120 Life Lessons I Learned Watching 200 INK Talks

Inspired by Chris Bailey's 100 Incredible Things I learned watching 70 hours of TED Talks, I decided to conduct a learning experiment this past week.

INK Talks Website

What is the INK Conference?

Poem- Student to Teacher

The INK Conference (Innovation and Knowledge Conference) is an annual event in India, where speakers from different fields are invited to share ideas, stories and perspectives. It is curated by Lakshmi Pratury. The talks are recorded and made available to the world on the INK Conference You Tube Channel and Website. As of May 16th, 2015, there were 282 videos available on the INK Channel.

What was the Learning Experiment about?

This past week, I saw 40 hours of INK Talks. Building on my notes from 3 days and 70 live talks at the INK Live 2014 event in Mumbai, I viewed and reviewed 200 INK Talks over the past seven days. Here is a list of 120 Life Lessons I learned, watching 200 incredible INK Talks.

Why did I write this post?

This blog is about ideas and stories related to the concept of Life as School. I am curious to understand why is Learning Beautiful? and how people make Learning Beautiful in their contexts? I truly believe every individual has something to teach you. Thus this blogpost is a collection of life lessons, that I picked up, while listening to the speakers at INK. I really hope they are useful to you too, and encourage you to further explore the INK Talks archives here 

Here we go...

1) Find new uses for everyday things. Find local heroes and thinkers and create with global expertise and technology.  Musician/Filmaker + Deep Sea Diver

2) Atoms may be only 4.6% of the universe. There is this thing called dark energy and dark matter that comprises the remaining 95% that we still do not know too much about. There is so much we do not know about the universe. Keep Exploring! Quantum Physicist

The Story Behind Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall project

This talk is about Sugata Mitra's research work in India for NIIT. He was part of a research department in India too, when the idea of the whole in the wall project came to him.

Notes from The INK Talk – My Journey to Re- inventing Education

PHD Student in Delhi – his PHD mentor left for the UK, for some years, when he joined his phd program in delhi. So he had relative independence to study on his own at that time. It was in the 1970's and computers were still large machines placed in the basements of select universities at that time. To write code, he would have to note it all down on round white paper and then would go to the basement and give it to an operator there. He made a mouse program, where when the code ran on the computer, a mouse like sound would come. He completed a PHD thesis in theoretical physics at IIT Delhi.

45 Lessons I Learned at the INK Conference 2014

What is the INK Conference?

From the website, www.inktalks.com, 'The INK Conference is an annual conference that ams to fuel innovation and foster knowledge by bringing together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers on one stage. The ideas that these speakers put forward are shared with the world, inspiring thought conversation and ultimately action.' or watch the INK Conference video

Why am I so excited about this conference?

Every year the conference is held at a different locations/states around India. In 2014, the 5th edition of the INK Conference came to Mumbai. I was in Mumbai too. I knew I had to be there. I registered for the event and two weeks later, I am at the entrance of a school in mumbai for the INK Live 2014 Program of the conference. We were given a bag, that had the event schedule. On the front page, I found this :-

'Be Humble, For you are made of the earth

Be Noble, for you are made of the stars'

Three days later, I walked out of the INK Live venue with a mind full of ideas, inspiration to climb a peak, conversations with extraordinary people, and an experience to last a lifetime. This is a post about the insights, learnings and observations from my three days at the INK Live 2014 conference. 

Alan Kay - Why the Future Will Not be Incremental

It has been a while since my last blogpost. But this video, I saw online recently made me want to write a blog post about it. It was a lecture by Alan Kay, one of the inventors of the computer age. This post includes notes from his talk at the Founder School Session of the demo conference.

Watch the full video here:- Alan Kay - Why the Future Will not be incremental

Seven Lessons From the Maker Fest, India 2015

Uncertain. Unsure but filled with extreme excitement and curiosity,  I made my way to the airport, to attend the Maker Fest 2015 in Ahmedabad on 9^th January, 2015.

What is the Maker Fest?

A community of really fun people making cool things and,

Lessons from the HT Summit Talk by Aamir Khan, Deepika Padukone and Karan Johar

Some notes from a talk by a group of Creative People from the Indian Film Industry

Collective Thinking and Support in an Industry

Karan Johar had brought up the subject of unity within the film fraternity. To answer this Aamir spoke about two of his biggest learning from Satyameva Jayate, which were
a) The places where there was unity or collective thought were the places where there was happiness and prosperity
b) The places where there was no unity or collective thought there were problems

Tagore and Shantiniketan Education – Part 3 - Activites, Schools and Student Experience

 Activities at the Shantiniketan

Sahitya Sabhas -  These were literary and musical evening that took place every Tuesday. Students would present their own literary work, dance, music and short skits among themselves and the community. They were also given a chance to perform these plays at the annual Rabindra Saptaho event with all other bodies of the Visva Bharati University. The other activities were...

Importance to extra-curricular activities – Students engaged in lots of physical activities in their time there. There were annual competitions in the areas of music, dance and recitation held there.

Lectures by professionals – Various professionals in the fields of sciences were invited to the school and university. Evening discussions of contemporary scientific and social issues where held along with the students.

Travel – Excursions and trips were organized to parts of West Bengal including Bardhaman, Malda, Purulia and Chittaranjan. There was a yearly picnic (Barshik Bonobhojan) as well.

Student Committees – The school had several student run communities that make and govern decisions related to student body. These committess teach students to take their own decisions and take self-responsibility for themselves.  Some committees were:-
-Environment Committee ("Paribesh Bibhag"),
-Health Committee ("Swastho Bibhag"),
-Justice Committee ("Bichar bibhag")
-Food Committee ("Ahar Bibhag")
-Literary Committee ("Sahitya Bibhag") etc. that govern and make decisions on matters related to student body.

Student Publication – Students were allowed to express their opinions through a quarterly news-paper, “Resonance”, which is planned and exceuted by senior students