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Proudly Present
Sit, Chennai!
An unconference on Chennai
st
31 May 2009
New #2/Old #9
Jeth Nagar, 1st Cross Street
R A Puram,
Chennai – 600028.
Introduction
In today’s world, the obsession with formality is taking a toll on our innovative
faculties. It has been often been proved that casual interactions facilitate
efficient knowledge sharing. This is clearly evident from the mushrooming
growth of blogs, virtual chatting, short messaging services (SMS), facebooking,
orkuting etc. 'Sit' has always believed that an informal and equanimous mode
of dialogue is the most effective way to share knowledge. Hence, 'Sit' meets
every Sunday on the Marina Beach and discusses sundry yet crucial subjects
which, unfortunately, overshoot our priority moulds. Unconference is an
attempt to engage a larger group of individuals into this style of thinking and
interacting.
Why an Unconference?
Popular sources describe an unconference as a facilitated and participant-
driven symposium centered on a basic theme or interest. Generally, an
unconference tries to avoid the conventionalities of a formal conference. It
substitutes customary/traditional conference practices with casual and
accessible ones. In spite of its apparent affinity with the ‘geek community’, this
fashion of conferencing holds a lot of significance to us.
The following two factors, we believe, substantiate our above claim.
i. Accessibility – 'Sit' aspires to improve the accessibility of
opportunities, to meet and interact, to people from all walks of life.
One of the founding ideals of 'Sit' is to remain accessible to
everyone. This event of ours will have an open door policy to
everyone who is interested to share and care.
Itinerary
The event will go on from 10 AM to 4.30 PM with 1 hour of lunch. The rough
itenary is as follows.
Welcome Ceremony
The Welcome Ceremony would involve a small talk on 'Sit', its activities and its
path. This would be followed by an Introduction to the Unconference and its
theme. The ceremony would be very informal and nothing like a conventional
one.
Discussion
This activity would be our typical Sunday Meets (the trademark activity of 'Sit')
on a bigger scale. It would be loosely styled on the lines of the show 'We the
People' from NDTV, where everyone sits in a circle or any manner and the
moderator kickstarts a discussion and pulls the right threads through the
discussion. Everybody participates equally and there is no Speaker-Audience
concept. The topic for discussion would be "Chennai - Life, Opportunities and
Challenges". The topic is generic in order to accomodate various subjects,
topics, people and perspectives. There would be a small break in between.
It is upto the moderator to pull the right threads and the sub-topics for
discussions. However, we would suggest some for guidance. The list is
constantly being updated by the organizing team after brainstorming for mroe
and more sub-topics.
Expenditure Patterns
The Inequalities
Idealism or Realism
The Brawl
The Brawl is an activity loosely styled around the show 'The Big Fight' from
NDTV, with four panelists on the stage. The panelists would argue over a topic
and the audience can pose questions (moderated by the moderator). The topic
chosen for the discussion is “Is Chennai Conservative?”.
Closing Ceremony
Participant Registration:
Website:
http://www.sitchennai.org/
Email:
thesitchennai@gmail.com