The Year that it was .... '07-08

This June 18, 2008 we have officially completed one entire year at SPJIMR ;) the entire journey so far has been wonderfully encapsulated by my colleague Krishna Danda

June 18, 2007: Registration (Officially we became PGP 1)

June 22, 2007: Foundation Begins

June 27, 2007: First Quiz at SP

June 29, 2007: First Paper Distribution session

July 3, 2007: First Feedback session

July 10, 2007: First ADMAP session

July 11, 2007: Freshers

Week 4 at SP: 5 quizzes

July 18, 2007: Committee Formation

July 22 – 25: PG Lab

July 27, 2007: Trim 1 Begins

August 5, 2007: First ADMAP Movie: Wall Street

August 22-23: Autumns for PGP 2

September 4, 2007: First Mid Term test

September 11, 2007: Nadira Babbar’s play

September 12, 2007: Chak De

September 16, 2007: First Introduction lecture to ADMAP Project

October 5: Trim end BISTRO Party

October 5, 2007: Trim 2 Begins

October 8, 2007: First mail from Sunita with Grades (Foundation)

October 8, 2007: Dance Inc. declared open to the batch

October 10: Sportscom organises Yoga sessions (Record break as to how long it lasted)

October 15 -18: Anandvan

October 11: Infracom gets our eyes checked for free

October 12: Do away with paper; First Online Feedback - Academic

October 21: Crecer capital declared open to the batch

October 23: Inauguration of open amphi; Anisha, Diksha and Jo dance

October 25: Dandiya Night

October 29 -30: Sangraha; Book exhibition

November 1 -15: Diwali Vacation

November 18: SD sends a mail with subject “Kweezzes…”

November 20: Business cards given by PRCom

November 28: HSBC CSR Seminar

December 2: Sprintzone by PR Com

December 13: Batch snap taken for brocure

December 15: SPANDAN

December 20: TBLA

December 20: PGP1 defeats PGP 2 in Cricket match

December 23: Marketing Meet (Remember this one !!!!)

December 25: PGP 1 celebrates Christmas in Bistro

January 4, 2008: Trim 3 Begins

January 4: Leadership Seminar

January 11: GASP Promo released in the auditorium

January 12, 2008: Khoj

January 19, 2008: LST

January 20, 2008: GASP

January 26-27: SPrint

February 2: VINIMAY

February 9: SMEC

February 14: Uddayam

February 18: Eshaas

February 29: Union Budget in Audi

March 1: BhavITva

March 8: Acadcom sends first SMS alert

March 18-20: Comprees

March 20: Farewell to PGP 2

March 21: Holi celebration

March 22 – May 12: DOCC & Vacation

April 8: Boom Shankar performs at HRC

April 30: Graduation Ceremony, PGP2

May 13: Trim 4 Begins; We become PGP2

June 4: Boom Shankar at Not Just Jazz by the way

June 18 2008: PGDM 2007 -2009 turns a year old; Birthday BASH all night long

All this along with Eco Ganesha, Dance Inc, Musig, Radio, GASP, Cresendo, freshers –farewell, 20-20 in audi, birthday celebrations, BH parties, GH parties, Bistro parties, KT sessions, GOG, PGP 1 production songs and videos, multicasts, group works, committee works, guest lectures, workshops, Special sessions by the CAs, making videos, writing testimonial, DC++ we seem to have done it all….

As a batch we have travelled the year with Trouble and adversities 100%; Fun 150%.

Hip hip hurray to this batch that doesn’t believe in majority but instead achieves 100% Consensus on any decision.

The batch that can create new traditions at SP; the batch that can challenge the history of SP and make it a better place.

Wonder what we will do in the next 1 year????

Have you NENed...

i guess this post is quite out-dated.
NeN short for National Entrepreneurship Network

Founded and supported by the Wadhwani Foundation and its institutional co-founders are IIT Bombay, IIM Ahmedabad, BITS Pilani, IBAB Bangalore and SP Jain Institute, Mumbai. It connects new and future entrepreneurs; small business owners who wish to grow their companies and students to a full range of resources to help them achieve entrepreneurial success. The resources include networking events, workshops, courses and mentoring. NEN’s advisory board offers it active support and includes some of the most respected names in different fields.

Being one of the founding members has definitely given us key links within this organization, and mostly exploited by us whenever we need to organize any Guest Lectures/panel discussions with Entrepreneurs/Venture Capitalists... such as the International event Lock Stock & Trade, and the E-BOOST Series; but what i really wanted to stress upon was the amazing amount of information which has been accumulated since yester-year in their website www.nenonline.org

One of my favorite Clicks would be their "Weekly Startup profiles"

Of course, you could also check another Networking Forum, TIE

All Hail Entrepreneurship

Quality management & SEX

Well... i really would give credit to the master-mind behind the above Quote - Roger Pressman in his book, "Software Engineering : A Practitioner's approach"

Here i was thrust upon yet another presentation to be made within the next three hours upon such mundane topics such as Quality management(which forms the internal part of any MBA education), and with nothing more to refer than to the ultimate guide on such topics, Mr.Roger Pressman.. i was indeed delighted to come across his initial Quote for Quality management

"The various aspects of Quality management almost resemble SEX"
Everyone needs it, Everyone wants it .....
of course i meant Software Quality management
No-one believes there is more to it than natural instincts.
And the best part .... if ever there occurs some Fault
Blame the other person.

Bloggers from Hindustan....

The news media is going to be history ....
The initial phase of Media was reporting News
Then it transformed to reporting news Live
Then it quantum-jumped to creating news

Now it shall be going back to "Consolidating news"

The chief reason behind this claim is LALU prasad's BLOG ...

I shall wait the next few minutes for this thought to actually sink into your mind (of Mr.laloo prasad yadav sitting in front of the computer and asking "Arrey Babua Yeh kya Hui Gava")

Now, let me explain the funda ... Blogging as the term would imply has provided access for celebrities such as the Khans, Bachhans and the Lalu's to actually showcase their part of the world to us; and the best part about such a medium is that these celebrities would have total control over the story and can easily employ amazing spin-doctors to synthesize a jesus-is-born version whenever they want it...

Considering the Impact on the News Media, this would dry up the vast reservoir for News Channels, who until yesterday thought of a "Celebrity-Bashing per day for 365 days" concept as the Mona-lisa of reporting;
just to add to their active discomfort their customers (prime TRP boosting junta) would actually log onto the internet and get their fair share of bollywood & politi-wood gossip and latest raving pics (which right now they discover can also be put up as screen-savers, much akin to the various posters hanging on their walls) and the only strategy they can do to counter this decline in their revenues would be to wait for the next india-pakistan Battle; and until then they should be happy with reporting "John Abraham has a new girl-friend online" kinda news....


And as Lalu puts his final key-strokes to his next article; little would he realize that this in-fact would be the final Strokes of Indian News Media (as we know it)

IT BUG BITES LALU (Economic Times)

News at the Top Companies

It's live playing cards in action, when one topples over the rest just follow in quick succession ....

I am really not so sure of what to imply that.. first it was Microsoft India and then later it was Oracle; in fact i had couple of news from HP that things were a bit down-ward too in the future; it just looks like all of the companies have bitten the Asian Flu.

Somehow for the past few days, i have been hearing only news of bad omen, even the stock markets no matter how deep they are sinking are just crossing newer thresholds of bottom-stocks.... suddenly it just sends deep shivers down the throat of a yet-to-be-placed MBA grad

Couple of Stories which you can read as get-well-soon stories for the indian corporate grounds

Oracle top India Execs exit
Whats up with Microsoft (remember this one is the development center and not the sales division.. or i hope not)

Talking about cards, i totally recommend watching of "21"

Change Management

5 Steps for a Manager to counter poor quarterly results :

1) Reach Down below
2) Noooo.. I meant below your seat
3) If you see/feel a RED SHINY BUTTON, then press it damn hard
4) yell "CHANGE MANAGEMENT"
5) Go back to sleep

Listed among the top 30 Management jargons which can be reeled off during any opportune moment, "Change Management" is the next hottest thing after "KHALI - pehelwan, bhudhiwan & bhagwan"

In the evolutionary process of key words i suppose Change Management(CM) would be considered as the great grandson of "centralization", nephew of "de-centralization" and half-brother of "Mergers & Aquisition".. in fact it took IBM to connote an evil-jedi other half of Change Management which exists in the parallel universe of IT (IT- the evolutionary process of this management term itself can be detailed after much chutzpah)

Almost every other Management course/chapter/page has a small offering dedicated to CM and case studies of prominent business entities such as Wall-mart, Microsoft, South-west Airlines, Hersheys and even our local pan-baniya have registered their process as trade-marked CM.

But, the question we must ask ..... Does it hold any GAS ?

During my 3 years of work-experience at prominent software industry which is labelled as the pinnacles of CM i rarely found an example where people actually looked joined together to implement any prescribed process or technology for CM. In fact, there was always open-resistance to even the word CM, which was viewed as much a extra-burden as would VAT to our shop-keepers (they would always shift the burden on the other person).
And if this is the situation in a IT firm, then imagine automobile work-shops, or the textile industry or even the pristine oil-gas firms (whose processes are as old as the Crude they extract).

In fact, the more i read about CM the more examples i have found of it's failures (Primarily due to human incompetence to adapt rather than technological failures) than successful implementation.

Judgement :
CM according to ME is nothing more than plain survival instincts


of course, the only Change management worth it's effort would be "CHANGE" management



p.s: The last joked is based upon my senior's comments

Rosetta Stone

Mein Name ist Deepak Bhaskaran

Das ist mein Sieben veir post

Auf Wiedersehen !

It's all about Money.....Honey

"Ingenuity is perhaps the name of the game, but what is more important is sustaining momentum"

During our first year course at SPJIMR, there was a sudden announcement of a "Practical Workshop"; just before i assume that it was just another run-of-the-mill stuff such as a guest-lecture or something.. the following instructions followed
Students are requested to take not more than Rs 50/- and access to mobile phones would be restricted; you would have to dedicate an entire day for the work-shop

Things were getting interesting. When we all assembled at 3 PM, the task was laid out as follows

GO OUT AND EARN MONEY..... (be back by 10 pm)

Crisp as a 500 Rupee note, we all got up and left the campus (after enduring the initial shock)... not knowing what to do and with a zest to explore Mumbai i thought of Plan A
PLAN A : Go over to Gateway of India, rent a Camera and try to earn money.
Almost all my other plans were replete with "Go to {Some exotic place} and earn money", unfortunately the chink in the armor was the short time period.

Settling with my friends we decided to go over to MacDonald to see if we can get some job for 5 Hours... only to return back after speaking to the head of MacDonald in Mumbai who mentioned the two facts (Sunday and no-temporary employment).

Just as we were to lose hope, i just saw a huge building which housed many training institutes.... The three of us decided to pitch in individually, but just as we were destined all of us ended in front of the one last company in which we had not been rejected by "STG" which offers red-hat Linux training.
Maybe it was utter desperation or pure conviction that showed in our eyes, as i made a pitch of technical competence (I myself was a red-hat certified) the manager relented and gave us an entire batch to train on both technical and skill-building.

The rest of the day was perhaps a bit too magical, we started off with a half hour long session but instead kept an entire class in rapture for 2 hours (even the manager and their instructor joined in on the fun)

Of course we also did earn our tution fee.. but i guess nothing really encompasses the experience we had interacting with all these students and making ourselves seem worthwhile to others.