Meet Rasika Kumar, who has learnt the fine art of balancing her twin interests in technology and dance. You could say Kumar combines the professional interests of her parents – her father is an engineer and her mother is a dancer. And growing up in Silicon Valley she was surrounded by cutting-edge technology and tech… Continue Reading
The annual Mill Valley Film Festival, which is one of the last film festivals in California before the Oscar season starts is back this year with a fantastic mix of films. Next year marks the 40th anniversary of the festival that started the same year the first Star Wars film was released. The 39th Mill Valley… Continue Reading
Mythili Kumar is the founder, choreographer and artistic director of Silicon Valley-based Abhinaya Dance Co. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the award-winning dance company that is recognized for teaching Indian classical dance & innovative dance dramas. Besides teaching dance, Kumar also teaches classical Indian dance forms at the University of California in Santa… Continue Reading
Filmmaker Jason Cohen’s Silicon Cowboys traces the rise and fall of Compaq, the personal computer (PC) company. Compaq was the company that challenged IBM and changed the PC landscape in the 1980s. Compaq was founded by Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto in Houston, TX. The founders were partially inspired by Silicon Valley’s culture. At one point Compaq was the… Continue Reading
Tula Goenka teaches film production and multimedia storytelling at Syracuse University, NY. A few years ago Goenka started a first-of-its-kind Bollywood internship program for under graduate students. As part of the internship program students spent time in Bombay or Mumbai, the entertainment capital of India and home to Bollywood film industry. Some students went on… Continue Reading
Justin Tipping directed and co-wrote Kicks, a coming-of-age film set in the San Francisco Bay area. The film revolves around a young teenager Brandon (Jahking Guillory), who dreams of owning a trendy pair of sneakers or kicks. He owns an old and frayed pair of sneakers, while all his friends sport brand new, funky shoes. And… Continue Reading
Meet Gene Guglielmo, a third generation winemaker from Santa Clara county, the oldest wine growing region in California. Guglielmo Winery is the oldest continuously family owned and operated winery in Santa Clara Valley. We sat down with Guglielmo to find out the history of his family’s winery and taste a couple of Guglielmo wines. Guglielmo shares how… Continue Reading
We are celebrating California’s wine month with a series of audio, video and blog posts. In the San Francisco Bay area we are surrounded by wineries and vineyards from Sonoma, Napa, Livermore to the wineries of Santa Clara county. Santa Clara Valley is home to the oldest wine growing region in California. Tucked away in Silicon… Continue Reading
We sat down to talk with Master Sommelier Richard Dean of San Francisco’s Taj Campton Place. There are less than 240 Master Sommeliers in the world. He was the youngest in the world and the second American to become a Master Sommelier in the world. He became a Master Sommelier about 40 years ago when California was not… Continue Reading
Nachiketa Yakkundi is a musician and an engineer, who has the rare distinction of being associated with the same Silicon Valley company for over 2 decades. Music is his central passion and we talk to him to find out what propelled him to study engineering and put his music on the back-burner? Yakkundi studied with Pandit… Continue Reading
Morris From America is a coming-of-age film about a young American teen in Germany. The movie is told from a 13-year old boy’s perspective and how he tries to fit in with his German school mates and falls in love with an older teenager. The film screened at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival… Continue Reading
Ever wondered how Vinod Dham got the moniker “The Father of The Pentium Chip?” Well, we did and got an opportunity to talk to Dham on how he got this moniker. We were also curious to find out how he developed his interest in science and technology. What brought him to America? How did come to Silicon… Continue Reading
What happens when you bring two engineers together to talk about a desktop milling machine? Excited is a mild understatement to describe how they geek out over product. Watch how Danielle Applestone and Vinod Dham geek out over Other Machine’s desktop milling machine in this video interview. They discuss how this desktop milling machine changes… Continue Reading
Meet Ken Florance, Vice President of Content Delivery at Netflix. We sat down to speak with him about how we get to binge watch all those pictures and shows from Netflix. How do they do that? As a kid Florance was more interested in literature, philosophy and music. How did he segue and chart this… Continue Reading
Karavalli is your ticket to taste the wonderful cuisine of Southwestern coastal region of India. Chef Naren Thimmaiah of Karavalli at Taj Gateway in Bangalore takes us through a quick culinary tour of this region that is a rich tapestry of different communities. Each community has a rich repertoire of dishes that use a wonderful… Continue Reading
Nachiketa Yakkundi is an engineer in Silicon Valley. When he has not tethered to a computer, Yakkundi spends all his spare time pursuing his passion for Hindustani music, North Indian traditional classical music. He teaches music at Rajguru Sangeet Vidyaniketan school of music. He frequently collaborates with Naatak, a SIlicon Valley-based theatre group. In this short… Continue Reading
Ken Florance is Vice President of Content Delivery at Netflix. Growing up in Washington DC area Florance was a big fan of The Grateful Dead, an iconic San Francisco Bay area band. He and his then girlfriend, now wife, traveled more than 10,000 miles to attend the concerts of their favorite band. Stay tuned for… Continue Reading
Amy Love was described as one of the best-known 10-year-old girls in the Bay area. Even Pele knew about Love. This was in the mid-1970s. She was famous because she fought for her right to play soccer in the USA. Love grew up with parents, who loved and played sports. Her mother was a synchronized swimmer… Continue Reading
Meera Menon’s new film Equity is billed as the first female driven Wall Street picture. It is not often we get to see women investment bankers in films. Neither do we see women bankers admit they love power and money. Such dialogs are usually reserved for male characters. Manon previously wrote and directed Farah Goes… Continue Reading
Amy Love is the chief marketing officer of Violin Memory, a publicly traded Silicon Valley company. As a kid Love enjoyed playing baseball and soccer. Then she discovered she was barred from playing soccer in her youth team in Northern California. And the reason? She was a girl. Girls ware banned from playing soccer and… Continue Reading
Meet Punit Soni, an investor and advisor based in Silicon Valley. Soni is an ex-Googler and former Chief Product Officer of Flipkart, one of the largest e-commerce companies in India. Disrupt and linear are two favorite words of Soni. We sat down to speak with him how he disrupted his life and pulled away from a… Continue Reading
That is a picture of the Gleason family consisting of Michel Varisco, her husband Steve Gleason and their son Rivers Gleason. In 2011 Gleason, a former NFL player for the New Orleans Saints was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). A couple of months later they discovered that Varisco was pregnant. Those two developments changed the course… Continue Reading
Matt Ross is a filmmaker, writer and actor, who is well-known for his role as Gavin Belson, CEO of Hooli in HBO’s Silicon Valley. We sat down with Ross to speak about Captain Fantastic that he wrote and directed. We wondered about the title of the film. How did he come up with Captain Fantastic?… Continue Reading
Former NFL player Scott Fujita is one of the producers of Gleason, a documentary on Steve Gleason, who has myotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Fujita and Gleason became good friends when they played for the New Orleans Saints. Fujita shares how one of his uncles lost his life to ALS and was aware of the challenges the… Continue Reading
Dr. James Schamus is a filmmaker, award-winning writer and a teacher at Columbia University. After writing, producing and distributing films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, Dallas Cowboys Club, Milk and Lost in Translation, Dr. Schamus makes his debut in feature films with Indignation. He wrote and directed the film that is based on… Continue Reading
Rasika Kumar is an engineer at Google and an Associate Director at Abhinaya Dance Company of Silicon Valley. We were curious to find out her story and how she came to combine her twin passions – science and dance and pursue them with equal dedication. Kumar grew up in a home surrounded by science, dance… Continue Reading
A wonderful mix of films will feature at the annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF). This year marks the 36th year of the festival that starts tomorrow – July 21 and will continue through August 7, 2016. Some of the guests expected to attend the festival include filmmakers and writers like Daniel Burman, Norman… Continue Reading
Shampa Banerjee is Chief Product Officer at Silicon Valley-based Eros Digital, which is the digital arm of Eros International, the world’s largest integrated studio for Bollywood films. We were curious to find out how she developed an interest in math and science and came to work in Silicon Valley. Growing up in India Banerjee developed… Continue Reading
A visit to Intel Museum is Santa Clara was in my bucket list for over a decade. I had driven past Intel so many times, and yet never made the right turn to Intel’s campus and to the Robert Noyce building where the museum is located. I finally did visit the museum and came away learning… Continue Reading
Hannah Kain studied International Relations in Denmark and was interested in politics. So, how did she end up in Silicon Valley? And how did she end up founding a company in the manufacturing space? We spoke to Kain about her journey from Denmark to Silicon Valley and the challenges she faced in running her company.… Continue Reading
The Kamla Show 