NED talks: connecting people offline

The venture gets people from diverse backgrounds to meet and converse

Social networking sites have brought together interesting people “virtually”, but it is rarely that people meet, discuss stories, share experiences, and end up having long conversations.

To bridge this gap and to collect interesting stories, a city-based couple have started ‘NED’ (No Enthu Da) talks where people from diverse backgrounds come together to share their experiences.

Karthik Shashidhar, a management consultant, and Priyanka Bharadwaj, an MBA student, started the talks in January this year in an attempt to bring together a bunch of eclectic people. The group speak on topics ranging from ‘Why Bollywood music of the 90s rules the world’ to ‘Computational complexity theories’ as they munch on

kodbale and sip wine. Each speaker gets an intro song based on the topic he/she is going to talk on.

Explaining the concept which is broadly inspired by TED talks, Mr. Shashidhar says the event is organised at their house in Jayanagar where a group of eight to 10 people speak for about five minutes followed by a question-and-answer session. So far, six editions have completed with about 50 people taking part.

While they use their personal networks to shortlist on speakers, Ms. Bharadwaj says they screen the recommendations after assessing how they can contribute to the talks.

So far, they have put up montages of the talks and the 6th edition was broadcast live on Periscope.

Thejaswi Udupa, chief technology officer at a start-up and who spoke about how beer drinkers are inherently racist in their choice of the drink, said the irreverence and the informal atmosphere of the talks are a merit.

For details, write to nedtalksinc@gmail.com