After the conference on May 28-29, 1977 in New York was completed successfully, a thought came in to sustain this effort with an umbrella Telugu Association and as a result TANA came into existence. Dr. Kakarla Subba Rao became its first president. TANA was later incorporated in Maryland by a Telugu attorney Mr. Durvasula Sastry in 1978.Initial Three elections to TANA in 1978, 1979 and 1981 were by indirect means through delegates. From the rolls of member associations, a delegate is elected for every 25 members. There were approximately 300 delegates that electe the executive body of TANA

2nd TANA Conference: Detroit - 1979

Second conference was held in Detroit with Tummala Madhava Rao as the convener, who went on to become the second president of TANA. He was instrumental in taking efforts to incorporate TANA with the help of Vadlamudi Sri Krishna and Durvasulla Sastry from Maryland. Budget of this conference increased to $20,000 with attendance of about 1000.

3rd TANA Conference: Chicago - 1981

Third conference was held under stewardship of Tella Tirupataiah as convener at Chicago, who subsequently became the third president of TANA. This was attended by about 2000 people with a budget around $30,000. Tirupataiah was instrumental in making TANA more visible. Getting a full pledged delegation from AP government, responsible in obtaining non-profit status for TANA by IRS and was also responsible for initiating the TANA Foundation in 1981 (before it used to be called Telugu foundation of TANA).

4th TANA Conference: Washington DC - 1983

This was held with Jakkampudi Subbaraidu as the convener and Tella Tirupataiah as the TANA president. While the first three conferences went smoothly the path to this conference was rocky at best. There were significant ego problems exhibited by the local leadership (between two well respected individuals) on the issue of who should be the convener, lead to an altercation. At this juncture TANA executive body intervened and brought in neutral person Mr. Jakkampudi Subbarayudu as the convener who did a face saving job of resurrecting the conference. This conference taught us important lessons of the importance of unity and sublimation of individual egos in running successful, fruitful conferences.

5th TANA Conference:: Los Angeles - 1985

This conference was held with Dr. Raghavenda Prasad as convener and Kakarala Chandrasekhara Rao as TANA president. After being president of Telugu association of Southern California (TASC1982-83 & 1983-84), I was blessed with the good fortune to serve as TANA's treasurer (1983-85), Convener (5th TANA Conference in Los Angeles) and it's President (1985-87). Having observed the happenings in Washington DC as a TANA executive committee member (treasurer), I decided on taking preventive steps to have a good conference that will bring in more unity in host community.

The first four TANA conventions were held in high with no air conditioning in the month of May. Typical budgets of first four conferences ranged from $9,000-30,000 and lasted two days. Families hosted delegates at home, women volunteers cooked food at the venue, local children and adults performed in cultural programs. I was moved by the plight of the mothers who had to host guests at home on one hand, come to the venue, cook food and still attend to the crying children in hot summer heat (no air-conditioning). They missed most of the cultural programs that were enjoyed by the men. I decided to usher in some changes to help these mothers. Fourth conference is lesson for us in terms of repercussions of disunity and sad plight of women at the conference. I decided to address these two primary issues squarely.

This is the first conference in a convention center rather than in a school. Conference was held at Long Beach Convention Center.First $100,000 budget. First Awards Banquet to save time on main stage for this function. First Moving Stage was created to save time in transition between artists groups. Food was catered for the first time and this became the norm in all subsequent conferences.

First Kavi Sammelanam was added. First Astavadhanam. First dedicated Business Conference. First Souvenir published separately by Telugu Academy of Hyderabad on the occasion of the TANA conference.

After Fifth TANA Convention, I was unanimously elected as TANA Fifth President. TANA received wide publicity in India because of its service activities. During my tenure Vempati Chinna Sathyam Kuchipudi Dance Troup , Sobha Naidu Troup and Shobha Raju Team and several other Telugu artists had successful multi city tours. TANA foundation increased their service activities in India. At a time when there is no concept of continuing medical education for physicians after their graduation TANA created and introduced the concept of continuing medical education (CME) in India.

6th TANA Conference: St. Louis - 1987

This was held in St Louis , with Dr. Mantena Narasa Raju as the convener. I was the president of TANA at this time. This conference was held in a university campus. There was a significant shift towards popular movie singers and artists away from classical artists. Convention catered to the populist film playback singers and paid large sums for their programs. In the first five conferences the focus was on promotion of classical fine arts. Popular movie artists attended the conference at their own expense. We just recognized their presence in the conference.

This practice initiated at St. Louis was followed ever after in all the conventions. Later on popular movie heroes and heroines were invited paying significant honorariums and privileged class air tickets to show their face at convention. The typical reason given by the leadership is that these movie stars will attract more crowds. Thus conventions became commercial enterprises and used commercial promotional tactics to attract larger crowds. The focus shifted from what is good (priyam) to the community to what is popular (modam) with community. As a results convention budgets sky rocketed to a million and above.

The convention committee took this shift in direction on their own without consultation with TANA executive body. One of the lessons of this conference is That TANA executive body should have participation and active involvement in conference planning and decisions. This was implemented in all conferences from then onwards with TANA executive body through its president became in-charge of the conference along with local coordinator.

7th TANA Conference: Houston - 1989

This was held with Dr. Vinta Janardhan Reddy as its convener and Mr. B. Venkateswara Rao as president in University of Houston campus. This had 2000 attendees. $110,000 was collected with a surplus of $20,000 that was shared between TANA and local Telugu Association. This is the first convention in which seating was segregated with ropes to separates donors from the ordinary registrants. This practice is followed in all the following successive conventions ever since.

8th TANA Conference: Atlanta - 1991

This was held in Atlanta with Dr. Vanapalli Manga Raju as the convener and Dr. Nallamothu Satyanarayana as president. After the Fifth conference the next two were held in university campuses. However the eight conference moved back into a convention center. After this all other conventions were held in convention centers. This was the first conference after TANA was divided to form ATA. ATA's first conference was on the same date in Chicago. Later after discussions with ATA body, they agreed upon having conferences in alternate years, TANA in odd years and ATA in even years. Thus the 2nd conference of ATA was held in 1992 and then every 2 years. Thus there was a level of cooperation between TANA and ATA in spite of the division, for the greater good of the community. This was a welcome development

9th TANA Conference & World Telugu Conference - 1993

This was held in New York with Dr. Dasaradharami Reddy as the convener and Dr. Nallamothu Satyanarayana as the president. Spiritual dimension was added in this conference, in tune with the aging Telugu population. We started first Vedic conference that was chaired by me in New York. This now became the norm in every convention since then. Several swamiji's now regularly give pravachans at the TANA conferences. These are well attended.

Large number of artists and others were liberally invited to this conference and there was significant problem catering to the needs of these stranded artists after the conference. They all got stranded in New York without a program to go. This taught us the lesson of the due diligence and prudency of invitations and the importance of having a committee to coordinate post conference tours for visiting invitees from India after the conference.

10th TANA Conference: Chicago - 1995

This conference was done with Yadlapati Yugandhar as convener and Mantena Narasa Raju as the President. This was attended by 7200 members. $ 785,000 was collected. Expenses were $ 700,000 leaving a surplus of $85,000 that was given to TANA. This had the first inaugural dance ballet and the first laser show. Business seminar is well attended. Youth were involved on the main stage.

11th TANA Conference: Anaheim - 1997

This conference was done with Kottapalli Kondala Rayudu as the convener and Vadlamudi Ramamohana Rao as the President. In this conference they conducted the first Novel writing competition in India with a prize money of Rs.1.5 lakhs. A supplemental stage was started for selection of local artists to perform on the main stage. This conference collected $750,000 with expenditure of $500,000. Surplus of $250,000 was passed on to TANA treasury. This conference set a record in surplus money that is passed on to TANA till that time

Chalasani Mallikharjuna Rao was the president from 1997-99. During his tenure, he beefed up the membership list, issued ID numbers for life members, updated voter list by removing more than 3 votes for one family. TANA finances were beefed up by cutting down TANA Patrika to 8 issues/ year from 12./ year. He had a novel writing contest like year before, before the convention.

12th TANA Conference: Cincinati - 1999

This was done with Gorrepati Ranganatha Babu as convener and Chalasani Mallikharjuna Rao as president. They had a revenue of about $1.2 million and had a surplus of $270,000. $200,000 of this transferred to TANA treasury and $70,000 was transferred to local Telugu association. High light of the program is the local unity, business seminar and 3 hour cultural program by Akkineni Nagarjuna and his team of 40 members. Miss world Rita Faria from Hyderabad attended the convention. Movie play back singer Suseela received the life time achievement award at this conference.Folk art Festival in India by name Chaitanya Sravanthi was started at this time. TANA regional & Youth conference was successfully held in Dallas during Gangadhar's tenure as president.

13th TANA Conference: Philadelphia - 2001

This conference has the distinction of having two conveners one followed by other. They are Allada Janardhana Rao and Kosaraju Vijaya Saradhi. Nadella Gangadhar was the president of TANA then. In this conference chief minister Chandra Babu Naidu's speech was shown in a live telecast to all the delegates. About 7000 people attended the conference. $1.1 million was collected with expenditure of $1,03 million leaving a surplus of $70,000. Out of this $20,000 was transferred to TANA treasury

During the tenure of Padmasri Muthyala as president TANA Back Pack Program was initiated. This program is now currently held in Dallas, San Jose, Washington, DC, Boston and Detroit. Dr. Navaneeta Krishna, Chalasani Mallikharjuna Rao and Yetta Hanumatha Rao were actively involved in developing this new program in TANA.

14th TANA Conference: Sanjose - 2003

Komati Jairam was the convener and Muthyala Padmashri was the president for this conference. A minor conflict for leadership role of conference was resolved by creating the post of chairman. Dr. Peraiah Sudanagunta took the roe of the chairman. This was attended by 6-7,000 people. Total collections were $1.1 million with break even expenditure. TANA conducted Kabaddi tournament in India. The winning team was supposed to come to the conference, however due to problems with visa this did not materialize

During the tenure of Dr. Navaneetha Krishna Gorrepati as president, he conducted children's Cultural programs in Dallas, Detroit, New York, Washington Dc, and San Jose that selected child artists to perform in Detroit TANA Conference. He was also involved in arranging Psunami disaster relief in Prakasam District near Chirala. A TANA Nagar was built at a cost $50,000 with 80 houses and given to fishermen there.

15th TANA Conference: Detroit - 2005

This conference was held with Dr. Kodali Srinivasa Rao as the coordinator and Dr. Gorrepati Navaneetha Krishna as the president. Conference team developed some guidelines to go by through town hall meetings with local Telugu community. Three such meetings were held one at the temple, one in library and the third one in a meeting hall. Approximately 200 people attended each of these meetings. Purpose of the meeting is the needs assessment of the community

Deliberations of these meetings were summarized below: (1) 70% of the performers in cultural program to be from USA. (2) Youth should have enough representation. (3) Tickets and honorariums should not be paid to any artists or otherwise from India. (4) Conference committee members agreed not to get reimbursed for travel and telephones from the conference funds. (5) Transparency in accounts. (6) Surplus is the goal. 8000 people attended the conference. A Total of $1.5 million was collected, leaving a surplus of $340,000 that was split between TANA and local association at 75% to 25% ratio.

16th TANA Conference: Washington DC - 2007

Dr. Yadla Hema Prasad was the convener and Bandla Hanumaiah was the president of TANA. 14,000 people attended the conference. Highlight of the conference is President Bill Clinton's address to the business seminar.

Former Chief Minister of AP Nara Chandra Babu Naidu attended the conference. In the youth mixer, 200 youth met and resulted in 10 marriages after the conference, 10% success rate. A decision was made to have the next conference in Orlando, Florida. But it was held in Chicago.

Kakarala Prabhakara Chowdary was the TANA president During 2007-2009. During his tenure TANA along with Telugu communities across the globe fought for recognition of Telugu as 'PRACHEENA BHASHA' and achieved it in the year 2009. TANA continued it's on ongoing programs, Telugu teaching at UT Austin, International Internship program, back pack program with school supplies and scholarship program for college students. A new program called TEAM SQARE was started to help Telugu families in USA under distress. During this time TANA faced unfortunate law suits that cost TANA dearly. Eventually these were resolved amicably. During his term, there was an Internal Revenue Service audit of TANA, Inc-Foundation, Convention, Trust funds and General funds for the years 2004 and 2005. TANA successfully came out of this audit with the pro bono CPA services of Prabhakara Chowdary. He obtained Illinois Tax exempt status that saved several thousands in refunds to TANA for the conference expenditure.

17th TANA Conference: Chicago - 2009

This was held in Chicago with Yadlapati Yugandhar as the coordinator and Kakarala Prabhakara Chowdary as President of TANA. This conference and its origin was meddled with problems as mentioned above. The conference that was originally scheduled to happen in Orlando, Florida was moved to Chicago as the result of of problems elucidated earlier.

This was the first time in the history of TANA a scheduled conference in a location was moved from that location. As a result of this split in TANA, both Chicago (TANA) and Orlando (NATS) conferences were held on the same July 4th weekend in 2009. Both conferences incurred heavy losses. 6800 people attended the conference. $1million was collected with expenditure of $1.35 million leaving a deficit of $350,000. This was the heaviest loss TANA incurred in any TANA conference