Nikhil Kulkarni

I had been out of the startup/tech events circuit for a while, primarily because of what you’ll see in the post ahead 🙂 and also because it’s usually the same set of people one comes across in Bangalore.

But when Paras tweeted about hosting an unconference with an uncommon format and agenda, it seemed quite interesting and I signed up for it.

Are you in Bangalore on 11th March 2018?

I am hosting an invite-only #InvertedPassion unconference with in-depth and lightning talks. Details + nomination form: https://t.co/5edWzwntF1

Also hosting the awesome @kunalb11 for a fireside chat

RT and tag your Bangalore friends plz

— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) February 13, 2018

One of the notable features (it’s also a product after all!) is that there’s no passive participation and everyone has to participate by giving a talk or involving in one of the activities.

While it seemed like a good opportunity to meet some interesting people and know more about what’s going on (esp in areas like crypto etc), I thought it’ll also be a good place for me to talk about some of the travel I did over the last year or so. Some time back while  was putting together a blog post (which is still in drafts), I was surprised (pleasantly, of course!) at the amount of the travel I’ve done and while some of it was for work, a large part of it was just personal travel. Why not share this with an audience that’s interested?

Here are some photos from my talk:

Here’s the deck I used for the presentation:

Some of the other interesting experiences from the event:

Silent introductions! You’ve to be part of one such event to understand what it’s like 🙂

Silent introductions at #InvertedPassion Bangalore Unconference. pic.twitter.com/HprP2NHmPv

— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) March 11, 2018

An activity where each participant had to recommend one must-read book:

#readinglist sorted! An exercise where everyone in the conference was asked to name a book they loved! “Felt” like it should be shared with everyone :). #invertedpassion pic.twitter.com/HG8NqCYLgz

— Neil Roy (@NeilGoesDigital) March 11, 2018

There was a book exchange:

Books people brought for book exchange at #InvertedPassion Unconference.

I’m so excited 😀 pic.twitter.com/R9Upre3liY

— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) March 11, 2018

The most fun for me was the clay modelling session and making clay-mojis:

Clay modelling thanks to Dipti from YourStory https://t.co/UpjDpgW7In

— Paras Chopra (@paraschopra) March 11, 2018

This is what people came up with!

#InvertedPassion was great. Guided everyone through meditation.

Learnings :@kunal : As a founder you need to change constantly and fast.
Roby: Apply to YC once you’ve established product market fit. @paraschopra is building a great community.Thanks for the opportunity 🙂

pic.twitter.com/F1x312f05T

— Karthik.Manjunath (@kar666) March 12, 2018

Overall, it was a Sunday very well-spent! Paras is taking a very interesting approach to community building through Inverted Passion and it’s good to be a part of one such community. If you’re interested to know more, do follow Paras On Twitter. There’s also an interesting Slack channel, ping Paras to get yourself added 🙂