Meeting with I Change My City

Today, I got the opportunity to meet with I Change My City (http://www.ichangemycity.com/). As you might know I Change My City (ICMC) is an initiative that closely works with the people of Bangalore to help report civic issues.

I made a presentation of this idea to a senior team of five members which included Ms. Sylvia Veeraraghavan, the head of this initiative. We also had Mr. Vivekananda (Marketing Manager), Mr. Venkatesh (Content Head), Ms. Gayatri Nair (Editor content). It was a privilege to have the opportunity to present this idea to them!!

Initially as I entered the building, I was very nervous despite a lot of preparation and practice. But the moment I entered the room the entire ICMC team was so welcoming and courteous, that I felt very comfortable. 

I had a 10 slide presentation. I started by explaining how I came up with this idea. We had a funny moment when I said that I want to start with a "pop quiz" about some road names in Bangalore:-) 

By this time I was at ease in the room. I then made the presentation for around 15 minutes. After I ended, the ICMC team asked very good questions about content creation and verification. They also came up with some ideas about how this initiative can go forward.

Here are some highlights of that conversation:

1. We discussed the challenges of doing research on people who may not be very well known.
2. One of the important questions that came up in the discussion was verifying the content that is crowd-sourced. An advisory group comprising people such as Mr. Suresh Moona might be able to address this issue.
3. There were several good ideas that were made by the ICMC team. I am listing them below as I understand them. 

• We should reach out to schools and crowd-source information through a Heritage competition/quiz.
• Each week ICMC could post a couple of road/park names on their website, and ask their users to write in information about these personalities.

If this partnership makes sense for ICMC, it would be wonderful to work with this team to take the idea forward!!

I am planning to reach out to my school Principal, Ms. Deepa Sridhar, and seek her guidance for this project. It would be great if more Kumaranites will be able to participate in this process. 

I am also hoping to meet another historian of repute. Keeping fingers crossed, I will let you know if I am able to get the meeting.