17/02/2016

25/01/2016; 00:29:

It’s been an eventful week, with Nihilanth and classes.

I don’t think anyone got any sleep, the night before Nihilanth was to begin. We received an e-mail announcing the closure of Globe@I- it’s now to be closed indefinitely.
The IIT-BHU kids got to Khandwa Railway Station at 3 a.m., as scheduled. Initially, an institute bus was to pick them up from there but since, as we later realized, the distance is about 100 k.m., this was thus not arranged. They got themselves on a bus to Indore which would drop them at BhawarKuan at around 7 a.m.
An institute bus was arranged for this pick-up. At around 7 a.m., I got to Bhawarkuan, got the 24 kids on the bus and back to campus and into a common room. A lot of people in my batch are from IIT-BHU and they were happy to meet their juniors. Later, I headed to the HRC where we’d set up a registration desk. Registration forms, food coupons and copies of the schedule were to be handed out to each participant at the time of registration (this technically included the room keys too, but, those were handed out as soon as the participants got to campus). I headed up to the Academic Block to get print-outs- 250 copies each of all the requisite papers.

Meanwhile, one of our team members walked to the HRC, dejected. He’d spent at hour waiting at the airport for an arrival who apparently missed the flight and never bothered to inform us. By the time he was done telling his story, his phone buzzed- another team, from IIM-Bangalore I believe had just about landed in Indore. And then, just like that, he made his way back to the airport!

At around 10:30, we made our way to the railway station to pick up the IIT-Bombay kids. We had a hard time spotting them at the railway station even though there were about 25 of them! Finally, we got to campus and into the SR-09 common room.
Registrations went on till about 2 p.m. by which time all 20 participating colleges were on campus. There was a short opening ceremony at 2:45 p.m. post which the General Quiz began. Each quiz had more or less a similar format- there was a written prelim for everyone after which 8 teams/individuals qualified for the stage round. All questions were designed by the quizmaster in charge of that quiz and included audio-visual clues as well as star-marked questions.
First up was the General Quiz conducted by Mr. Vikram Joshi – Winner of the 2014 World Quizzing Championship- was held right after.
There were a total of 257 participants from 20 IIT’s and IIM’s including IIM-Ahmedabad, IIM-Bangalore, IIM-Calcutta, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Kharagpur.
IIT-Bombay won the General Quiz. The Sports Quiz began at 6 p.m., conducted by Mr. Chandrakant Nair.

After the prelims of the Sports Quiz, a comedy night was in store after a hectic day of quizzing- . Youtube star, Kenny Sebastian was here, from Bangalore, to entertain the crowd. The student community finds his jokes very relatable and he even strung together random words from the crowd into an original song, on the spot!
But, right after the comedy night, it was back to the quizzes- the prelims of the India Quiz and the stage round of the Sports Quiz. This was won by IIT-Madras.

It was back to business, early on Saturday morning. IIM-Indore won the business quiz, bringing the first and only victory for the IIM’s at this edition of Nihilanth. IIT-Madras won the India quiz too.

Post-lunch, the Science-Tech quiz was held, conducted by Mr. Navin Rajaram - Part of KQA and host of the Texas Instruments Sci-Tech Quiz. Here, IIT-Madras continued their winning streak- both the winning team as well as the runners-up were from there.

To add a touch of entertainment, the MELA Quiz was conducted by Mr. Venkatesh Srinivasan. The MELA i.e. Music, Entertainment, Literature and Art quiz was replete with audio-visual cues and very enjoyable. Just the sheer amount of random facts & figures that people in the quizzing world know is astounding. We sat in on a few quizzes and were pleasantly surprised to actually know quite a few answers in the prelims!

Through the day, we tried to closely follow the developments on the ‘Start Up India’ scene- the closing ceremony with the PM’s speech was broadcast live in all premier institutes including ours.

17th i.e. Sunday was the last day of the quizzing activities- and the Lone Wolf quiz conducted by Mr. Suraj Menon was the best way to end with a bang. It was the ultimate challenge- questions across domains and one single winner. Both the winner as well as the runner-up were from IIT-Madras.

The Prize Distribution saw IIT-Madras celebrating as they were crowned Nihilanth Champions for the third year in a row.
Pongal was celebrated on campus, in the evening with a series of games, culminating in a traditional Pongal feast and loud music!

The same weekend i.e. 16-17th January was also the 10 Year Alumni Reunion for the 2006 Batch. The campus was buzzing with activity since a lot of the alumni had brought along their families including little kids.
Arena, the Gaming Club held an Alumni v/s PGP CounterStrike tournament at 4 p.m. An interaction session with the alumni was held at 12:30 p.m. I also got to meet the Finance head from the company I’ll be interning at this summer- he’s an alumni of the 2006 batch and it seems like there will be a lot to learn over the 2 months.
18th morning began with an ISM (Information Systems for Managers) class. The professor has decided that each group ought to send in an analysis of every case that we’ll be dealing with. A total of 4 questions are sent the day before the ISM class, to be submitted the same evening. 4 groups (1 question per group) are then randomly called on, in class to discuss said questions.
We had our first session of RCB (Retail and Corporate Banking) in the afternoon. The course will be conducted in two parts- Retail Banking & Corporate Banking, to be taught by two different faculty. The Corporate Banking professor has been in the industry for nearly 20 years and there is just so much to learn!
Meanwhile, the PGP Office has been sending in the time-table for the next day, each single day. An integrated one, till the 15th of February has been uploaded on the intranet but does not resemble these daily time-tables. So along with the surprise quizzes, there is now a new element of suspense on the cards.

We had our first HRM (Human Resource Management) class on Tuesday. The professor is really nice; most of the session was spent picking on a guy in our section who’s worked at Infosys- the subject of the day’s case. Unfortunately, the course is only 2-credits, down from the 4 it was last year.
At 12:15 p.m., we assembled in the Old Auditorium to hear the President of India’s address on the topic ‘Youth and Nation Building’ as part of the National Knowledge Sharing Network.

Applications for the post of SAC-Coordinator were thrown open and I decided to try my luck. Of course, a series of pre-processes was in store- a necessary evil perhaps.

A briefing session was called for at 8 p.m., in the Academic Block. All applicants for the post of SAC-C were present as was the current SAC-C. The idea was to let us know exactly what we were attempting to sign up for. Round 1 of the pre-process was sent to us shortly after. There were a couple of questions to be answered including why you want to be SAC-C, instances of leadership in the past, and two candidates other than you who would be suitable for the post. One nice thing about such questions is the fact that they make you actually think about why you want to do certain things in a certain way, what values are important to you and the life lessons you’ve gained from different experiences.
We had an industry visit on the 20th i.e. Wednesday. We headed to our assigned company- we’d been working on our project for a while now and our final submission was ready to be presented and reviewed. It was good team-work that resulted in a detailed Balanced Score Card for the Rolling Department of the company. We were lauded for our efforts and a few tweaks and changes were suggested which we ought to incorporate before the final submission to the panel which will happen perhaps at the end of the term.
CulComm sent out an e-mail, inviting volunteers to help with the Farewell preparations. The Farewell for the senior batch.

Round 2 of the SAC-C pre-process was also a written one. There were a few questions to be answered in a word document- two things you would change as SAC-Coordinator; comparing one club/committee at IIM-Indore to a similar entity in another B-School and an e-mail to the director, on behalf of the batch, talking about the hectic schedule we currently have. I wrote about working to increase the number of students who come to campus on student exchange and having a single body to garner sponsorship for all events that happen on campus instead of a separate team for each event. I then compared the Academic Committee here to the one at IIM-Calcutta.
A workshop on Design Thinking has been introduced as part of the curriculum for the PGP1, this year. It is to be held in two parts, the first of which was held on the 21st. We were introduced to the idea of design thinking and given successful instances of corporate implantation of design thinking. We were then split into groups; each group was given a problem that was to be approached and solved from a design thinking perspective. The first step was to detail out the process involved; then, we were to interview the consumer, in our case the students of PGP1 and note their current experiences. These were then compiled into an idea map. We shall continue working on this, in the second part of the workshop which should be held soon. Most of the day was spent on this workshop.
22nd morning began with a few classes and the Design Thinking workshop for the other 4 sections. Meanwhile most end-term papers from last term were shown during the week, before the grades are finalized. We then had a Finance-II Quiz at 4:50 p.m. Of course, in keeping with the new tradition, the e-mail announcing the quiz was sent to us only at 3:30 p.m. The quiz was simple and based entirely on what we’d been doing in class.

The SAC-Treasurer sent out an e-mail to both the batches sharing the audited financial reports of the SAC for the financial year ended 31st March, 2015. The unaudited report for this financial year will be shared soon.