The Goa Project’s press release quotes co-founder Udhay Shankar as saying that the vision is “to create a community of passion at the intersection of disciplines for cross-pollination and innovation to happen organically.” In person, Mr. Shankar, who is a Bangalore-based investor and consultant, eschews the gobbled-gook and is far more direct about what he sees as the core for him: “I want to be in the middle of smart people — when I say ‘smart people’ I mean people who I consider to be smarter than I am in whatever way you want to measure it; smart is a context-specific term — and articulate people all the time and learn and grow.”
The Goa Project is an annual ‘unconference’ that happens, unsurprisingly, in Goa. The format, while better known in the tech geek world, is not unknown in other fields. Simplistically put, it comprises sessions proposed and voted up or down by the attendees. TGP sessions are in eight ‘tracks’: Music & Sound, Design, Interactive Media & Cinema, Performing Arts, Fringe & Geekery, Society/Education, Workshops, and Presentations. There are different slots in each track, including lectures and lightning talks, debates, Q&As, demonstrations. There is a space reserved for projects, where selected innovators look for support, through collaboration or even funding.
Mr. Shankar says that TGP is partly a descendant of a mailing list he runs, Silk List, a by-invitation virtual space where members with shared interests also tend to meet up in the real world. And that meet-up practise in turns has its roots in pre-Web online spaces like BBS groups. “The most immediate trigger was myself and Vijay [Anand, the other co-founder] having a series of discussions when both of us were volunteers at a NASSCOM Product Conclave in about 2009 or so, about how this was intended to be the seed of a movement that brought together people in the products space, and from there it went to how it would be nice to have spaces like this for other communities as well. And not just restricted to one kind of community; but to pull together interesting people.” Nothing happened immediately, though the conversation continued, until Mr. Anand one day said, “Why not just go ahead and do this?” The friends had discussed the idea with others, and got uniformly positive responses; in fact people wanted to help. “Typically, the response we got was, when do we start?” Mr Shankar says.
The unconventional format was arrived at after observing a range of international events, from Burning Man to TED: “We were reasonably sure that that was not what we wanted to be,” he says. “One, there already exists a TED, and two, we wanted to do something a little more unstructured. We wanted to see what would happen when we put together all the smartest people we know.” And why Goa? “We wanted to do it in a place where people don’t have work pressures. We could have chosen to do it in a place like Leh or the Nilgiris, but in addition to selling the concept, we didn’t want to sell the venue as well, and Goa is a venue that doesn’t need to be sold.”
‘The Goa Project’ was the working title, and one that survived a naming exercise by professionals (but volunteers) from branding agencies and marketing. “We went through the entire exercise of coming up with a name, evaluating them,” Mr Shankar says, “and decided eventually that ‘The Goa Project’ was a good enough name.”
An interesting facet of the festival is that the core team, who are all volunteers (most are busy professionals the rest of the year), do not just give their time; they even pay their own way to be a part of it.
Anindo Ghosh, who has been involved with TGP since its second year, and has curated tracks as well as been a speaker, puts simply: “It’s become like family.” But what contributes to that atmosphere? “It’s the way it is run. Everyone has a voice.” Mekin Maheshwari, formerly of Flipkart and Yahoo, now running a foundation which aims to develop entrepreneurial mindsets amongst youth from difficult backgrounds, says it is the perspectives he gets and the people he meets that he prizes, which he attributes to the way the “open, warm and egalitarian” way the festival is run. For Javeeth Ahamed, business development professional and manager of the projects track, it is the drive to create that he gets from being at TGP that is the draw — he added ‘author’ to his bio because being at TGP inspired him to write his first novel — that, and a desire to give back, because “I’ve got here because people helped me, and this is a way I can help other people.” There’s also a selfish motive, he says: “The contacts! The people I meet here… I feel empowered, like I can find someone to help for anything I need, or someone else needs.”
How does the actual event list evolve? Rashmi Dhanwani, an independent arts consultant and curator when she is not being a part of TGP’s core team, says, “The process starts even before the funnel [the process by which prospective presenters pitch their sessions] is open when track managers and curators reach out to their networks and tell them about TGP, asking them to propose sessions and ideas. Once the funnel is open, it’s about keeping an eye on proposals coming in, reaching out to proposers to better understand their ideas and taking mental notes about the quality of the proposals. Once the funnel is closed and the final confirmations have to be made, it’s about finding those subtle balances between sessions that will make for an interesting event. We try to be as inclusive as possible. We also look at proposals through the POV of the audience, and try to choose sessions that are about an idea rather than a plug for a product.” It doesn’t stop there, Mr. Ghosh explains; there is then close collaboration with presenters, helping fine-tune, understand audience cues, coach them in dealing with questions.
The projects track grew organically from the festival, Mr. Ahamed says. So many people had found support for their projects at TGP that it made sense to make that a formal part of the event, which it is now, with a tie-up with the crowd-funding site Wishberry. TGP invites applications and selects a few projects that will get to make their pitches at the festival. Mr. Ahamed says that the big issue for most crowd-funding efforts is getting that initial seed funding, and the impetus from a TGP pitch has helped these firestarters get some kind of take-off velocity. This year, there has been a conscious decision to have only arts-related projects pitching: being presented are a board game, a documentary, and a folk music collective.
For the rest, there as session ranging from hot-button geeky topics like crypto-currency and 3-D printing to using public interest litigation to save the environment and engaging with the Indian conservative, to more flower-child areas like creative movement therapy and relaxation with the didgeridoo vibrations. Mr. Ghosh says that attendees are invited, encouraged even, to walk out of sessions, walk into others, then go back, to participate vigorously. “Don’t be surprised if a track organiser strongly suggests you attend a session, perhaps even propels you to one,” he says laughing. In response to a question about the inherent chaos of an unconference, which may unsettle more traditional minds, he says that it is, under the surface, far more organised in advance, as other core team members have pointed out, with and contingency plans for presenters who couldn’t make it. For instance the calibre of attendees means that there are potential presenters in the audience who could do impromptu sessions, and the organising team are also ready to step into the breach at any time.
The feel of TGP is one of vibrancy, but also of relaxed informality, which isn’t just because of the flip-flops and bright T-shirts. The physical space, at Bay 15, a resort in the Dona Paula area of Panjim, is designed to promote that informality, and exploit the fact that at any reasonably organised meeting of minds, like a seminar or conference, the true value of attending — in a time when feeds of presentations can be viewed online easily — is the networking. “The most valuable conversations are the hallway conversations,” Mr Shankar says. “In some sense, what we’re trying to do is to make as much of this hallway conversation as possible. It’s not just the kind of sessions, it is about the physical layout of the spaces as well. You have, at any given point, four different things happening; that means there four different spaces. You have to make a choice about where you’re going to be, you may need to wander from space to space. The layout is such that you have to pass through a community space, which includes an important community gathering spot, the bar. The whole idea is to throw people together.”
Goa undoubtedly attracts the conference market, but for most attendees, interaction with Goa and Goans is limited to the buffet, the bar, and the beach, and the hotel waitstaff. TGP wants to be more a part of Goa. “But honestly, we haven’t done as good a job as we would like to, but we’re trying,” Mr. Shankar says. “Some of it is because our networks aren’t as strong here as they are elsewhere. This time, we’re partnering with several local organisations including the GCCI, an industry body, and a few artists. We’re also planning to have a student pass to encourage more students to show up, in the hope that these are the folks who will anchor TGP in future years. The idea being that even though we heavily subsidise the cost of attending TGP, it might still be out of reach for a student.”
The other big change is that the organisers have formalised the structure, and have formed a non-profit, Atman Creative and Knowledge Development Foundation. “We intend to do stuff year-round instead of only the annual event,” Mr. Shankar says. “And some of this will continue to happen under the official umbrella of TGP.” Is it to enable donations and to be able to offer donors tax deductions? “Eventually, yes,” he says. “But we don’t yet have [that paperwork] in place. More importantly, we wanted to preserve the non-commercial aspect of it. You know, once you run an event a couple of times reasonably successfully, a lot of well-meaning people will come and give you advice on how to commercialise it. But commercialising also means that you optimise for revenue, which is not what we want to do. This is a passion project for us, and due to that it has taken on a certain character, attracted a certain set of people, and we want to protect that character as much as possible.”
Disclosure: The writer attempted to earn a pass to the event with a pitch. It got two votes.
