Episode 002 | March 20, 2020 Enabling Rural Communities to Participate in Crowdsourcing, with Dr. Vivek Seshadri Crowdsourcing platforms and the gig economy have been around for a while. But are they equally accessible to all communities? Dr. Vivek Seshadri, a researcher at Microsoft Research India, doesn’t think so, and is trying to change this. On this podcast, Vivek talks about what motivated him to focus on research that can help underserved communities, and in particular, about Project Karya, a new platform to provide digital work to rural communities. The word “Karya” literally means “work” in a number of India languages. Vivek primarily works with the Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research India. He received his bachelor's degree in Computer Science from IIT Madras, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University where he worked on problems related to Computer Architecture and Systems. After his Ph.D., Vivek decided to work on problems that directly impact people, particularly in developing economies like India. Related · Microsoft Research India Podcast: More podcasts from MSR India · iTunes: Subscribe and listen to new podcasts on iTunes · Android · RSS Feed · Spotify · Google Podcasts (https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ibHVicnJ5LmNvbS9mZWVkcy9tc3JpbmRpYXBvZGNhc3QueG1s) · Email Transcript Vivek Seshadri: If you look at crowdsourcing platforms today, there are a number of challenges that actually prevent them from being accessible to people from rural communities. The first one is, most of these platforms contain tasks only in English. And all their task descriptions, everything,