Next stop is Mumbai. Only ten seats left! We Begin on September 26, 2012

I am missing Hyderabad already! Though my stay was as short as three nights and four days, the city’s warm and helpful people, positive air and just everything makes me want to go back right now! I’d gone there for a ConnectIT workshop that NASSCOM Foundation organizes every now and then.

The Workshop:
ConnectIT workshops are three day long, hands-on training workshops organized by NASSCOM Foundation and Microsoft in order to build the capacity of non- for- profits and Government Officers by facilitating technology enabled skills development. It was inspiring to see about 25 people from 15 different NGOs from the city enthusiastically participate in the workshop. A pre-workshop test taken by all the participants reported 51% success. Putting it simply, these NGOs had some experience in IT enabled services (usually at admin level) and hence made an interesting audience to talk about IT at a strategic level to.

And so we were all set! The trainer, Karim Padaniya along with Ram, Soumya, Professor, Sridhar, Robin, Kailas, Zahed and I together set the ball rolling for the exciting three days ahead. These few made sure the entire workshop was interactive while the others chipped in a bit less frequently. A hearty thanks to Shiva of Sanaari Software Pvt. Ltd. for the venue and especially for shielding us from the 3 hour long daily power-cuts. 

As you may notice in the agenda of the workshop, we always start with the topics Better Documentation and Project Management as most NGOs find this more challenging than anything else. Some key features of Word and Excel that are lesser known among most users got applauded. Other topics that were instant favorites were Skydrive, Movie Maker, Publisher and Social Media.

There has never been a single ConnectIT workshop that has limited its discussions to the topics mentioned in the agenda. Following the tradition, this one wasn’t any different. A major problem faced by a majority of NGOs in our country is regular updation of their respective websites. Either its a painstaking process or expensive. Having dealt with this topic before, we shared a few best practices.  Based on the other questions, we introduced a new session,’Power of Internet’ that should ensure that our participants don’t miss our trainer after the workshop. :) One of the feedbacks we got was what Ram from IKYA Global Foundation had to say.

Along with these sessions, other services offered by NASSCOM Foundation (specifically for NGOs in India) were also introduced. We were glad to know that a majority of the NGOs present there had registered with www.bigtech.in program wherein NASSCOM Foundation provides technology donations that complements our training workshops. It was a great experience in totality adding new people to our network as it always is! 

Next stop - Mumbai, 26 - 28 Sept. 2012. We did our first ConnectIT workshop in Mumbai back in 2009 so its time we revisited our NGO partners. One can register for the Mumbai workshop with this link.  

And one last thing about the Hyderabad crowd - the post-workshop test results showed an increase of 15%!

Yours,
Prashant Pandit
AVP & Tech Officer, NASSCOM Foundation