8/2/07

mission 2007: day 2

the rainfall last night was heavy enough that the city was afloat this morning. traffic suffered, as a result. the driver who was to arrive at 9am to pick me up, made it 2 hours later. it took me another 1.5 hours to get to the campus. i was hoping to see some security, again, since sheila dikshit was to come. none. i was also hoping to see a lot of media, promised yesterday. none. the booths were even less populated than yesterday. i guess the rain scared the others off as well.

when i got there, i went to the qualcomm booth and looked for arif khan. found him, and we talked for a while. i demoed one of the games (the clothing game) to him. he also introduced me to parag, and - in a nutshell - said that we should try to meet up in the qualcomm office in the near future.

after that, i walked around to see the booths i had missed (and that were populated) and met rg from msri. we talked about digital green in some detail. then proceeded to have lunch (that was a process - people cut the line like nobody's business, and no number of dirty looks can sway them from their purpose). anuva was gone, and i didn't know anyone else there, so i went into the auditorium and waited for the next session to start.

there were 3 panelists in the session - 2 from the govt. and 1 from tcs - the vp of csr. i had already learned enough about the projects at tcs, and the govt. representatives spoke so genericly ("so far, the role of the govt. has always been seen as that of a regulator, or a facilitator. this is one sector where the govt. has gone much further." yeah, the talk proceeded at just that level and i walked out in the middle).

day 2 was much shorter, and day 3 is yet to start (it is 10.30 am friday). arif promised me that the scale of the conference was not going to shoot up, so i will attend today's panel discussion in the afternoon and come back home. 'tis hard to imagine that anyone will shed any light on any areas not already covered in the past couple of days, but let's give them a chance.

more later.

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