Multimedia & Technology Committee
Conversation with Narendra Maniar and Sapan Doshi Narendra Maniar has been an IT Professional since 1971 and holds two master’s degrees. He has been a very active member of Jain Center of Southern California (JCSC) since its inception and has served on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors in various roles. He has been the team lead for Audio/Video and Information Technology Infrastructure teams at JCSC for last 20+ years providing technical support to several events. Narendra also supported Multimedia requirements for the JAINA Convention in 2009 and 2015. In 2019 and 2021 he was the Chair of Multimedia & Technology Committee. Narendra leads the team by example and communicates effectively at all levels of Management. Sapan Doshi is an active member of the Jain Center of Southern California and has been volunteering wherever help is needed since the age of 10. He is a strong advocate for youth empowerment and co-founded a non-profit organization to teach children leadership skills. Along with his work with JCSC and several other non-profits, Sapan has worked with JAINA and the JAINA Convention for several years. Professionally, Sapan has his own media production and marketing company, Last Minute Media. The 2021 Virtual JAINA Convention has been an amazing experience for the attendees as well as all the organizers and volunteers. Although credit of that success goes to many people who wholeheartedly worked together as one team, one committee that stands out from the rest is the Multimedia & Technology Committee (MMT). Jain Digest team wanted to know more about what went on behind the scenes and how did they manage the monumental task of the virtual convention. In early August, we had a conversation with the committee chair Narendra Maniar and cochair Sapan Doshi. Here is the excerpt from that conversation.
MMT Committee Members JD: Welcome, Sapan and Narendrabhai. Thanks for taking the time to tell us more about your experience in working on the MMT Committee during the past several months. In addition to giving our readers an idea about the enormity of this task, we also want to hear about your personal experiences, about your motivation in doing this Seva. Let us start with the technical platform we used for the convention, 26
Laaveo. What does it stand for? How did you come up with this name? Sapan: We started with “L”, which is the first letter of my company name – Last Minute Media and “A” is the first letter of Dhimen Vora’s company – Arham Technosoft. Then we were wondering what else we could do with these letters. Dhimen came up with an idea to use a Gujarati word “Laviyo” – meaning “I
