Summer Conference, 2016

The Student Conference or the Summer Conference named Summer of’16, took place on the 20th of September at the campus. It featured the stories and experiences of students who interned, studied abroad or took up an interesting activity or initiative during the summer break. I was involved as an emcee of the event, which gave me a birds-eye of the conference and what went into it.

The Summer Conference serves a dual purpose for students: it is as much for those who went out and did interesting things during the summer; as for those who want to know about the kinds of things they could do in the summer to come. So even though there are an audience and a set of speakers, the event is not just to inform; but also serves as a forum for sharing experiences.

The new undergraduate batch formed the bulk of the audience.  For them, it was an opportunity to get familiarised about  Ashoka’s summer options and interact with seniors who were taking initiatives. There were also members of the larger community who wanted to know what fellow Ashokans did during the summer.

The conference, which began with an insightful excerpt by Pramath Sinha, founder, and trustee of the university, ran for two and a half hours, spanning 5 separate panel discussions organized thematically according to the kind of space the students were involved in. Pramath talked about his personal experience of how his internship changed him as an individual.

Overall, the conference combined entertainment with serious insights and valuable inputs on how students should spend their time. Apart from hands-on advice on summer internships, the conference offered external perspectives, and glimpses of what post-Ashokan life could be like.