Fortess Group Meeting

A very significant FORTESS (Former Employees of Tata Consultancy Services Association) event took place on Oct 28, 2018 at Chennai, India. Following a personal invite from Mr S Mahalingam (Vice President – FORTESS), a group of 70+ ex-TCSers showed up for a meeting of FORTESS at a conference hall in a residential neighbourhood in Chennai. While the opportunity for meeting fellow TCS-ers, some after several decades, was an incentive by itself, this group was also motivated by the cause underlying FORTESS, that of making a positive impact on society in several spheres of activity. Among those who had traveled to participate in the event were S Ramadorai, former Vice-Chairman and CEO of TCS, and also President – FORTESS, Anita Rajan, current COO of TATA STRIVE and member of the Governing Body of FORTESS and, Jayant Pendharkar, Secretary FORTESS and PVLN Rao from the US and also member of the Governing Body of FORTESS. Mr. N Lakshminarayanan, earlier with TCS and later CEO and Vice-Chairman of Cognizant was an active participant as well. Pawan Kumar, bringing along with him C S Murali, made a day trip from from Bengaluru to attend this get together. There were others also from Bengaluru who came to attend. Jayaramakrishnan (JRK) assiduously recorded attendance and contact details of all those who entered the venue hall. .

After Maha welcomed the gathering, set the context for the meeting and ran through the planned agenda, Ram took the stage and addressed the gathering.

Highlights of Ram’s speech were:

There is a whole lot of work to be done in the social sphere. We can take education, or health, or environment etc. each one is a huge area of opportunity as far as the contribution is concerned
After retiring from active roles in TCS, he is busier than before, due to his involvement in several social organizations and causes. His approach has been to go to the field and experience the activity and contribution first hand – this is the only way to get realistic feedback on the impact these organizations make on the ground. His message to the gathering was that if anyone is looking for a meaningful role to play in this space, there are ample opportunities
Participation is such causes is all about giving. Giving in terms of time and energy, knowledge and skills, and access to one’s network. Money plays a part too but that is not the only way. What is clearly discouraged is someone having an expectation of what is in it for him or her.
Engagement in these activities is all about impact and outcome. As people who have worked in one of the world’s largest global organizations, all of us take pride in having played a part in the growth of TCS. We have the same opportunity to do so again in FORTESS.

Following Ram was Jayant with his humorous account of how the idea of FORTESS was born, the early days and the path traversed till now. He said he was extremely motivated by the turnout that day and was sure that the path ahead was bright. He urged people to become members and also propagate the message to other ex-TCSers in their network asking them to become members too.

In an earlier meeting of FORTESS, the need for rebuilding the FORTESS website as well as implementing a collaboration platform was discussed. Paramasivam (Param) and Ramasubramanian (Subbu) had volunteered to take this on and present a plan as well as a prototype for consideration. In the months that followed, this team had made progress and had kept the Governing Body updated. Besides identifying an open source platform called Discourse for collaboration purposes, they had also selected a partner company Vajra Global whose CEO Ganapathy was a former TCS employee. Ganapathy’s team had developed a concept for the FORTESS website as well as configured the Discourse platform to meet the identified basic requirements. The work was also reviewed by K Padmanabhan

Now it was time to present the revamped FORTESS website as well as the collaboration platform. As Ganapathy went through each step of the demonstration, the environment became animated with several in the audience raising questions on specific features, integration, security etc. to which Param, Subbu and Ganapathy responded. After all, there was a collective experience of several thousand person-years in the room of having built and deployed mission-critical applications for global clients and it was understandable that an IT platform representing such experience had to meet exacting standards. Several of the inputs given were taken into the future roadmap of the platform but on the whole the nervous team doing the demo came away with a sense of having accomplished their mission. The team presented a plan to Go Live with the website and platform on Nov 6. There was a lot of work to be done but there was confidence that this date would be met.

PVLN Rao then made a short speech about the activities of FORTESS in the USA. He made an appeal to the audience to refer former TCS-ers in their network who are currently located in the US to him so that he could follow-up and get them on board as members.

Mahesh, former TCS-er and later with Cognizant, presented his platform MadRasana and his experiences in bringing to light local musical talent, currently confined to Carnatic music but could potentially be expanded to other areas as well. He gave an instance of how a Carnatic instrumental music featuring an ancient musical instrument was made a platform for further refinement by musicians in North and SouthAmerica, leading to a large number of views in YouTube and in the process eliciting enquiries from persons in Argentina and Brazil who have interest in learning to play this instrument. His point was that we now have the power of a global communication medium, namely, the Internet which, if used effectively, can bring global exposure and potentially financial rewards too, to local talent in various spheres. He left the audience with the thought that FORTESS can collaborate in several ways with his MadRasana initiative. This presentation also showed how varied the projects supported by FORTESS can be.

Finally, Shivasubramanian co-ordinated a session to surface ideas for FORTESS from the audience. The issues for interaction among members were three- Membership Drive, Identification of Programmes and Projects to be put on the Data Base, and Organisation of periodic events for networking. Due to lack of time, the focus of the discussion was confined to expanding the membership base and entry criteria.

It was suggested and agreed that we do away with the current norm of five years as the minimum tenure of employment in TCS as the basic criteria for membership. Going forward, it would be sufficient for an aspiring member to be recommended by an existing member to be admitted to FORTESS, so long as the proposed joinee had been employed in TCS. With respect to expanding the membership base, Pawan Kumar volunteered to lead the membership drive – this was enthusiastically accepted by all present. Pawan started in right earnest asking all those present but not yet members to get on board as members immediately.

Another suggestion was to get names and details of former TCSers from Linkedin TCS Group.

The meeting ended with a note from Maha who suggested that such meetings be held at periodic intervals to ensure more face-to-face discussions as well as to increase bonding between members. He thanked the participants for their active participation. Ram had a final word of appreciation for Maha who energetically championed this meeting, to all those who presented at the session and for those present.

The team then eagerly headed to the buffet table loaded with sumptuous food from a leading caterer in Chennai. Vigorous networking continued over lunch before the participants dispersed.

Ram addressing the Meeting