What did a Gardener, a Mythology expert tell CIOs?

BANGALORE, INDIA: Sages of their own area came to C-Change and passed on some tips that go beyond IT and Technology. All this at CIOL’s annual Technology forum C-Change 2011.

There was Devidutt Patnaik, chief belief officer, Future Group, who decoded the mythological tales, avatars, heroes and villains in an interesting way for the CIOs.

“Why does Lakshmi run away from Indra? Why does she run to Vishnu? Only because one is insecure, and the other is secure.” He said as he teased the conditioned-minds of India in a challenging way.

Continuing with examples of Ram and Krishna on one side and Ravan and Duryodhana on the other side, he asked, “Both Krishna and Ravana break the rules, but SriRam and Duryodhana kept the rules. Yet one is hero and the other a villain. The answer is that one did it for himself and the other for someone else. That’s the reason why the world is not going to be successful chasing transactional equations at the cost of relationships.”

He even set a rebellious note on the word’ adaptation’, cautioning that if done out of context and without answers to ‘for whom’ and ‘why’ it can be a futile exercise.

Earlier speaking on the topic ‘Platform and Purpose’, Subroto Bagchi, vice chairman and gardener, MindTree Consulting gave a new thought approach to the word ‘platform’. He explained how one’s skills, network, family, education, community etc are the real ‘platform’ for anyone. He then talked how some people have great platforms and yet waste life because of a low-purpose. “Try to have a high-platform and high-purpose spot in this matrix and you will not waste your life.”

In the ending keynote, Pradeep Gupta, president, CyberMedia, proposed some new directions. He opined that convergence and divergence would be a simultaneous process.

“Ten years from now, I will have a paper-thin device, which might start working a mobile or a TV, the moment I write a word on it. You could have an ubiquitous device like the mythological power-packed arrows. Things like these could be a reality.”

“I suspect that one place where most devices run into a bottleneck is the form-type. Can I have variability of the form factor? Technologies like these can come up soon.”

He explained how we might seamlessly shift from one device to another. Applications will move effortlessly from one to another.

As to what the future directions would be, he left with an interesting thought for all to chew upon - “Facebook was not here ten years ago. The new sea of trends and game-changers likewise could have not even been born by now. They are sitting in someone’s mind somewhere.”

Unborn and yet potent. Needless to say, C-Change 2011, touched the womb of all that is going to matter ahead this time too.