Archive for the 'Conferences' Category

For those that have been following our new blog closely, you’ll notice that this is my first official post

I’ve been to been itching to write, but the truth of the matter is that I have no idea where the last three months have gone! Anyone else feel the same? I think part of it has to do with the fact that I’ve been traveling a lot for The CulturalConnect (something I didn’t do much of last year). In fact, I’m currently writing this at the Toronto International Airport.

Why all the traveling? Well you may remember that a few months ago BusinessWeek Magazine recognized The CulturalConnect as one of America’s Top Company run by young entrepreneurs. Since then we’ve had a lot of requests by journalists for interviews and conferences/event coordinators looking for us to come out and share our story.

TCC has been featured in 15 articles (since BizWeek) making our total media coverage about 50. Even more exciting, personally, has been the invitations to come speak at Universities, Business Conferences and Cultural Events around the nation. I really enjoy the opportunity to speak to, share our story with, meet and connect with so many new people of different backgrounds, age groups, interests and professional industries.

In January, Raymond and I had the wonderful opportunity to present a keynote and a couple workshop talks at the University of Michigan South Asian Awareness Network Conference (as Raymond previously blogged about). In February, I spoke at the San Francisco State University’s 1st Annual Marketing Association Meeting as their keynote speaker. We also attended/participated at the NASALSA Annual Conference and a Bali Institute event as top level media sponsors.

This past weekend has been quite a whirlwind. I had the amazing opportunity to speak at the 6^th Annual Achieving Professional Excellence (APEX) Conference in snowy Toronto, Canada. I’m actually surprised that my flight landed as I flew in on the worst snow storm it has had in over 10 years (atleast that is what I was told).

I gave a workshop entitled “For the Young, Driven and Forward-Thinking” where I was asked to share my experiences about working in Marketing at a great Fortune 500 company like Sun Microsystems, my involvement in the Non-Profit community and of course about The CulturalConnect and what it is like to be a young entrepreneur running it with my co-founders. I spent a lot of time sharing snapshots on the very inspiring and amazing professionals we have had the opportunity to interview in our magazines. I find that sharing these stories really resonate with college students and recent alums that are stressed about degree and career choices.

I must say that it was such a well organized and professional conference. I’m constantly surprised by college students that put on conferences better than more experienced and seasoned conference coordinators. I’d like to give a big shout-out to the very talented Conference Chair Aditi Kapadia (to the right of me) and her relentless conference team (special thanks to Sal Rabbani for the invitation - to the left of me).

It has been a great (albeit busy) start of the year. I really want this year to be stepping up on providing even more amazing interviews, growing our readership and connecting in person with our fabulous readers from around the world. We’ll keep you posted on future speaking engagements. If you hear that we’re going to be speaking in your area, please email us so we can ‘Connect’ in person

So I’m still recovering from my trip to Michigan. Sumaya and I spoke last Saturday at the SAAN Conference in Ann Arbor. Let me just say something…This was the most organized conference I’ve ever been to. I was amazed by these University of Michigan students who organized the conference. You could really tell they put a tremendous amount of dedication, planning, and effort into EVERY detail. I met almost every single person who helped organize the conference, and each one of them told me that this event was one of the best experiences of their college lives. Special thanks to all of them! Especially, Sarwat!!!

I got to see some of the other workshops by the other speakers, most notably Moushumi Khan who we profiled a couple weeks ago. It’s great when you get to meet the people you profile. I think there’s always a sense accomplishment when we profile someone who’s been doing great things. But it’s even more rewarding knowing that the people we profile will be doing even greater things in the future. I can definitely say that about Moushumi Khan. If you haven’t read her profile, make sure you do and remember where you read it first

We’re going to end up profiling a lot of the speakers we met at the conference. Stay tuned for this…

Oh, and one more thing. If you’re a college kid reading this, make sure to attend the SAAN Conference next year. If it’s anything like it was this year, you have to attend.

I’m flying to the SAAN Conference in Ann Arbor tomorrow (technically later today…12 hours to be precise). I’m very excited about the conference. There’ll be a lot of great speakers that I’m looking really forward to meeting, especially Moushumi Khan who we’re profiling later today. Sumaya’s speaking too. Her mother and brother are flying out to see her speak. Aww…

I’ll be without internet for close to 3 days. This is not good.