IIT meet: A star-studded affair

The delegates at the Pan IIT Global conference heard Swami Vivekananda quoted several times on making India strong, Well, that invocation should not have surprised anyone. For, the conference which drew 2,000 people, including many non-IITians, was taking place in Schaumburg, close to the windy city where the Indian monk had addressed the World Parliament of Religion in 1897 and made history.

The 7th global IIT conference with the theme -- entreprenurship and global economy -- took place from October 9 to October 11.

The conference, which was giving out for the first time a number of awards, saluted the late Rajeev Motwani, Stanford Professor and an entrepreneur with a vast clout and also to a handful of current IITian leaders, including Padmasree Warrior, chief technology officer of Cisco. She was recently declared one of the 50 top women leaders in the world by the Financial Times.

"It was a sold out event", said conference chairman Ray Mehra. "This was one of the largest professional conferences of its kind attended by professionals as well as students."

"We were able to energise the alumni group and the community in the Midwest to work as a team and put on a great conference and build stronger ties", he added.

"Its was not easy organising an event like this and yet we were able to find a broad-based support of sponsors amid one of the deepest recessions. Speakers ranging from Bill Clinton to Jim Rogers showed that we were able to attract indicates a growing level of respect for the IIT alumni."

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