[silk] Invitation to presentation and film screening at NIAS

[Carol Upadhya]

Dear Silklisters, Sorry for not sending personal invitations to all the Silklisters who helped me with this project. Hope you will be able to come: ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dear friend, As you may be aware, the Sociology and Social Anthropology Unit of the National Institute of Advanced Studies has, over the last two years, been carrying out a research project entitled ‘Indian IT Professionals in India and the Netherlands: Work, Culture, and Transnationalism’, funded by the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development (IDPAD). As the final event in this programme, we will present some of the key findings and screen two films that were produced as part of the project. We invite you to participate in the programme and give us your valuable feedback on our research and the films. Please treat this as a personal invitation. Date:  Friday, March 24, 2006 Time:  4.00 to 7.00 p.m.(tea at 3.30) Venue:  Auditorium Building, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science campus. You are cordially invited to join us for dinner after the programme. Kindly confirm your participation. The agenda and further details will be sent after we hear from you.   Yours sincerely, Carol Upadhya A.R. Vasavi ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Coding Culture – Bangalore’s Software Industry A series of three films by Gautam Sonti in collaboration with Carol Upadhya produced by National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India supported by Indo-Dutch Programme for Alternatives in Development, The Netherlands   The Indian software outsourcing industry has emerged as a key node of the global economy. The series of ethnographic films, Coding Culture: Bangalore’s Software Industry, explores the cultures of outsourced work and the moulding of a new workforce to cater to this global high-tech services industry. Each of the three films focuses on a single company, representing one of the major types of software company found in Bangalore: a medium-sized Indian-owned company software services company (Mphasis: The ‘M’ Way); the offshore software development centre of a U.S.-based IT company (Sun Microsystems: [EMAIL PROTECTED]); and a small ‘cross-border’ startup company that produces its own software products and markets them to global customers (July Systems: July Boys). All three companies are engaged in the production of software products or services for markets outside of India, but the nature of their work and their position in the global economy differ, producing significant variations in their cultures of work. Each film revolves around a distinct theme that is central to the outsourcing industry as a whole, but that also has wider sociological significance: the systems of time and people management that are typical of these new global workplaces; the functioning of multicultural ‘virtual teams’ and the absorption of Indian software engineers into a global corporate culture; and the new identities that are emerging in this highly transnational sector of the Indian economy. The ‘M’ Way: Time + People = Money The ‘M’ Way was shot inside MphasiS Limited, a medium-sized Indian IT software services company that typifies this highly competitive business, in which the provision of high quality and low-cost service is the key to attracting and retaining customers. The film focuses on two teams (one for software development and one for testing, or quality control) that work on a single project for a U.S.-based customer, depicting the high-pressure work atmosphere that prevails in this industry. Activities must be tightly coordinated within and between the project teams, and also with the customer site, with which the Indian engineers are in constant communication. July Boys: New Global Players July Boys focuses on a small ‘startup’ company in Bangalore that designs and produces software products for cellular service providers in Europe and the U.S. Turning the tables on the usual outsourcing story, July Systems has leveraged U.S.-based venture capital and Indian technical expertise to break into the latest high-tech markets. The film explores the creation of a Silicon Valley-style work culture within this ‘cross-border’ company that has one leg in Bangalore and the other in Santa Clara, California. It also highlights the emergence of new kinds of identities (global, transnational, cosmopolitan) that incorporate and transcend pre-existing identities such as the national (Indian) and the regional (Tamil). But the narratives of the film’s characters reveal a tension between their assumed global subjectivity and their nationalist pride in July’s achievements as a company founded and run by Indians that makes ‘cutting edge products’ for the global market.   For more information, contact: Carol Upadhya Visiting Associate Fellow, Sociology and Social Anthropology National Institute of Advanced Studies Indian Institute of Science Campus Bangalore 560012 India office:  +91-80-23604351 ext 267 cell:      +91-93413-11453 [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gautam Sonti [EMAIL PROTECTED]     -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.