Here is a story of a young lady, perhaps some of you know her.

"I graduated from Stanford University in 2003 with a BS in Computer Science. I minored in Dance and Social and Cultural Anthropology. Dance has continued to play a major role in my life. While I was at Stanford, working closely with the Dance and Anthropology departments, I organized and taught the first university course on Indian Classical dance to thirty students. As a result, this course was formally included in the University’s dance curriculum.

After completing my undergraduate studies at Stanford, I joined ID Analytics, a company focused on identity theft prevention. I collaborated with a team of modelers to create analytics-based software and implemented intricate algorithms that created a detailed picture of a person’s identity from their “data footprints” throughout the economy.

After spending nearly two years at ID Analytics, I joined Global-Analytics, a small startup based in California with back-end operations in India. Global-Analytics provides predictive analytics and risk management solutions to clients across many industries. I was drawn to the daunting, yet exciting prospect of working with a small global startup that offered unique leadership opportunities.

My work has been integral to the growth of Global-Analytics on many levels. Within six months of joining, I was assigned as primary project manager on our largest client, Hewitt Associates. My projects soon generated over 50% of the company’s revenue. Using Hewitt’s massive database of human resources data, we developed human capital analytic models to predict the impact of people-related decisions on shareholder value. Human resources are often the most expensive resources, yet until now, companies had no effective way of building rigorous business cases around this area of spending. I enjoyed using these analytical insights to train and mentor my team in India.

My cross-cultural and management experiences equipped me to tackle the challenges of virtually managing a team more than 10,000 miles away. Carefully examining the shortcomings in our organization, I created detailed procedures enabling our company to operate in an efficient manner globally. I was responsible for setting up the company’s project management process and training junior managers in the US and India as the company grew from 20 people to the current headcount of 120.

As my career progressed, I also continued to develop my Odissi skills, paving the way for the ubiquitous role it plays in my life today. I interacted with a diverse group of artists, from representing North America at the International Odissi festival in Malaysia, to teaching Ricky Martin Odissi movements prior to his world tour, to completing a thirty-city US tour with the Orissa Dance Academy of India. These experiences have nurtured my ability to effectively interact with individuals from different backgrounds and provided me with insight on the impact an individual can have on a single person, collective audience, or entire community.

About six months ago, I was assigned full responsibility for the company’s largest initiative – the launch of a consumer lending company based in the UK. My responsibilities as a manager increased tremendously as I coordinated all aspects of the project, including legal and regulatory issues, licensing, compliance, vendor selection, marketing, technical infrastructure and analytics. Initially, the sheer number of moving parts, diverse set of risks and aggressive timeline were daunting. However, with precise organization, intense focus on high-priority tasks and continuous attention to critical path items, we overcame numerous barriers and launched on time."

Dear Friend:                                                                                                                       June 10, 2009.

Virtual One Family is a platform to bring global Odias together in a deeper, beneficial way that transcends geographical distances, generational differences, gender separations and even social inequiies. Furthermore, we aspire to achieve this in a fun, entertaining, educational and facile environment. This social network platform focuses on Odia heritage or Odia experiences to some degree, but it is very inclusive -- Youth Forums, Women's Forum, Senior Forums, Dance Interest Groups are all possible under the platform.

For illustration, let's look at the theme of "younger generation Odias in North America". Typical questions and issues of interest here might be: What are some bi-cultural issues that are important for the younger generation? What is it that will excite our youth to connect with each other in a deeper way? How do we facilitate the older youth to mentor the younger ones? How can the youth contribute to volunteerism in the USA, Canada or India, etc.? What can we do or start that will pave the way for the younger and older generation Odias here to feel a greater bond and shared interest?  How do we measure our success? How do we sustain and innovate in our effort?

We will start off with a strong Youth Program for the global Odias at the upcoming, 40th Convention of the North American Odias. Many of you have graduated from college years ago and some ofyou are still in college. We would like to be in touch, learn from what you have done so far, rejoice in your successes and create a "Virtual One Family" in short.

Clearly we cannot do much without the leading participation of the youth such as you and other outstanding youngsters. I invite you to participate in the Convention not only to partake in fun & games and soak in a bit of the culture/heritage milieu, but also some seriously interesting topics. We are thinking of two Seminar Tracks at the convention that may hold special appeal to you. This I will briefly describe below. However, for it's success we need people to participate as audience, we need speakers who can share their experience, voice their opinions, articulate their thoughts. We need youth like you who would step forward and mentor other youngsters at school or early college level.  We would like to build a One Virtual Family where we re-integrate across our generational and geographical boundaries or separations!

We would like to start a more permanent Youth Forum that does not die soon after the convention is over..  We would like to build a networking system, a mentoring foundation, a meaningful dialogue  while creating channels or infrastructures to have the "traditional fun" as well. (One such fun activity might be arranging a culture or volunteering trip to India/Orissa, e.g.). 

Of course we need your ideas and your participatory involvement. We will be there to facilitate and help as needed.
Your questions, comments and ideas are most welcome.

love,
Darshan

We have created this virtual networking site (http://OneFamily.seedsnet.org) to support the concept of Virtual One Family. This has most all the features of Flickr, Facebook, You-tube, blogger and more, but is tailored commercial-free and safe use by us. So feel free to try it out and see if more of your friends would create a forum for themselves and manage it themselves.

The OneFamily site itself is not limited to the youth. Any Odia or lover of things Odisha can and should become a member to build that bridge and connectivity to realize the "One Family" concept. Forums and special interest groups can easily coexist within this platform.