By Vidula Patil

IEEE Bombay Section Young Professionals (YP) in association with IEEE Region 10 Young Professionals organised a Young Professionals Meet up on 23rd October, 2016. The event was conducted at a co-working space, ‘Workbay’ in Santacruz, Mumbai between 3pm to 6pm. The meet up was open for final year students, graduate students and Young Professional members and was attended by 21 members. The primary objective of the event was to appraise the attendees about the Asia Pacific’s Young Professionals community and to encourage them to actively engage in activities and take up new initiatives. The event saw participation from three sections viz. Bombay, Madras and Delhi as well as provided a networking platform to the members.

The event took off with an introduction session by Mr. Nivas Ravichandran, IEEE R10 Young Professionals Co-ordinator. He gave an overview of the Young Professionals across the globe and within Asia-Pacific. He highlighted the importance of the community and how it can play instrumental role within each section being the workforce. He also brought to the table instances and experiences of various Young Professional affinity groups and talked about some of the events R10 Young Professionals has successfully conducted and planned for. He encouraged the attendees to keep up their good work and suggested some impactful initiatives. Next session was taken by Mr. Gandhar Suryavanshi, Secretary IEEE Bombay Young Professionals. He highlighted the activities taken up by Young Professionals Bombay Section. He threw some light on the internship and entrepreneurship development program for the students and Young Professionals and also emphasised on the MoU IEEE Bombay Section has signed with the incubator centre and how members can benefit from it. He concluded with a short note on the successful transition of student members to young professionals, who are now helping young professionals team and further willing to contribute to the same. His talk was complemented by Mr. Suyog Vyawahare, Vice Chair, IEEE Bombay Young Professionals, who took a brainstorming session wherein he addressed various issues faced by graduates and final year students. It was concluded by a networking session in the form of pizza party.

In the final session, the attendees were divided in four teams and asked to think of challenges which final year students, entry level or mid-career professionals face and come up with  solutions for the same. Following a time span of 25 minutes, each team was asked to present the challenges they thought of and their potential solutions. At the end, some of the  volunteers were assigned to different initiatives to ensure implementation of these proposed solutions .

Following this, the Meet up was concluded with a networking sessions wherein members became nostalgic sharing their memories of previous meetings and discussing some of the solutions proposed in the prior sessions and ideating on how can those be implemented. The event was successfully hosted by the IEEE Bombay Young Professionals team. A commendable contribution was from IEEE Bombay Young Professional core team member Vidula Patil, who regularly kept track of the registrations and other duties. The Section Young Professionals team is also thankful to Mr. Nivas and R10 Young Professionals for their incessant support and motivation.

By Vidula Patil                                                                                                                                                    , Young Professioonals Core Team Member, Bombay Section