Invited Speakers



KN1: Prof Surendra Prasad, Director, IIT Delhi



KN2: Shoichi Hanatoni, Hitachi


KN3: Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO, Rediff

ABSTRACT:
In the late 18th century, the invention of the Spinning Jenny in England set in motion a train of events that so dramatically transformed the way work was organized and accomplished that it came to be called 'the Industrial Revolution'. Yet, for people living through that era the significance of all that went on was not that apparent and the phrase , "the Industrial Revolution" was itself coined by the historian Toynbee a hundred years after the events. We are possibly living through an equally transformative period right now. Just as machines like the Spinning Jenny combined with the dramatic fall in transportation costs that was brought on by steam-powered ships to trigger a revolution, techniques of Machine Learning combined with cheap broadband may trigger a revolution in finance, medicine, law and education that is likely to be equally transformative In this talk, I will speculate on some of the parallels between these two eras and the implication for policy makers.

BIO:
Ajit Balakrishnan is the founder and CEO of rediff.com a company trading on the Nasdaq Exchange in New York. He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He chairs the Internet Governance and Proliferation Committee of the Government of India, Ministry of Information Technology; was a member of the task force to review and rewrite the Information Technology Act 2008; was a member of the Committee to review the working of the seven Indian Institutes of Management; and presently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Governors of IIM Calcutta. He is deeply interested in the interaction between technology and society. His blog is at blogs.rediff.com/ajitb and his email ID is ajitb@rediffmail.com


KN4: Deepak Lala, LSI, USA


KN5: Benoit Simon, COO, Orange Telecom


KN6: Ajay Ghatok, IIT Delhi


KN7: Devraj Srinivasan, GM and Head, Wireline Business, Wipro, India


KN8: Wael William Diab, Technical Director, Office of the CTO Broadcom / Vice-Chair, IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group


KN: N. Ravishankar, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India.