2013 Mifos Summit in Jaipur has Begun!
A quick post to let the community know the summit has begun. We’re only one day in but already we’ve grown incredibly from our inaugural summit in Bangalore last year. Amit has helped us pick an amazing world-class venue that we’ve filled to capacity – the comfort, cuisine, and hospitality are unmatched. We’ve nearly doubled the number of attendees with more than 75 including so many first time attendees and brand new members of the community. We have also more than doubled the amount of content in our agenda – and even stayed on schedule for the most part of Day 1 until the final day’s session ran long.
Some of the highlights from Day 1: a beautiful traditional lamp-lighting ceremony led by Amit and his colleagues at Digamber Finance, an opening keynote looking at the evolution of financial inclusion led by our chief guest, Mr Mahesh Sharma, the Deputy General Manager for the State Bank of India, a first-ever demo of the new Mifos X UI led by Vishwas, Binny, and Nayan, a compelling case study from Sander on Musoni‘s journey at the forefront of technology, and a mind-blowing presentation from Praveen detailing the IT infrastructure and day to day tasks and responsibilities for himself and entire IT department.
One of the most memorable moments during Day 1 had to be our group introduction session. I feared we wouldn’t be able to pull off an icebreaker to introduce the more than 70 people in the room. Craig had a great suggestion for us to break out into pairs and interview someone you didn’t know for 2 minutes and then each person would introduce the other for 30 seconds. As we passed the microphone from person to person and learned who everyone was in the words and voice of their peers, it was a perfect way to connect everyone and show how diverse a community we are forming.
At every moment, the conference hall is bubbling with shining faces and informal meetups as people connect for the first time; or now in many cases for a second or third time as we’ve met at the summit before or in another setting. Please track the sessions in our detailed agenda, stay tuned for notes being posted to the wiki, and we’ll have a good number of sessions from Day 1 recorded on video too – tons of photos as well – I haven’t seen more SLRs in one place before! Share your photos with the group via our Google+ Event page for the Summit.
My heart goes out to several in the community who ran into emergencies of all sorts that have prevented you from attending in person – we can try and join people in via Google Hangouts wherever possible so do let us know if there’s a specific session you want to join.
