The NYC Trip and The Kairos Global Summit

A lot has happened since the last post. I had a chance to attend the Kairos Global Summit in NYC last month.  The conference led to – what was my first international visit and that started with New York. A quick round up on the overall summit experience -

1. What did I like about the Kairos -

The USP of  Kairos  is the network.  The 700 odd students who came down for the conference represented some of the best schools all over the world including Harvard, MIT, Univ of Penn, IIT’s ,ESADE and many more.  Meeting and spending time with some of the most brilliant people was a fantastic experience.

2.What could have been better ?

I still believe that the networking session could have been a bit more organised.  Networking throughout the 2 day conference was a messy affair. Had this been a Barcamp -I would have enjoyed that but when you are asking people to dress up in Business Attire and Pay $1150 for the conference ticket – the last a participant could expect was to directly meet people with the same interest areas instead of hunting down for them. The Showcase at NYSE was more of a all startups packed into a giant space with no categorization. Tagging the showcase as Chaotic would be a exaggeration but it was definitely confusing to find who was where.

3.What could have been better ?

I should bot crib about these but yes the sessions as most of the conference were boring. One of the sessions by Simon Serek which was on Motivation Level was extremely interesting. The rest of the talks – were redundant. They could have seriously tried roping in some good speakers. While the profiles of the speakers was extremely strong on paper – none of them were actually able to hold on to the audiences.

4. What next ?

We plan to start the Kairos India Society in India soon with a vision of building a student driven elite community exclusively for student entrepreneurs. While NEN and AIESEC both have been trying to build the same but some how I personally feel the quality has been diluted over time.

Here is a glimpse of  the showcase at NYSE.

The Kairos Global Summit

Yes !! I have an exciting piece of news. I am heading off to attend The Kairos Global Summit. 20 of us from India will be heading to New York to attend the Kairos Global Summit.

The more exciting part is that Voicetap will be a part of the Top 100 Innovative Startups that will be showcasing during the summit. Here is a sneak peak about what all will be happening at the Summit on 17th April during the showcase at the New York Stock Exchange.

Here is a brief about the Kairos Society

The Kairos Society is an international student-run not-for-profit foundation based in the United States. We started with the belief that the key to improving our world lies in uniting the next generation of leaders to develop globally impactful innovations. Continue reading here

Here is a sneak peak at the summit itself –

The Intrepid Air and Space Museum

Kairos is bringing together some of the world’s most influential and globally impactful leaders to meet a select group of the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial students. Aboard the former USS Intrepid Aircraft Carrier, these leaders will address the importance of the future generation of global leaders to work together on cutting edge innovation and ventures.

The Dinner Cruise over the Hudson River. During this special gala dinner cruise, students will have a chance to build lifelong friendships with other future leaders who share a common passion for entrepreneurship and come from different walks of life. These students will also have the opportunity to learn from and build valuable relationships with leading CEOs and mentors from diverse backgrounds

The innovations that will be showcased at  NYSE will cover cover everything from new alternative energy technology to cross media entertainment platforms to   global relief services.

Coming next – List and Profiles of people attending the summit. And yes I am super thrilled.