Day 6 In India

Day 6-January 8, 2014

  Today we visited the research wing of one of the world's biggest companies, Microsoft.  Microsoft has five or six businesses in India and a location here in Bangalore.   We spent today visiting Microsoft's Research division.    Microsoft Research India is very active in "rigorous research and exploratory pilots rather than product, business, or partner development."  At Microsoft Research India, there are nine areas of concentration. Our hosts for the day, Ed Cutrell, Kalika Bali, & Indrani Medhi, are part of the Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM)group.  The mission of the TEMs group "is to study, design, build, and evaluate technologies and systems that are useful for people living in underserved rural and urban communities."
They "believe that computing is a profoundly important tool that can be used to improve the lives of people around the world."

  Microsoft Research India is much closer to a university setting than a corporate one.  This division of Microsoft is more concerned with production professional papers and their publication than it is with producing a product.   Their research can be classified in four categories.

•   Health, Health Organizations and Health   Education.  
•  Education
•  Human Computer Interaction
•  Context & Critique

 


    To illustrate some of the projects they work on Kalika Bali told about her project involving "code-mixing."  In India, the national language is Hindi, but in the Bangalore area, most speak and write in a language called Kannada.  Next, mix in the fact that most people in India speak English also.  When a person speaks in multiple languages at the same time, switching back and forth from one to the other, they can be using Hindi, Kannada and English all in the same conversation.  Social Media has had a huge impact on India also, especially with the younger generation.  On social media sites, people converse very informally.  Much like a casual conversation, a user may be switching back and forth between 1 or 2 or maybe even 3 languages.  Next you have to take in account online slang or abbreviations that are frequently used.  Combine all these factors and you have an example of code mixing.  In order to develop future technologies, these areas need to be studied.  For example, if you want to create a speech recognition program like Siri, you have to take into account that  many people use code mixing when speaking. Or the same can be said for normal type written searches.  Mixing so many different "codes"  or languages has to be taken into account.  Kalika is involved with a current project examining a Bollywood Forum on Facebook and examining the concept of code mixing in that particular forum.  Bollywood is a popular form of film in India & many different languages and abbreviations are used to discuss Bollywood online. 


     Another project that Microsoft Research India was involved with was called  VideoKheti.    VideoKheti is "a mobile system that uses speech, graphics, and touch interaction to help low-literate farmers in rural India find and watch agricultural extension videos in their own language and dialect."  There were some successes and some drawbacks to this project, but every project helps them examine how technology can positively impact these underdeveloped areas.  With nearly all of TEM's projects,the group may have less product impact, but the research could have a profound societal impact. 

       TEM projects hope to shed light on understanding existing and potential tech users in developing communities.  Another example of this is a project Indrani Medhi told us about.  The team created a project aimed at introducing and examining social networking among the farming community in Karnataka.  She described it as Facebook for Farmers. In Karnataka, farmers work closely with the local agricultural extension agencies.  TEMs provided 8 smart phones to representatives from the ag extensions, gave them instructions and encouraged them to aid the rural farmers in using social networking.  The program is only 3 weeks old & already has 160 farmers registered.  By examining how this demographic may use social networking could lead to future developments in how technology can serve those farmers.  

  It was quite a fascinating day spent in a gorgeous state of the art facility in a very "high rent" district in Bangalore.  As with all our hosts, Ed Cutrell joined us for another incredible lunch in the Canteen with all the other Microsoft employees.  Since the food in Southern, India is very well spiced...I hadn't noticed that I don't see salt & pepper shakers sitting on every table here like we do in the US.  I had to take a picture of it since it is such a rarity.  But of course that picture did not turn out for some reason.  Luckily, I noticed salt & pepper shakers on the table at Indian Coffee House.

  

 If I haven't mentioned it yet...Dinner in India is not traditionally served until 8pm.  So with plenty of time to kill after Microsoft, we went back down to Mahatma Gandhi Road to have the gentlemen get their belts re-sized just a little bit & then stop by Indian Coffee house for another great cup of coffee for less change than I can find under my car seat.  We also took the opportunity to visit a few side streets in the Commercial Street area to see what we missed the other day.  We are definitely contributing to the stimulation of the Indian economy.  

Also noticed a few other things that stood out to me:

It is not unusual to see little kids(or even infants) riding on the front of motorcycles.  I have seen as many as 5 family members on one bike & am hoping to get a picture of that soon too!

 

 

Back at the Belt Vendor for more belts & re-sizing some from the other day

 

Only second box of tissues I have seen in India in almost one week

Only the 2nd salt & pepper shaker I have seen too!

The traffic is crazy here.  I get fascinated and can watch it for hours.   Traffic comes at you from all directions at the same time....this video link only gives you a brief glimpse.

There are plenty of more pictures from today on Facebook.