All Work And No Play...

It has been quite sometime since I last blogged. I am only partly responsible for this distraction. The exam season just came like a storm.It kept us busy and continues to keep us busy. Writing exams were once conducted around 2-3 times in a year. But now, it is almost conduced once every fortnight. Over a period of 10 days we had around 12 exams, not including the lab internals that followed.

This semester has almost ended. It seems like only yesterday when I was pretty excited to enter the final year completely aware of the hectic semester.The semester saw me bunking loads and loads of classes that even resulted in attendance shortage in two subjects. What kept me busy initially was GRE after which placements followed.

The short trip to the native leading to a mini-break was something I longed for from quite sometime. The time came and we had a great eventful holiday spending time with the extended family,cracking jokes till 4 in the morning,playing dumbcharades and most importantly having some quality baccha-party time(though none of us remain bacchas anymore).

The stress-free time was followed by a long series of exams. The gap between the second and the third internals was hardly one week. On completing 2/3rd of the II internals with zero or very little preparation, the III internals was certainly going to be crucial. Gathering important questions before exams was the routine. Fortunately or unfortunately, I do not remember the last time I attended a class in this semester. But amidst all this, internals came and internals went.

Luckily, All was well. The pre-determination to do extermely well in the III internals in order to get a consistent average really did some good. Group studies were really effective and the results were favourable. What followed was a stressful period of lab internals. We were asked to execute the programs that we have never tried even once since we were all busy bunking classes throughout the semester.

This was the moment when we paid the price for all that bunking. We had to squeeze some extra time from our almost-busy schedule to go to the labs and execute the programs with friends. They say All's well that ends well. The pressure of preparing for these lab internals, the pain taken in writing records, the last minute work at the end of each semester and most importantly surviving these internals all ended on a positive note. Who doesn't like getting a perfect 200 in all the subjects of the semester in internals?

Parallel to the lab internal season were a series of placements. Luckily, to benefit the non-placed students, there were some rules and restrictions on the placed students which is perfectly justified. The next company which I was going to attend was TCS-Tata Consultancy Services.Cracking this interview was extra special because my grandfather was a part of the Tata family for quite sometime. That was when I decided, if TCS hires me, I would dedicate this offer to my grandfather, my Thathappa. The ones with a consistent record in academics since school were exepted from the online written test which got mixed opinions about its level of difficulty.

Unlike other mass recruiters, TCS has a gruelling technical session followed by a HR round. Fortunately, I finished my interview by 12.30. The pressure eased out but the wait till 9 made it a very long day for us. Lab internals preparations kept us busy though. Finally around 9.30 the results were announced by Mr Arun preceeded by a talk by Mr Chakravarthy, head of Talent Acquisition Group. TCS had taken a whooping 301 students. The highlight of the day for me was my non-placed friends joining me in walking to the portals of one of the most successful,employee friendly company - TCS.

All that's in store ahead, atleast for the next month or so is EXAMS,EXAMS AND MORE EXAMS!!

This too will pass...

A fortnight back, I was so stressed out in life that I thought there was no looking up from here. When good things start happening, that is when we realise that life is a cycle with ups and downs. After a series of lows in placements, i was waiting to see some light.That is when CTS came into the picture.

The top 15% of the students in each class were exempted from writing the aptitude test and were asked to directly attend the interview. We were given the 'Topper Shopper' tag. This was certainly good news. The first mass recruitmet company visited our college waiting to take huge amounts of students into their company. The first day was a no-stress day for us. Only the aptitude test was conducted and results were announced. We were asked to come prepared with all the lessons learnt in the previous 3 years. A few hours is certainly too little to recapitulate the three-year course material. I decided to just take things as it comes. Without much preparation, I went to attend the HR interview. The interview went on well. I was asked to answer a few personal and a few technical questions. There was a long wait post the interview for the results.

The moment finally arrived when the results were called out. I was glad to be one of the chosen 352. But the happiness was not very sweet since due to sheer absence of luck, a few of my friends could not clear the interview. Not because they were bad. but because they ran out of luck getting trapped with the wrong HR. Cognizant has beautifully arranged our welcome with offer letters being handed over immediately by the Principal followed by cake cutting for our welcome. The cake was certainly yummy.

There was Musigma whuch followed CTS after a couple of days. A friend of mine instilled a lot of enthusiasm into me to write the Musigma aptitude paper. I wrote the paper prety well but was not lucky enough crack it. There came the second disappointment. It took me a couple of days to get over this failure. Akamai was the company to follow. It was certainly tough to carck a dream company test and clearly this was not my cup of tea. Luckily, not cracking the aptitude this time did not lead to much of a disappointment.

A couple of days later, it was Computer Sciences Corporation that followed. The company was very strict in its principles. Right from giving the instructions while writing the test to final interview stage, we were inspected by strict professionals from the company. On clearing the aptitude round, we were given the technical written test. I was so nervous after a series of disappointments. But luckily, it clicked this time around.

On successfully clearing the technical written test, we had Just-A-Minute. We had to speak on a given topic for 2mins with zero time for prepartion. My topic was "Truth no longer exists in today's world". I gave a solid start with "Satyameva Jayate" and continued to give my thoughts. My friends told me that my talk stole the show. It felt good and I was a little confident. But the next hurdle was the technical interview. I had to go to the panel which saw maximum rejection but I was lucky to get away. On clearing the technical interview, the HR followed. The interviewer was one of the toughest and probably the best HR I have seen. She was very quick to catch a mistake and counter attack our statements. fter nearly waiting for five and a half hours for the results, they were fianlly announced. Since I finished my interview really early, my name was called along the last few names. Yippee...I was one of the 32 selected. The wait ended on a positive note and I was happy. The company policy of the two year bond and an average salary keeps me thinking if this is a good one to plunge on.I got to witness the view of the college at 12am due to the gruelling rounds of interview. I finally reached home around 12.15 and had dinner.

The last few days saw interesting changes happening in college. It was a big day for all of us since we had the National Board of Accreditation visiting our college to rank us. Teachers,students and the management have been working hard for this big day. I was lucky enough to interact with the panel twice as a part of student interaction program,once represeting college and once the department in the span of two days.

In between all these events happening in college, a wedding in the family was planned.I am so excited to attend the engagement at the end of this month. I have decided to even skip my internals to be a part of the big day.

Now with three offers in hand, am a little relieved. But then life always keeps us busy.Preparation for GATE, for the wedding and above all the next internals is in store for now..

Life is certainly a Roller Coaster...

Everytime something great happens, there is something bad to balance it. And then, something great follows. Sometimes, I feel it proves the credibility of Newton's 3rd law. It convinces me that life is a cycle of ups and downs.

The week after the first placement followed with a series of lows. Agreed that the companies that follow were big-shots, but no one feels good after a rejection. The failure at De-shaw and Amazon did not keep me down for too long as Kalanjali preparations were on full swing. I was too involved in my last Kalanjali, our silver jubilee Kalanjali.In between all this at the professional front, I also got busy with arranging dolls for Navratri. I took the responsibilty of setting up the whole thing on my own.

The hunt for talented anchors started with announcements in all classess regarding the auditions. It felt good to be a judge, judging the speaking talents of juniors and pick out potential anchors to replace me. Anchoring at MVIT has always been so close to me over the last couple of years that I sometimes get pretty possessive about it too.

The auditions were a successful and helped me assign anchors to all the 29 events at Kalanjali in addition to the anchors for the main stage. The next couple of days went on with preparing my own speech, correcting others' speeches and more importantly assigning the right task to the right one.

The D-day finally arrived.It was the time for Kalanjali 2011. The day was pretty hectic.I had to anchor at the inaugral function along with a junior who was absolutely new at the job. Post that, it was time to take part in software presentation and paper presentation. By the time, I reached home, I was totally tired. The next day gave me some time for myself to enjoy a few events as audience along with friends.I had given myself the role of giving the event's report on Day 2. What followed was the rockshow, whcih saw me head banging for a while under peer pressure. Overall, it was a memorable event.MVIT's Kalanjali 2011 was quite a big hit.

With very little preparation for Aricent, I decided to give it a try. The test seemed pretty easy at the beginning but the last section was a nighmare. I could relate to how any match result cannot be predicted until the final ball is bowled. The Aricent results gave me a reality check. I realised how much I needed to work on my technical skills in addition to my pretty above avergae aptitude and HR skills.
But as it is said, there is light on the end of every tunnel. I am waiting to find that light soon.

On that note, I would conclude with a forward that really motivated me..Something that is sure to lift me when I am down..."Life has its own way of making us smile especially at times when we lose hope but certain surprises come our way just when we think we could never smile again."

A Mindtree Mind!

The moment arrived...The moment which every undergraduate dreams about.. The moment which every final year student waits for.. The placement season..The time when you can see the sweat on your forehead... The time when everyone is clueless of what is in store ahead...

The pre-placement preparations seemed quite hectic. Right from preparing a CV exactly in the format that the training and placement officer had asked us to and getting our CVs proofread by friends to arranging for passport size photos in formals were something we were doing for the first time in life. Putting the certificates received right from school to college in order was an even tougher ask. That kept me on my feet till midnight.

The 19th of September.. MindTree visited Sir MVIT
All of us tried to look our best in formals. We all assembled near the auditorium waiting to welcome the visiting team. There was chatter all around. Discussions of formulas, sharing of ideas, releasing stress by having some fun were the activities happening all around. The visiting team gave us a presentation on 'Life at MindTree' and Activies in Mindtree.

Successful Customers,Happy People and Innovative Solutions are its mission and the values being Caring,Learning,Achieving, Sharing and Social Responsibility. The powerpoint shown and the talk by an MVIT alumni from MindTree was interesting. The reason behind the MindTree Logo was my favourite section of the talk. Imagination, Action and Joy were beautifully described with a few strokes of blue,red and yellow. After the interactive session, we were asked to write the aptitude test.

The test was of pretty high standard with a few questions being very tough and a few being a delight to solve. Our aptitude,technical skills,email-writing skills and programming skills were tested.The test ended after one and a half hour and we were asked to wait for 2-3 hours to declare the results. After patient waiting, it felt good to be one of the 180 selected. The day of my interview was fortunately the next day. The thought of having a few hours to relax at home and an opportunity to find out from friends having their interview on the same day seemed to release some stress.

The next day was a day to Do-or-Die. The day began with hours of wait to hear my name bing called for the HR interview. After waiting for over 3 hours, my name was finally called. With some excitement and some nervousness, i entered the room. I was interviewed by Mr Jayant who game me a warm welcome with a small puzzle. I was pretty excited about it but could not solve it because of my nervousness inside. I was also asked about my background, goals and why I would join MindTree. A few technical questions were also thrown at me. A few that I answered and a couple I did not. The interview was over with the last words of the interviewer being "Hope to see you in Mindtree". I was hoping to be there too.

The interview was a long process which went on till 7 in the evening. After hours and hours of wait, the results were compiled,offer letters signed and waiting to be announced. It was around 8 by then. Patience was being tested. A few of us were even thinking about how tough it would be if we were not selected. Hours of waiting all in vain. A few silent prayers went on too.. The HR from the MindTree team called the name sof selected candidates and handed over our offer letters. A sigh of relief to hear my name being called... Yeah..I was finally a MindTree mind!!

The day was being ended on a high with smiles all around. Congratualtons and best wishes kept pouring in.The MindTree minds also had a few photos being clicked with the interview panel. There were around 120 candidates who were given the offer letters that day. The reason MindTree is personally so special even before I was a prospective mind is that MindTee was the platform for me to start blogging. The very reason why I can today share my thoughts with the world.

The next visiting company was D E Shaw, everyone has a dream to get in there. We all geared up to write the aptitude. Alas, the aptitude test, the technical test, the programming test - they all went above our head.The results were declared after a couple of hours shortlisitng only 15 out of the many who wrote the test that day.

Amazon followed with a high standard of online testing. The questions were solvable but with high level of difficulty. The results may take time to be announced by I do not see much light at the end of the tunnel. After two high difficulty-level tests, it seems quite normal to be disappointed. I warned myself to prepare well for the next company since there is more than a week to prepare.

With disappointments all around, I saw a ray of hope with talking to my mentor, my guru, the co-founder of Moolya Software Testing Pvt Ltd. I realised,co-incidently, we played a role in promoting each other. The motivation to have a higher dream, higher credibility and to have the best skills gave me a push and a goal for the future. I am looking to work on them now.

After a hectic week of placements, it's probably some time to relax at college. With Kalanjali on cards and friends urging me to bunk, I got to hunt for great anchors in college tomorrow in about an hour. Waiting for this exciting talent hunt...

Busy bee...

The week that followed the festive season was filled with completion of assignments,updating myself with the lectures that happened in the course of time when I had missed classes and catching up on some fun with friends that I was craving for quite sometime. I also got to meet some of my school friends who surprised me by visiting my locality to have the Ganesha Darshan.

In the professional circuit, the week saw more teachers giving out the important questions for internals, a few mass bunks and some exam fright. One month of VII sem just flew by. Alas! It was internals time again. The preparation for internals after being detached from books for sometime by now, seemed a tough ask. Nevertheless, I had to overcome this obstacle and I am pretty pleased with my effort. A few papers were a breeze whereas a few just rattled our brains. The transition from every-Monday internals to six exams in three days were a little stressful but we somehow managed writing them. I was extra convinced on the benefits of group studies prior to exams.

The end of exam season did not get much relief because we all knew that the hill was just getting steeper. The placement season is to follow. We had our second and probably the final placement and training session where we were told about writing a winning CV. I worked on my CV for a few hours before I finally got it printed for the placement officer's approval.

Google was expected to come to the campus for recruitment on Sept 15 but fortunately, the date got postponed. I got an opportunity to attend the Google's DevFest 2011 for which I had registered quite sometime back. The learning experience was great.
We had speakers from different parts of the world coming to talk to us about Android Development,Google Apps, Maps,Chrome, APIs and Cloud. The sessions were informative but unfortunately, my friends and me got a little saturated towards the end of this event. The Google goodies, the ambience, the company, the exposure were all major positives from the event.

The next day at college did not witness many teachers taking classes. Loads of talks about placement and writing CV's was in the air.

One of my favorite events in college every year followed, Verve 2011. Participating in Verve gives me a lot of joy, especially after a very very memorable Verve 2010, probably one of the my best Verves. I chose to elocute on Martin Luther's "I have a dream". The experience and the performance was personally very satisfying. The thought of not attending another Verve is not very pleasant. Nevertheless, the placements are the biggest priority right now.

Mindtree,DeShaw,Amazon and Emphasis are on cards this month end... More preparations, more tests, more bunking classes and above all more stress... But all I'm trying now is to keep it simple!!

Exams to write minus 1...

After so much drama happening earlier this month, life took a turn towards serenity. I completely isolated myself from college and friends to an extent during the course of my GRE preparation.As I always say, I have no plans of going abroad as of now, nevertheless,I thought it will be nice giving it a shot and am glad with my decision.

The last 10 days have been quite banal with a very few exceptions. Waking up late in the morning after a study session at night was the routine. I,without my own knowledge, was getting accustomed to the U.S timings with no motives to go there..Or perhaps, I was just getting a little nocturnal.

My sole reason for writing the GRE is future planning and my parents' desire of me writing all the exams possible. They cultivated this habit when I was really small and I guess by now it has got into my blood too. So with parents' expectations and some peer pressure being my motivation, I decided to write the exam. I booked my test dates even before I got my passport hoping that the passport will arrive on time. I am glad, it did. I also timed my exam in such a way that it will not come in the way of my placements,internals or any other activity.

I got my first surge of inspiration for the preparation while I was having a look at the Workout Manual for GRE from Princeton. With friends quizzing each other on words, the wheels of my preparation started rolling. I must admit it is one of the best way to learn words.With around a week for the D-day, I realised I had a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, I had not done much.

That was the time,I did something I've never done in my life. Truly said, "Zindagi mein bahut kuch pehli baar hota hai". I decided to bunk college till my GRE exams got over. I used to utilize some time very constructively. Not surprisingly, there were times which I simply wasted. But I guess that was needed to maintain a balance.
I started taking atleast one practice test per section, learning new words,googling through various sites for assistance(which was not very successful) and whiling away some time.I also went through various books from friends whether it was Barons, ETS, Princeton or Kaplan.

Despite the pair studies once in a while and these routine activities, I was nervous.Nervous, about the what the future had for me.Nervous, about how I am going to tell my score to everyone if it is not good Loads of negative thoughts cropped in too, but I tried my best to keep myself optimistic.

I have always seen people using Word Power Made Easy while preparing for GRE. But the thickness of the book always scared me,especially since I am a tyro at reading. Three days before my exam I decided to have a look at it.After reading the first 50 pages of the book in half an hour, I fell in love with the book. I parallely decided to take down notes about the root words and their origins and finished skimming throught the book with appropriate notes in about 5 hours.I was myslef shocked on achieving that feat. The mini-dictionary was the last section which I went through the next day. With around 2 days for the test, the nervousness only increased.

Giving a friend a surprise on his birthday, buying the Ganesha idol, rides on the HH Pleasure and a series of serials on TV were a few de-stressers that time. A couple of days before the exam, I used to just follow the routine and worrying about the results.On the eve of the exam, I just managed to read for the analytical section which I had almost neglected and revise already known concepts. I decided to not take any practice tests that day for the fear of being de-motivated.

The D-day finally arrived. It was 31st of August. When the world was relaxing at home, my friend and I were getting ready to leave for the all-important exam. Reaching well before time, we had some time share a chuckle and clam oursleves down. 45 mins before the scheduled time, we were called in for the confindentiality agreement and security checks. On its successful completion, we were alloted cubicles in which we were to spend the next 4hours sweating it out in an air-conditioned room for the GRE.

I would certainly not be able to exactly put that 4-hour feeling here, but loads of thoughts were flowing in and I tried to keep myself as calm as possible. The first section was the analytical writing section where I had to write an issue essay on "Learning being a matter of personal discipline; schools and colleges alone are not sufficient" and another argument issue on "Mandatory driver's education for teenagers of Centerville school". The AWA was followed by a quants session and a verbal section. The 10-min break helped me to calm down after a not-so-good verbal section. I was happy that half my test was over. The next 3 sections were quants,verbal and quants.I was praying that my experimental section would be verbal since I had a terrible first section of Verbal but I was happy solving the Quants qs.
After a hect 3 hour 45 mins, my test was finally over and my scores was displayed. i was happy with my quants range of 750-800 and I had mixed feelings about my verbal range of 410-510. After choosing my 4 universities, I walked out of the room relieved that the test is over.

I was not very happy with my score but I knew that it was an OK-performance. The day followed with preparations for Ganesh Chaturthi,which was on the next day.After a long period was holidays, I was craving to go to college which was supposed to be a mass bunk. But fortunately nearly half the class turned up.

After college adding some colour to my life, life is going to be followed with more
exams and the placement season.

Yaad aayenge ye pal...

15th August 2011...

64 years after the Indian Independance!! The day was special not only because it marked the 65th year of India's virtual freedom, but also because of the Silver Jubilee Alumni Meet of Sir MVIT. I was involved as a part of the event management committee.

Managing events has always been one of my passions since school. It is an exposure of working with different people,different minds,learning from them and sharing a bond with them with the common ultimate goal being the grand success of the event.

I must admit I had a few sleepless nights before the 15th of August 2011. I was looking forward to meeting seniors this day(the ones I have known,the ones I have heard tons about and waiting to meet and a few that I have never known and were probably 25years older to me).The nights were filled with apprehensions anticipating the degree of success of the event, the review from the seniors and what not.

The alumni meet eve saw loads of checklists being made,duties being assigned to volunteers,a few volunteers backing out,a few glitches...But there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel. The positives were our prayers for a good event and our pre-planning skills.

The day finally arrived.. I was fortunate enough to witness my first flag-hoisting ceremony of Sir MVIT. The flag was hoisted by the Secretary of Sri Krishnadevaraya Educational Trust,Sri K V Sekhar Raju accompanied by the Director and Principal of Sir MVIT.I sang the national anthem and the national song after a few years. A few speeches were delivered as usual. We had arranged wrist bands and flag brooches for all the organisers and volunteers and we proudly flaunted it that day.

The event also witnessed its live screening through which people all over the world could witness the Silver Jubilee Alumni Meet live. Thanks to Vishal and Vishwanath for their effort.

The event kicked off with inaugration being delayed by half an hour which proceeded with the General Body Meeting after which it was the time for the alumni to enjoy with some games. We had "Bombing the City" and "Passing the Parcel" as the games. Ironically, we saw more enthusiasm from the alumni's tiny tots who were waiting to grab the prizes by displaying excellent sportsmanship. 3 out of 6 prizes were claimed by the kids. The games were followed by a festive lunch. One of the best lunch party thrown by MVIT. Right from the sweet to the desserts, it was a well-thought lunch menu.

The lunch was followed by the visit to department for the alumni.The alumni hour started at 3p.m which witnessed the alumni showcasing their skills on center stage a few years after they left college. The program started by a soothing classical music performance by Shruthi followed by an audience-attracting performance by Mr Ashutosh Dikshit. The dean describes him as "Name a talent and he has it". And I admit, he certainly does. The hour also saw alumni singing,sharing their experience and recalling the times they spent in college.Ranjani entertained us with her talk and songs. When we see one of the founders of Susamskruthi addressing us and singing songs, it certainly feels good.

The best moment of the day came when we had live performance by Mr Abhishek Kumar,Indian Idol. He is probably the most entertaining singer I have wathced live.It was a pleasure to recieve him from the entrance,watching him perform some of the finest music and watching him make the teachers,principal,dean and even the secretary dance to his tunes. His down-to-earth nature and love for the college left me awestruck. Being on stage while he was singing "Yaad aayenge yeh pal" was certainly a nostalgic moment.The day ended with loads of happiness and loads of photographs being clicked.

This experience was one of my special moments at college.
Working with the event organising team was a pleasure.The interactions with people of the college right from the top level till the foreman level was a delight. I will always cherish this synergy with the 15-member team. The reviews of the event by the alumni after a great time was even more motivating. It's always nice to see yourself and your team being appreciated.The day ended on a high!!

The week that followed involved attending a few classes, bunking some,registering for placement of a few companies among other activities both good and bad.

Susamskriti in assosiation with SpicMacay also organised a classical music concert by Vidwan T V Shankarnarayan this Friday.The music of the Padmabhushan awardee was extremely soothing and more importantly it was heart-warming to see the 65 year old connoisseur bubbling with enthusiam enjoying his music.

I had to sacrifice attending my Department fest,4th Dimension, conducted by Ganak for my GRE preparation.It would probably be the first fest I missed in college since I joined Sir MVIT. It also felt good after I heard that the fest saw particaipants in huge numbers. The positives from this sacrifice meant learning a few extra words for the GRE and a successful group study for the all important exam. Loads of bunking classes in store because of the GRE!!!

Present Perfect Continuous...

This post is to share with you all the things I have been doing(hence the title) in the past week or so. Continuing from my previous post, I have been attending seminars throughout but the one at IISc on the Frontiers of Computer Science was a little different. Reasons:
1. I had teachers and friends accompanying me to learn and have fun(For once, I was attending the seminar with a group I know..)
2. The college decided to take me to this conference.
3. It meant a few days of bunking college with attendance(Unlike my previous seminars which always happened on holidays..)

The international conference was conducted on "Frontiers of Computer Science" at the J.N Tata Convention Center, IISc by Atria Institute of Technology in assosiation with the IIIT-B,ACM,VTU,CSI and ACT from 7th-9th August 2011. It was a large-scale event featuring Indian and International speakers and a few enthusiasts submitting their conference papers.

No doubt, there was a lot to learn and explore in this conference although,a few things that the keynote speakers said, bounced over my head. Nevertheless, a brief explanation of the 3-day seminar on the sessions I attended would go like this...

1. A tutorial on Advances in Multimedia Surveillance by Dr Pradeep Atrey:
Safety is important for all of us. Surveillance(setting up cameras) enhances security. Multimedia Surveillance makes use of cameras, microphones, motion sensors, RFIDs, night vision camera,IP camera etc to keep a watch at other people's activities for security. By using multimedia, we enhance efficiency,reliability and scalability at a lower amortized cost. Face detection,face recognition, blob detection and tracking were the areas focussed upon by Mr Pradeep aided by his partner Mr. Mukesh. The key point was achieving security at the cost of privacy loss. They concluded the talk with a solution of a security-privacy tradeoff where the criminals can be recognised by the behaviour and other attributes, thus ensuring privacy.

2. Mr Pradeep Atrey also gave us an idea on "How to write a Research Paper":
Research can either be a theoretical research(developing theorems,statistical methods etc) or appliction oriented research(to solve a particular problem).
a. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION - Identifying your problem, establishing the importance of the problem, scrutinizing the existing solutions to identify their flaws, developing your core idea and solution, summarizing main contributions of your work.
b.RELATED WORK - Discussing the related work and explaining the novelty and distinctness of proposed work.
c. PROBLEM FORMULATION/STATEMENT - Formally stating or defining your problem in mathematical form.
d.PROPOSED WORK/METHOD/SYSTEM/FRAMEWORK/ALGORITHM - Describing proposed work in detail using scientific tools and notations.
e.EXPERIMENTS,RESULTS AND ANALYSIS - Reporting experiments to substantiate your claims, establishing superiority of your work etc.
f.CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK - Stating the conclusions and summary work.

3.A tutorial on Cloud Computing by Mr. Subbakrishna(Excel-Soft Technologiees),Mr Janakiram(Amazon Web Services) and Mr Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu(Microsoft):
Cloud Computing is the next stage in Internet's evolution. Cloud essentially means the Internet. It focusses on hosting applications,making computations on the web etc. The aspects of Cloud Computing include foundation,network services,infrastructure,platform and applications. The terminologies include IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service),PaaS(Platform as a Service) and Saas(Software as a service). It stressed on technology development and R&D drivers like scalability,deployment flexibiltiy,development flexibility etc.
EC2 is a service which facilitates resizable computer capacity that auto-scales based on the workload.Ramaprasanna, a developer evangelist from Microsoft demonstrated using Visual Studio 2010 with Windows Azure to set up servers.He lightened things up by cracking a few jokes and interacting with audience.

4. Keynote talk on "Multimedia Data Mining" by Dr Mohan S Kankanhalli:
Multimedia Data Mining is the exploration and analysis by automatic or semi-automatic means of large quantities of audio,video,image and text data in order to discover meaningful patterns and rules.
The techniques assosiated with MDM are clustering,classification and sequence of pattern mining. MDM can be applied in search and retrieval,sports video analysis and surveillance data mining. He familiarized us with open issues of MDM like inaccuarate concept detection issue,dynamic temporal relationships,automatic attribute construction,media stream synchronization,synchronous cross modal mining etc.

5. FUTURE OF WORK by Mr C S Murali from CTS:
This particular session was one of my favourites. The talk was initially not on the schedule but was added later. And it was worth the accident!!
The topic concentrated on the confluence of technology,demographics and globalization which is changing the nature of organization and work itself.
The four forces changing the nature of organization and work are globalization,virtualization,millenials and cloud computing. The talk focussed on how the number of Internet users have increased exponentially,the explosion of virtualization at the organisation,process and technology levels,the changes in the work-life of employees,impact of social networking sites,how the millenials(those born between 1975 and 1995) are important and different in terms of being digital naives,fierce multi takers who crave collaboration,travel in-packs and don't care about status,how work has transformed from being a noun to being a verb,the coming of cloud and rising of the knowledge process.

6.Keynote talk on "Correct Design of Enbedded Systems" by Dr Wolfgang Kunz:
Embedded systems are specialized for certain applications in a particular technical environment. Dr Kunz discussed on the challenges of a embedded system design, the functional correctness of a systems on chip,the role of formal methods and the Electronic System level(ESL) based design. He stated on how the dependance on computer systems has soared quoting an example of a modern ES car that has 70 processors,10 million lines of code and 40% of the value.
Dr Peter Liggesmeyer,then, discussed the current trends and challenges in embedded sofware engineering and how we could develop a practical model based approach for system engineering.

7. Workshop on Analytics and Algorithms for Business Optimization by Dr Indrajit,Dr Y Narahari,Dr Vinayaka Pandit, Mr S V Subrahmanya and Mr T S Mohan:
The marriage of mathematics and computer science with business applications was explained. The talk was about integrating the aspects of Mathematics comprising of linear algebra,optimization,probablitly,statistics,simulation,machine learning,game theory, graph theory etc with aspects of business applications comprising of advertising,product marketing,e-commerce services like finance,health,education etc,carbon economincs,drug design,intelligent transportation etc. It was a good platform to identify problems and take it up as projects for us.

8. Keynote talk on "From Cycles to Solutions" by Dr. Vipin Chaudhary:
It was about redefining the possible. It focussed on the evolution of high performance computers, the cycles of HPC, the exploision of choices in this field etc.It left us pondering over the message that we have to think about complete solutions in terms of applications,application workflows and systems and how the primary concern is to think about the end user and the solutions rather than the computer scientists.

9.Presentations: Apart from the tutorials,keynotes and workshops, there were also presentaions being made by students and teachers who have writtien a research paper and aspiring to present it in a conference.

The three days hectic schedule was combined with great hospitality,yummy food,mind blowing cultural programme on Day 2, the walk with friends exploring the IISc campus,clicking tons of photographs and above all a great learning experience!!

That's not all that happened this week. The week also saw me bunking classess after classes for the all important "Sliver Jubilee Alumni Meet" to be scheduled on 15th August marking the institutes' 25 years completion. Being a chief member of the event management committee feels great. Right from chalking out the schedule,games to be played,discussions with the higher authorities,piling up volunteers,getting things done at the right time and above all the responsibilty of hosting a memorable meet feels great...A cherry on the pie came when someone jokingly tagged me as the unofficial college captain..With that contentment deep within, keeping fingers crossed for 15th August..Live streaming of the event on the website is being planned too!!!

Rest in Next...

Potpourri of LIFE...

Before I begin, I would like to explain the title of this blogpost. Potpourri is a literary production composed of parts brought together without order or bond of connection. I was tempted to name the blog as "Potpourri" for two reasons. One, that it sums up the happenings of my life in the last fortnight perfectly. Two, because it looks very good to they eyes on screen(atleast to my eyes).

The first part of the fortnight mainly revolved around the family whereas the latter half concentrated on the professional aspect. Family time involved cousins coming over,late night snacks, visiting relatives and most importantly spending quality time at home with parents.

The highlight of the first half of the past 15 days is certainly the new addition to my life,to my family..my prized possession..A Hero Honda Pleasure..It involved some research,some googling, some brainstorming to narrow down to choosing a two-wheeler..Finally, I had the pleasure of owning a PLEASURE.. Now that obviously called for a learners' license, which meant I had to do brush up on the traffic rules. The LL too arrived in 3-4 days after a not-so tough viva at the RTO.

Amidst all these joys, there was a sense of excitement and a sense of nervousness to attend the Yahoo Open Hack 2011! I was sharp on time to the venue on a Saturday morning at the all exciting Lalit Ashok! The security was tight owing to the political events happening in Bangalore with Yeddyurappa resigning. We were then welcomed at the event by the crew at the registration desk.

It was the fourth Open Hack event at Bangalore. The session was introduced by Micheal Smith from Yahoo! which was followed by talks from Saurabh Sahni on YQL and Y! APIs,Natarajan Kannan on YUI 3,Pradeep B V on HTML 5 & CSS 3 and Harsha Rajashekar Vashisht(my super senior at MVIT) on Hacking with Node.js at the Kalinga room/ Parallely, the Siddhartha room at Lalit Ashok was busy with Praveen P N's on Building High Performance Web Sites,Prajwal B S's Y! Geo Technologies and Tathagato Rai Dastidar's Yahoo! Search BOSS.

The highlight of the event was Douglas Crockford,the creator of JSLint and developer of JSON discussing JavaScript. He was present at the event to give us talks on three main topics. a.Server Sidedness b.The JSON saga and c.Programming Style and Your Brain. A man with such credentials was very amiable and interacted feeely with the crowd. The technical talks gave us a sense of direction to proceed in this field and boosted out technical knowledge.

The rest of the event was filled with a few developers building applications, a few learning to develop and a few interacting with others and brodening their horizons. The hacks were based on the location ,mobile and entertainment challenges which led to mobile apps,web apps and hackware hacks. The top 50 hacks out of 111 were chosen and were presented by one team member. A few hacks were funny, a few aiding the social mass and a few were purely technical.

The winners' hacks were something that we could all connect to and use to make our lives simper and easier.

The grand prize winner hacks were Spotlight – Illuminate your part of the World(This hyper-local web app surfaces the best content in our area) and D.A.M.N. - Single Serving Friend (Connects people on demand to enable them to share meter fare in taxis / auto-rickshaws. This is done by finding out common routes that different people want to take at a given time).They would participate the the Grand Open Hack at New York this September.

The other winning hacks were fakemytrip, crosstag, devsync, StoryBoard and iCribber. fakemytrip was certainy my favourite and rightfully chosen as the popular hack by the jury.

I would sum up my experience as a place of learning from others and exchanging ideas that would soon become innovative products(hopefully). The experience included learning about hacking with plenty of fun(i enjoyed the foosball and the T-shirt is pretty satisfactory) and amazing yummy food for the weekend. The bean bag, that they allowed us to take back, is a tresure at home now.I carried it home by using the public transport..Anything for the bean bag!! The hospitality at the event, the crew, the mentors, Anil with his team and most importantly YAHOO! deserves a big pat on their back for organizing such a mega event!!!I am tempted to work for Yahoo! some day after this event. Amidst all this action, the VI semester results were announced too. It was,all in all,a perfect end to the semester holidays...

I could not ask for a better start to the final year. Three years of engineering have somehow have passed so soon and here we are,walking through the gates of the college as seniors. Seeing the college,friends and teachers after a month instilled a feel-good feeling. I already had a responsibilty at hand, even before I entered college. It was a great opportunity, more than responsiblity. I was asked to be a part of the event management committee for organising one of MVIT's milestone events - The Silver Jubilee Mega Alumni Meet to mark the 25 years of our college. I plunged into it as I would get to meet and interact with the seniors I know and the seniors who passed out from college much before I joined.

The latter week included some(very little) seriosuness to prepare for GRE which is less than a month away.The week also witnessed our first training and placement session by Prof S H Khan on the Do's and Don't s of preparing for an interview. After a month of attending seminars voluntarily, a new opportunity knocked at my door. I was chosen as one of the 10 students who would attend a 3-day seminar at IISc along with 4 teachers on Frontiers of Computer Science from 7-9 August. Awaiting to learn and have some fun!!

Variety is the Spice of Life…

I never anticipated so much of action in my life during holidays when I am sitting at Bangalore with no internships at hand(I’m a little lazy for it now since this would probably be my last year of a month-long holidays). Life was all about eating,sleeping,computer and television. Life minus friends and college(No matter how much we criticise our college, we just love it..na??) could be really boring sometimes.

The action packed week started with me taking an extra inning - I decided to get blogging. Hurray.. I wrote my first blog ever and received quite a few compliments. I did get a few suggestions for improvement too and I promise to take them seriously from here on. The hectic week included a few guests coming over where I tried my best to brush up my hospitality skills by being a good host making sure things are in place and in order(I tried my best to make my house look like a museum). Quality family time and a trip to college was the key for the next few days.

Amidst all this action, I always had a few apprehensions regarding Yahoo Hack 2011. The thought of “How am I going to be part of a team that needs me and with whom I can work along and create a successful hack by the end of the next week” kept flowing in me. I even started constantly checking the wiki page exclusively created for this event so that I can be updated with the event details. I tried talking to a few seniors in college like Kiran, Rahul and Ganesh to see how they could help me out.

To get rid of all the tensions, I even planned a fun trip to Mysore but..oops…that did not work out either. The plan was cancelled at the last minute. A horrid state to be in.. As time passed, I realised that it was certainly a blessing in disguise. I decided to attend the Yahoo Pre Open Hack Mixer to give myself a break and ease some tensions. I was confident that I was going to get some information on how I could prepare for the all important event lined up next week.

I decided to Google the route to the venue(Bagmane Tech Park) after carefully printing out my entry ticket. Alas! It all sounded so new to me.. How was I going to travel to a place that I had never even heard of, with no one I know for company? I was reminded of the solitary reaper…Nevertheless, I gathered some courage to attend the talk and thankfully I was on the right track.
The talks were interesting. The event was beautifully organized and put together. The Yahoo team that was present consisted of a few great minds letting us know about the APIs and Interfaces. An informative, informal and innovative session of two hours did a lot of good to me. For most of the event, I was a loner sitting quietly at my chair and listening to all that the mentors had to say, making notes of the important points to remember.

The talk started with Mr Bala introducing us to Yahoo Hack and sharing a few experiences from last year. Breaking a problem into pieces and solving them successfully, making sure the problem is relevant, applicable and appealing to the audience and the importance of a good story telling were the areas he stressed upon. We had another Yahoo mentor telling us about the key challenges of the industry with respect to Entertainment, Mobile and Geo-locations.

Mr. Saurabh Sahni enlightened us with the Yahoo Open Stack and YQL emphasizing on the importance of data,access and interface to build a web hack. An interesting slideshow was presented leaving us all to realize how much we can play around with YQL. The troubles of finding an API, reading the documentation, getting access using keys, finding data points all seemed like problems of the past.

Mr. Harsha Vashisht emphasized on using Yahoo User Interfaces which makes our life simpler to create a front end. He focused on the interface widgets like data sources, auto complete, data charts to name a few(very few). He gave us references to these examples and also demonstrated a few.
Mr Prajwal informed us about YQL-Geo Library letting us know how the lat-long of a place can be found using various references like GPS,HTML 5 navigator, IP Sniffing, W3C Geolocation APi etc. He also stressed on placemaker and placefinder APIs.
Mr Dutta acquainted us with BOSS and OAuth giving us a few examples and references.
Mr. Sudar, then familiarized us with Hardware Hacks quoting a few examples of how it can be implemented and promised a Getting Started session on 30th July.

The talks were followed by a Q&A session and I was still alone. The interesting part of most sessions is often the networking session. They say “Patience is the Best Virtue” and I was rewared for my patience. I found a partner, a group, a team with which I can hack the next week..Ahh…What a relief it was!!

All the world’s a stage and we are merely players. After the drama this week, I am eagerly waiting for the next weekend to end my semester holidays on a high and start my final year of engineering on a positive note.

With all these events spicing up my life, I am both excited and nervous for the all important Yahoo! Open Hack 2011.

Making hay while the sun shines...

The life of an engineering student is often wasted with classes,assignments and exams...The importance of practical training and industry exposure is missing in our education system. But who am I to question the system? I am not even a graduate yet. I decided to not merely be a drop in the ocean but to be responsible for the course of the stream.I did something differently to decide my own journey.( I must admit Shiv Khera's advice of doing things differently than doing different things certainly helps.)

I decided to attend seminars in my free time(especially in holidays) both to have fun and broaden my horizon. Make hay while the sun shines kept ringing in my ears. I started off by deviating(slightly) from technology. I decided to attend a product management workshop at IIM-B throwing some light on Technology Adoption Life Cycle. The lecture kicked off with an interesting presentation stressing on INNOVATION by Mr.Suhas Kelkar from BMC!! I thought that Saturday morning could not have started in on a better note. This is when I realised that I do not need to necessarily invent something to innovate. The talk by Mr.S. Ramesh of Confianzys Consulting was based on TALC model which has innumerable applications in the field of technology. Google+ , Microsoft, Sony vs JVC, Amazon Kindle were a few of the case studies discussed. I would certainly thank Mr.Ravi Padaki from IPMA for this experience.

The lecture was the serious part. The element of fun was the journey to IIM-B,sitting in the Management Development Centre where the classess in "3 idiots" were shot, having a look at the tank which has a few epic scenes from the movie and the library where the lesson of not merely mugging but enjoying learning was potrayed(remember how Chamatkaar became Balaatkar). The journey ended with having a taste of the food of the IIM-B canteen!! The day followed with having some more fun spending time with seniors who shared their experiences giving us guidance as to how we can shape our future.

We have all heard about "Opportunity strikes the door only once." But exactly a week later, I got my second opportunity. An experience to be among the software testers having great industry experience at the monthly testers' meet. I was nervous with loads of apprehensions as to what would be in store for me at a place where the best of the best interact. What would I, a college student, understand and gain from it?

Nevertheless, I chose to strike the iron as it was hot. I went ahead and attended the meet. Not surprisingly, my friend and me were the only college students there. The biggest positive was that at no point did we feel out of place. Both of us could perfectly relate to the talk by the VP of Mindtree, Mrs. Sylvia Veeraraghavan. She gave us presentations on testing and its applications. More importantly, she shared valuable experiences of her life making it a great intro for the long session ahead.We even exchanged a few words with her over a cup of tea.

The moment of inspiration had still not arrived. We were then introduced to the best tester..also the best test blogger from India, Mr. Pradeep Soundararajan, the co-founder and director of Moolya Software Testing Pvt Ltd. Two hours of his stage presence seemed like 20 mins.More importantly, my inspiration to start a blog. I learnt many lessons from him. The best of all was importance of lateral thinking and to never underestimate yourself(even in front of your boss) when you feel you are doing the right thing(Though, I agree more with Mr Rahul- We need the skills too).. The talk was certainly about testers and test blogging but on analysis, I learnt that all that he spoke about can be applied to life,at large.Thanks to Mr.Rahul Verma and the "Tester Tested".

We always got an edge over the others in both the seminars for being college students in a pool of industry experts. And I admit, we loved it.

Waiting to attend a few more events like these in the coming weeks before the education system loads me again with exams,projects and placements in my final year of engineering. I hope, I can convincingly say "I'm an Engineer",a year later, when I have some wealth of practical experience in addition to the theoretical knowledge that I flood my brain with!!

Right now, Yahoo Hack is on the cards for me!!

P.S :
1. This is my first post in my new blog. I am a novice and completely open to criticism. Pardon me for grammatical errors,if any.
2. Thanks to the Tester Tested for inspiring me to do this.( You added Moolya in my life..Yes, I found my guru..Just like how you found JB and MB).
3. Hope I have the patience and skills to continue blogging and sharing my experiences.