My Podcasting Experience (Part VI): Perspectives
By: Apeksha Srivastava
Tags: Podcasting, Computing, Iriss, Iit Gandhinagar, Acm India

“I find podcasting an enticing space.” — Jason Calacanis, Internet entrepreneur, author, and podcaster

Image Source: appleinsider.com

Hello, friends. This article is the last piece of my ACM/IRISS podcast puzzle. Being the final one, it involves in-depth outlooks from some more people about these events. So, without further ado, let’s embark on our sneak peek adventure!

Maria Amante: Former Director of Information and Documentation Services at the ISCTE (Instituto Universitario de Lisboa) and Scholar-In-Residence at IIT Gandhinagar

What was your experience of the ACM-W workshop, which you attended at IITGN recently?

The ACM-W workshop on women in computer science and research was interesting for me because it discussed the problems which women face in a male-dominant field or profession. It is interesting to see how women may use different strategies to realize their presence as partners or lead a particular area. The workshop also had a session on data analytics, which is crucial in the domain of library and information sciences — my profession. I think

such events are not only essential to deliver information and knowledge but also are excellent platforms for establishing fruitful dialogues and networking among people from different fields. They are also great sources of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborations and play critical roles in the process of life-long learning.

Do you think that doing outreach programs for women is still necessary, or should we focus empowering them in general programs that involve men as well? What are your views on it?

I am in support of women’s empowerment. I remember the words of Cherri Pancake during the workshop, where she stressed the need to change, and change involves more work. Change is incremental; this means to start small but to think big. It also applies in terms of encouraging more women in computing. However, I would instead prefer to discuss these issues in gatherings where both men and women are present. In my opinion, I would prefer to focus on empowering women in general programs that involve men as well. I think the solution to this gender problem lies in discussions between males and females. These dialogues will lead to the development of a proper understanding, hence promoting the necessary actions in this direction.

Neeldhara Misra: Assistant Professor at IIT Gandhinagar, Program Committee Chair of IRISS and Committee Member of ACM-W India

What was your experience in organizing the ACM-India Annual Event and IRISS 2020 at IIT Gandhinagar?

It was exciting. We were also terribly nervous since it was the first time we were doing an event on such a large scale. In retrospect, we did rather well in terms of bringing more than 1200 student participants, and everyone had an extraordinary experience in being able to interact with the who’s who of modern computing. ACM did a fantastic job of bringing together great speakers and putting together a very special program. We were thrilled to get the opportunity to host them. Similarly, IRISS has a pretty amazing steering committee, which helped us plan the event in the best way possible. A team of about 70 people constantly worked to make these events successful. I think we managed to reach out to a reasonably large number of aspiring and young college kids.

What is the vision of IRISS? Why do you think students should attend it?

IRISS is a student seminar, and its core format is that we reach out to grad students, and they tell us about the work they have been doing in the recent past. A program committee screens all the submissions and figures out what would be a good fit. We invite about 16 contributed talks and a much larger number of poster presentations based on these submissions. The format of IRISS has evolved and expanded over time; from one-day, we have progressed to a two-day event. During IRISS 2020, we had various industry and academia panel-sessions, with some of the very bright minds, discussing issues that are extremely relevant to grad students. I think all these are great opportunities for students who are starting their careers in the field of computer science. In the future, we would love to see more people taking advantage of these opportunities, in terms of having interactions with experts from the community. Please mark your calendars for IRISS 2021, which is happening at PSG Tech in Coimbatore.

What is your involvement with the ACM-W India Council?

It has been a pretty recent association but a very fulfilling one. ACM-W makes special efforts to reach out to women in computing. Unfortunately, there are still some unfair stereotypes surrounding gender in the field of computer science. We are doing what we can to fix it, a lot of our activities are focused on outreach. The most recent ACM-W event that I was involved in, we had over 100 people come specifically for this workshop. At the level of ACM-W India, we are working towards creating awareness for opportunities that are specific to women in CS. In particular, we organize something called the Grad Cohort, the third edition of which will happen at IITGN later this summer. We invite women interested in computing education and research, the details of which we will share on various platforms soon.

Shruti Singh and Rishiraj Adhikary: Ph.D. Scholars in CSE Discipline at IIT Gandhinagar and volunteers during the events

How do you think these events and other similar ones will help you think about and shape your career?

Rishi: One good thing is that I met these great personalities in my first year of Ph.D. In the future, I am expecting more such opportunities to get feedback on my research from some eminent minds of this field.

Shruti: One thing that happened after attending these events was that after listening to the talks and lectures given by these influential personalities in computing, I feel more motivated to work on my research problem. These events are, indeed, great platforms to connect with and seek guidance from the leaders in any field.

You must have met some pretty amazing people during this time — can you please share some interesting snippets of your interactions with them?

Rishi: I had the opportunity to meet Shwetak Patel. He is an entrepreneur from the University of Washington and the Winner of the 2018 ACM Prize in Computing. It was extremely fruitful to meet and have discussions with him because my research is more about the engineering stuff rather than method stuff, and many people do not consider it as research. But, then you meet Shwetak Patel, and you realize that his whole work revolves around the engineering-based research — if he can do it so big, surely we too can! So, it was very enlightening and motivating for me.

Shruti: I was fortunate to have an interaction with Kalika Bali (Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Lab). She gave a talk on low-resource languages and mentioned how they have collaborated with native Gondi (South-Central Dravidian language) speakers to translate stories and books to their language. I feel that this is very interesting and also has a substantial social impact since they are trying to save such forms of communication. This step will help many people to connect with the world, which is the need of the hour.

So, folks, it’s a wrap for this season of ACM/IRISS podcast snippets! I hope it helped you in gaining some insights about what’s hot in computing these days. You will get to hear the detailed versions of these sessions real soon. Till then, stay tuned for more reads on a variety of domains and topics.

(For Part 5 of this series, please visit here. The 1st Part can be found here.)