ideas from India and for India – ideas which will spark deep discussion and introspection among the group that attends, those viewing live from across the world, and those who view the talks after the event is over. I like their quote “We speak to enlighten, unite and provoke.” And, I hope I’d win a pass to attend the event. In case, you are also wondering how to win a pass (sponsored by DLF), just head over to this giveaway link:

https://www.facebook.com/TEDxDelhi?sk=app_228910107186452

The list of speakers can be found here. I hope to interact with some of them and share and discuss ideas. Till then, keep following my simple idea of bringing about a change:

I believe that you have the right to take responsibility.Get up, open your eyes, lend a ear, strike a smile. A fellow human somewhere might just need your help :)

 

Let’s change the world then.

 

Welcome to the World of GMAT

I am writing this post during a 5 minute break in between my GMAT prep study session. Yes, like many others, even I’m giving GMAT sometime at the end of this year. I am not too sure how it’ll go as it’s largely dependent on the time I put in (which I haven’t really put). I have two months or so to prepare. Today, I have started with NOVA (a book for pre-stage maths and verbal). I’ll mainly do the maths from it – all the basics mostly.

My plan is to practice Verbal section problems alongwith studying Nova. Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish it off quickly to move ahead with Princeton, SC Grail and so on.

 

 

Introduction to Finance on Coursera: I Think I Like Finance

I had stumbled upon Coursera when it was in its early phase Then there were only a few courses, and I had a feeling that this startup could change the way we study. And, perhaps it is already doing some revolutionary stuff. If you don’t know, it has raised around 16 M $ to make quality education to all of us for free. Now, I am a student to Coursera’s Introduction to Finance Course taught by Prof Gautam Kaul. Here are my views about the course:

• I especially like the fact that I can attend any lecture whenever I want to, and that I can sleep in between without the fear of losing on an important topic. In fact, I have slept quite a few times already in my short time as a Coursera student :P
• The quality of the course is really good, and perhaps it is the most important factor which brings me here. I am doing the same course at Amity University, and found that quite a few things were lacking. One was the lack of doing practical, real-world problems, and the other was use of MS Excel to showcase the problems. In the online class, I am able to attend all the lectures, understand all the concepts and implement them to practical probelms at hand.
• I especially liked Mr. Kaul’s style of teaching. I think he tries his best to engage you in a discussion around finance, even though I’m in an online lecture, i feel the urge to find out more about the topics he teaches. This guy surely knows how to inspire you to know more about finance. As he says, he is crazy about finance, and it really shows!

Finally, after the first few lectures, I feel sure about two things:

• I’ll do more courses at Coursera, especially the ones related to Finance and Business.
• I’ll try understanding each and every aspect of finance before my third-year at Amity finishes. I think I have 1.5 years in hand, and it’s enough to understand the basic concepts thoroughly. In fact, I hope Coursera, EdX, Udacity, Venture-Lab, etc have more finance courses from which I cam learn from.

For all those who wish to understand finance, and feel their college curriculum isn’t sufficient, I’d suggest the Intro to Finance course at Coursera. It surely has inspired me to explore finance in-depth. Hopefully, by another year, I’d be good enough to tell you about my exploits in finance. Cheers!

Managing Human Resources at a Nursing Home is tough! I’m up for the challenge though.

What do you do when your staff do not actually want to work and they still want their pay and annual list of holidays? What if the patients do not want to pay a single penny out of their pockets for their treatment? Well, that is very much the case in most of the hospitals and Nursing Homes in Bihar. Consequently, there are very few well-maintained hospitals and nursing homes in Bihar. One of them is run by my parents in my hometown Gaya, Bihar. Guess what? It has my name: Abhineet Nursing Homes and Laporscopic Centre Pvt Ltd.

As a result, I have always been intrigued by healthcare dynamics ever since I was a small kid. Part of it was because I was involved in so many dinner conversations about ill patients, operation procedures to be performed, unwillingness of people to pay, stupidity of the staff. So, when dad asked me to look after its management, I naturally said a yes.

In this post, I’ll let you know of the first big problem I noticed: Managing the Human Resources at my nursing home. It indeed is tough in a town like Gaya where the healthcare ecosystem needs to improve considerably. And when people are not used to perfecting their job, it is indeed tough to train them to be awesome at their job. But, I have always cherished challenges, especially ones being close to my heart. I’ll keep you updated as to what all problems I encountered and how I went on to solve them sometime later. Need to go for dinner right now!