NetIP Dallas – 2011 Year in Review!

Net IP Dallas had a terrific year; Being awarded the  “Best Large Chapter Award” in 2011 at the 20^th Net IP Conference at DC, the current board members led  by our energetic President, Nobby Ahluwalia and calm and laid back Vice President , Karthik Muraliraj wrapped up a year with nostalgic memories from a variety of events throughout the year.

This year our chapter organized numerous events with a focus to give back to the community and fundraised/donated a total of $ 7010 to different organizations! The first quarter marked a Saturday of Service with the Pub Crawl for Cancer, March of Dimes and Asha for Education’s fundraiser.

 The month of May added some cheer when Net IP Dallas members and non members participated in the Dragon Boat Festival and rowed with the Breast cancer awareness division. Through continued efforts and an overwhelming participation from all our members, we were able to donate to Doctors without Borders and Tsumani Flood Relief. 

In addition to raising funds, several members also volunteered and built a Ramp with the Dallas Ramps Project, participated in the BAPS walk benefitting children’s medical center and organized bone marrow drive to help build the south Asian blood donor directory.

Finally the community service pillar marked the year end with a monetary contribution to the North Texas Food Bank and Baal Daan through its mind blowing, well planned and well attended “Bollywood themed Charity Gala” organized by our Special Events Chair, Jignasa Sharma.  We are thankful to Vishal Bagchi, our community services chair whose leadership and events enabled us to build our “good karma” by volunteering and donating.

As an organization that celebrates cultural diversity, Net IP Dallas hosted and organized a range of events that helped promote cultural awareness.  Our events during the Cultural Weekend, the “Ultimate Friday night art party” that brought together international wines, best chefs and great local artist, the Arboretum’s Artscape event” that showcased works created from varied media such as photography, paintings, woodwork and jewelry and the colorful “Holi Hai” event added some vibrant colors and relaxing tone to the hot summer weekend in March. Our dinner clubs and book clubs gave opportunity to several members to network while taking their reading and taste buds to a different level. 

Our movie club events allowed us to catch up with movies like Delhi belly, Patiala House, Dhobi Ghat and Mumbai Diaries. These events were very well attended and gave Net IP Dallas a wonderful opportunity to partner with Dallas International Film Festival to conduct a viewing of “LBW – Life before Wedding” – an independent movie made by a local and first time director.  Our chapter also hosted a “Meet the movie makers” enabling our members to mingle with the movie makers.

Our cultural awareness events were unique and diverse in nature and each event resulted in increased membership for our chapter.  Kudos to our Cultural Awareness Chair, Megha Vyas for raising the bar for future board members!

Our political awareness chair Vasu Vats built strong alliances with the Greater Dallas Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (GDIACC) and made it possible for our members to participate in events organized by World Affairs Council with the Governor Nikki Haley and Robert Kaplan, an author who has written extensively on a range of foreign policy and national security issues.  We were also able to attend the South Asian Peace Conference and participate in different discussions on the situations/issues challenging peace among the south Asian countries.

 Several professionals within Dallas Fort Worth attended a resume workshop organized by our professional development Chair Sid Singhal. His efforts helped build a very good partnership with “The National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP)” which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that cultivates, supports, and promotes Asian American leaders. NetIP Dallas participated in few professional development series like “ Stretch your Career with networking”  and “Body language and Non verbal communication”  that were very helpful to many Net IP Dallas members .

Third Thursdays of every month continued to be very popular mainly due to our Happy Hour event with a consistent turnout of 60-90 members each time.  A great platform for our diverse members to network, it also proved to give our chapter an opportunity to promote our upcoming events and recruit new members.  Our membership Chair Hemi Ahluwalia and Karthik Muraliraj combined their ideas to use large presentation board to list all our upcoming events and accept membership applications during the happy hour, thus significantly increasing our membership each month.

Finally all work and no sports will pamper our calories and so our sports Chair Anish Thakrar introduced us to a special evening of “Zumba” and allowed us to think of sports as a fun activity with the ‘speed zone race car event.’  Many members also enjoyed a discounted rate for a ranger’s game!

As we look back through the year, some of the key factors for a successful year has been prompt website updates/changes and literally anytime support by Manjesh Reddy (Dir of Technology), timely payments, collecting event and membership fees, funds disbursement and budget watch by Sunil Sajnani (VP of Finance) and our updated face book page and timely creation of our events page by Puja Amin (Secretary).  

Congratulations to the entire 2011 board of Net IP Dallas and to all members of our chapter who made all our events and this year a memorable, successful and fulfilling one.

By Swati Halady (Natl Liaison)

NetIP SFBA – 2011 Year in Review!

NetIP SFBA’s goal in 2011 was to provide unique and quality events.  We brought 35 events to the Bay Area and raised $8000 for charities, including ASHA for Education, UNICEF and Hospital for Hope. 

We kicked off the year with “Entrepreneurial Politics” with Vivek Wadhwa, tech entrepreneur and Ash Kalra, City Council Member, stimulating a challenging discussion about immigrant entrepreneurs and the government’s ability/lack of ability to support them.  This event quickly led to a NetIP SFBA first and provided an opportunity for audience members, including Rishi Chopra, Political Awareness Pillar Chair, to be invited on a panel with Tom Brokaw of NBC’s Nightly News. 

“Karaoke at Kaama” was yet another opportunity for a board member to share his skills for the local community.  Ankit Jain, Vice President created local buzz by adding a twist to his DJ skills and mixed karaoke videos for a night of Bollywood & bhangra music, allowing people to serenade the new local venue or scream their hearts out. 

“Vegas Invasion” was a challenge that NetIP SFBA decided to lead for the West Coast chapters with the intent to allow an opportunity for the nearby chapter members to connect for a weekend in Las Vegas.  It brought together four West Coast chapters – SFBA, LA-OC, Phoenix and Chicago.  All attendees had front of the line access to the hot day and night clubs for ongoing networking throughout the weekend.  With the support of all chapters, we were able to turn this event into a charitable event, donating $2000 to ASHA for Education.   

Our annual Black & White Affair was give a Masquerade Ball twist with a casino theme.  It attracted 250 guests and we were able to raise $5000 for Hospital for Hope, which aims to aim to fund the construction of a hospital in an extremely under-served area of the rural Indian state of Jharkhand.  The goal of the Black & White Affair is to bring together the NetIP SFBA community, but also tighten the Bay Area community by raising money for a charity with the support of local businesses and partnerships.

NetIP SFBA successfully achieved its goal of providing unique and quality events.  We are more than a networking forum and aspire to be the facilitating vehicle used by South Asian professionals to improve and enhance the communities in which we work and live. 

We are grateful to have received recognition from North America with a Boscar for Most Improved Chapter.  With the support of the local community, businesses and partners, we hope to continue to be a platform for community growth and development.  We hope to continue to be influenced by the power of Silicon Valley and be innovative, grow and progress into an even more successful 2012.  Raising the bar!

NetSAP DC – 2011 Year in Review!

NetSAP DC had a tremendous year in 2011 with various events surrounding NetIP’s 4 main pillars: Political, Community Service, Professional Development, and Cultural.

With over 6000 community reach and a board of nearly 20 individuals, NetSAP DC was able to execute a number of meaningful events for its 300 official members and Greater Washington Area community members.

An example of some of our amazing events included:

• NetSAP DC’s partnership with the Indian Embassy for a concert featuring The Parikama Band, a famous Rock ‘n Roll Band from New Delhi; there was an audience of over 200 people.
• The 11^th annual SALTAF (South Asian Literary and Theatre Arts Festival) in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution. This is our flagship event in which prominent South Asian authors and performers from around the world come to discuss their published books and personal experiences.
• A Resume Building Workshop in partnership with Kaplan and Aerotek,
• The Asian Heritage Month Professional Panel event, in partnership with Deloitte Consulting, where prominent leaders from all sectors including non-profit, private, and government spoke about their personal experiences and challenges they faced  to reach to their C-suite level positions. There were over 100 people at this panel event.    
• NetSAP DC participates in Serv-A-Thon and Ghandi’s Be the Change National Day of Service annually.

NetSAP DC received many awards thanks to its dedication to the community, including the Mayor’s Community Service Award of 2011 and also 3 Boscars at the annual NetIP Conference held in Washington, DC.

NetIP Seattle – 2011 Year in Review!

NetIP Seattle has gone through its most challenging and incredible year ever! Our board collapsed in 2011 Q2 and left the chapter in a stage of distress and uncertainty. We had less than 20 paid members and $2000 or less in our bank.

Aviral Gupta (VP Operations) took charge as the acting President and grouped couple of active board members to take NetIP Seattle forward in the year. They threw out the old working model and defined new mission statement, value proposition, board roles/responsibilities etc. in accordance to best practice model available on officer central. We did an open call for new board members and received more than 50+ applicants in less than 2 weeks. Within a month we were back up and running w/ a new board of 14 individuals!! This was not easy turnaround but we are proud to say NetIP Seattle was back in business in 30 days!!

The new board in leadership of the President marched ahead and painted the best NetIP year ever! Our high level achievements for the period of June to November 2011 include the below:

1) Raised sponsorship worth $11,000!!*

2) Quadrupled our paid membership in less than 6 months!

3) Re-Established partnership and organized events together w/ esteemed local partners including Seattle Art Museum, YPIN, TiE, TWIF, CRY, Yelp! to name a few.

4) Organized 3-4 events per moth embracing all NetIP pillars and multiple of them were sold out including the Annual Diwali Gala!! Most of the events were brand new event ideas – never executed in NetIP Seattle history!

5) Created VP positions for each pillar for direct accountability and event programming delivery!

6) Technology Updates: Transitioned to Google Apps for team communication and collaboration assisting in knowledge share and proper documentation.  Updated website and weekly newsletter template.

7) Raised $1000 for CRY Seattle as beneficiary org for our Annual Diwali Gala

We did have some challenges wrt new board members ramping up to NetIP and delivering at the same time. Old board members and the President were immensely helpful in guiding them along and kept an open communication thread!!

*includes Kind, $ and NetIP NA Grant

Fashion Show at the NetIP Seattle Diwali Gala benefitting CRY Seattle

NetIP Members w/ Khaled Hosseini on a NetIP Seattle Partner event

NetIP Board raising a toast after the successful NetIP Seattle Diwali Gala benefitting CRY

End of Summer BBQ event on Alki Beach

Get Cookin’ event benefitting Jubille Women Center

NetIP Seattle Yacht Party event benefitting Tasveer Seattle sponsorship packet

NetIP Houston – 2011 Year in Review!

NetIP Houston – An Explosive Year!

2011 has been a year of many firsts for NetIP Houston. The best analogy for our growth and our challenges is “raising a child.” For those of you who have experienced this, or even been a close aunt or uncle, you will understand what I mean. Five years ago when the Houston chapter was revived, the board members were motivated but the population was not. They had been burned by the earlier board due to lack of activity and it was clear that the group was not going to grow rapidly and trust had to be established again with the members.

It’s the same feeling you get when you see a child trying to crawl and stumbling and falling. You feel helpless because you know they can do it, but they are just not ready and nothing you can do will push the process along.

Slow and steady, over the past four years, Houston has been building its credibility through a varied range of events such as pottery classes, rock climbing, community service events, networking mixers, dinner circles and speaker series. In 2011, Houston finally reached its tipping point.  We had built enough credibility to start the year off with a bang.

In January 2011, Houston signed up more members than our total number the previous year.  As the year progressed, we definitely saw a decline or rather a steady and slow increase but what was interesting is that people we had never spoken to or didn’t know at all were signing up because of word of mouth.  That in our book is a sure sign of things going right.

The other serendipitous occurrence was that some of our existing board were involved in other community groups in Houston. Our President was involved with the Indo Action Political Committee, our Treasurer was involved with the Indo American Chamber of Greater Houston, and a leadership effort called Share Our Secrets, our Political chair was involved directly with the Mayor’s camp, and we had a long standing history of supporting the India Culture Center, one of Houston’s oldest associations.

The board therefore decided on an outreach strategy. 2011 was the year of building community relationships. Each one of us reached out to different groups we had connections with and we either supported or co-sponsored events with them. For instance we had a booth at the India Culture Center Independence Day Event, we held a Fashion Show for Holi and for the International Festival that came to town, we supported the Mayor’s campaign by helping in the Call Center and we brought down the house at a local radio show event.  This strategy paid off for us in more than one way.  This year we won the Community Outreach Boscar at the national conference and we are now a well-known name in the larger desi community.

With increased visibility comes increased responsibility of maintaining a positive profile in the community. One failed event and we could potentially lose some of the good will we have built, one brick at a time. As a result we now think of the impact of our actions on a wider scale. It’s easier to have things go wrong with a small group, you can manage the damage. But if things go wrong with say a radio station, then the echoing impacts are unmanageable.

 We learned several key lessons in 2011 whilst trying to protect our reputation. Our Fashion Show with a local radio station required a significant amount of damage control due to miscommunication of roles and expectations. Several conversations and discussions later we delivered a spectacular show and we continue to support and be supported by one of Houston’s most popular and fast growing Desi radio stations.

Our most exciting event in 2011 was the Fashion Show we did for Houston’s International Festival. This year the India was one of the focus countries of the event so we felt very privileged to show off Indian outfits. Of course coordination was a night mare. Getting people in and out, selecting the clothes, deciding the theme, practicing the walk; all of it was handled by a crew of three-four people with a lot of help from friends. We picked regional sarees from different eras and then we had a segment on “nouveau Indian clothing,” a blend between East and West. It certainly helped that we have a fashion designer who serves on our board.

As we wrap up 2011 and reflect, we know we have a lot more work to do. We need to establish our political events, we are hosting Krishnan Narayan in March 2012 as part of our “For the Love of Food” fundraiser where we raise money for Houston’s food bank and have a cooking competition as part of the event, we know we have to establish our leadership series and engage many more board members. But all this is part n parcel of growing up, we feel like we are barely in our adolescent stage right now and just about to shoot up into adulthood. The good thing is a fair percentage of the board is staying on, some new enthusiasts want to join and we have nothing but bigger and better things to look forward to in 2011.

NetIP Philadelphia – 2011 Year in Review!

NetIP Philadelphia had a successful year in 2011, building the brand locally through having consistently well-attended and fun events.

Our members know they can expect a networking night every month and a dinner event every other month. Because of the tough economic times, we make sure our dinner events are affordable and that we get discounts at our networking nights.

 In addition, we have also formed partnerships with noteworthy groups from the Philadelphia area. These include the Art Museum, where we have recruited musical acts and arranged for our members to get free admission during several Art After 5 events.

 For the fourth consecutive year, we participated and helped market the annual walk of the local chapter of Service and Education for Women Against Abuse. The walk has grown every year, with this year’s attracting over 25 people and raising over $1000 for the charity.

 NetIP Philadelphia is also experimenting with new and innovative ways to raise money for charity. In the Dine to Donate program, participating restaurants donate a percentage of the sales to a designated charity for anyone who says they heard about the restaurant through NetIP.

 NetIP Philadelphia has led the way in engaging young professionals in Philadelphia for the past several years. We have a strong standing in cultural events and community service, and have plans to build our professional development and political awareness pillars in the new year.