What makes us a better workplace? What makes us better workers? What will find us better recognition of our skills and services globally? What will make Indian developers grow-up the value chain? What makes us better human beings?

These are questions we've asked ourselves at Srijan often. There is no "one" answer to these existential questions. People at IDEO, a leading design and innovation firm coined the term "T-shaped people", where the vertical aspect of the "T" represents depth in a certain field/skill, while the horizontal bar repreents breadth - signifying a general understanding/knowledge of a variety of skills.

“Regardless of whether your goal is to innovate around a product, service, or business opportunity, you get good insights by having an observant and empathetic view of the world...empathy allows you to have original insights about the world.” ~ Tim Brown, IDEO

It is this spirit, with which we are announcing the "Beyond Tech" initiative at Srijan. As part of this, we'll be inviting people from different walks of life, who excel in their respective areas, and actually are themselves T-shaped people. These will be people from backgrounds and skills in design, usability, writing, teaching, blogging, technology, management, innovation, venture funding, enterpreneurship, and so on. These people would be serving, or former, CXOs and senior manager at various technology, branding, design firms; well known bloggers; published authors; executive coaches; editors of print and online magazines.

The event will be open to non-Srijan folks. Further, we'll be streaming this live, make recordings, and publish these as podcasts on our website.