CII Connect Madurai 2018 sets an agenda to become future-ready through education, employment and entrepreneurship

The temple city of Madurai hosted CII Connect Madurai 2018 on 9^th and 10^th February with a focus on developing southern Tamil Nadu as a value added ICT destination. The event was inaugurated by Dr M Manikandan, Hon’ble Minister for IT, Government of Tamil Nadu and it was sponsored by IT giants like HCL and Honeywell, besides many large companies in the field of ICT. Along with the list of speakers and panelists sharing their expertise and experience from a cross-section of IT and ITeS domains, the event conducted an interesting competition for students to encourage innovative ideas and find solutions to various local problems.

As a well-planned and meticulously executed seminar, CII Connect Madurai 2018 provided a platform for engaging and enlightening discussions on latest and emerging technologies, scope for jobs, need for training and skills in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, IOT, Machine Learning and other related areas. The discussions contributed to the expected outcomes from the event; this included establishing a CoE and incubation facility and training, Diversification of IT companies into AI, ML IoT, ESDM, colleges signing up for proposed CoE and incubating 10 news technology startups in 2 years.

The presence of students was another highlight of the event. While they participated in the Innovative Solutions Contest and eagerly waited to know the results, they also got to listen to inspirational stories of innovation and entrepreneurship from Madurai heroes who made it big globally.

Enlightening Panel Discussions
The themes for the panel discussion was perfectly matched to generates ideas and plans for executing the desired outcomes under “Policy Framework for Developing Southern Tamil Nadu as a Value Added ICT Destination”. The broad themes were:
Digital Revolution: Powering the Economic Growth
Engineering the Future: Role of New Age Technologies
New Age Technologies: Skilling for the futureTechnology
Startups: Redefining the ICT landscape

The panel on “New Age Technologies: Skilling for the future” constituted Mr B Subbaraman Centre Head – Madurai HCL Technologies Ltd, Dr Madhuri Dubey Founder, National Skills Network -NSN, Mr Dinesh Thukaram Director – Global Learning & Development Honeywell Technology Solutions , Dr Shasi Anand Director Kalasalingam University , Ms Nalinee Choudhary Corporate Trainer Zekelabs Technologies Pvt Ltd, Mr Awantik Das Co-Founder and Director, Zekelabs.

The emphasis on skill development in ICT and preparing students and employees for current and future jobs was discussed from various perspectives. Mr. Subbaraman moderated the session to provide a balanced view from the speakers who represented the academia, the industry, the training company and online media. Our founder Dr Madhuri Dubey, spoke about the need to balance technical skills with soft skills for 21^st century workforce. This was preceded by an account of how skill development and training is an integral part of the curriculum at Kalasalingam University, how Zekelabs is supporting academic institutions with skilling for present jobs through courses in latest technologies and L&D initiatives at Honeywell Technologies to keep the employees upskilled for emerging job roles.