A long long time ago, is how I'd describe my last post. I don't even remember what I wrote. It seems like an eternity, now that I see what I wrote. It wasn’t as good as part 1, was it? Well most sequels aren’t, so it isn’t that bad a thing. Anyways, I’ve been really really busy since then and it was hard to sit in front of the computer and type out a post while having three-four different deadlines to meet, simultaneously, and being the person I am, I’m always behind schedule. I rely on the age old principle called the Procrastinating Engineer’s Law of Inevitability, which states that “No matter how bad the situation is, the work you had to do will get done in the end. After all, it could’ve been worse!” It works for me, every time. I can think of millions of instances to support this and more. Some of these took place very recently and some more are about to take place (my final exams are coming). So, I was up against the wall and neck deep in piles and piles of work-to-be-completed, but I managed. It’s been more than a month I guess and a lot happened in that more-than-a-month. I’ll do one thing at a time because I’ve been told that long posts are boring (!).
I’ll start with something that was completely new for me and one of the very best experiences of my college life. I have this friend called Varuni (just V from here on) who was going through the Facebook profile of a guy she likes ( :P ) and she stumbled upon this ad from a site called ideawicket.com. She followed the link to a business plan contest being held in IIT Roorkee in April called ISIS ’08 for which the entries were open. The prize was supposedly Rs. 2 lakhs and a seed funding of upto $1 million!! So she got all excited and told me about it and said we should take part. I wanted to share her enthusiasm but I had too much on my plate. I still gave it a thought whenever I could. Then she had this brainwave and came up with a brilliant idea and started working upon it with full dedication. I chipped in now and then but had a lot of things to do at that time too. This is mid-Feb I’m talking about I think. It started at that time and I was busy with my project work then, along with Lingua Franca and the upcoming fest to boot. I wonder why I didn’t write about it earlier. I used to write for the fest blog, wrote an occasional post now and then. You can read them here. I was made part of the Core Team as Spokesperson, which wasn’t much of a job until the fest itself, but the real time consuming stuff was organizing the events. It was a major headache and our level of preparation wasn’t as good as I’d have wanted it to be, but the above stated law works for me. Being our first ever Inter-College fest, it was a huge success. I camped at Sridhar’s place for the duration of the fest and it was a lot of fun. Other people came in too and we used to have late night card games with fake money. A quick word for the LF team that worked really hard and did a great job in the end, well done guys!
Getting back to ISIS, I was so busy with all the stuff going on around me, that I couldn’t be involved with one more thing. V kept at it and asked Deepak and Shashwat (D and S similarly) to be a part of the team as well. They worked with her and made the executive summary and sent in the entry. I saw the document that was sent and I was bowled over. It was brilliant! We were going to make it surely. The result took longer than expected because the judges were having a hard time dealing with so many entries. When it finally came, we were left speechless and dumbfounded. We had made it to the top 8 and we had people from IIMs and IITs for company, better still there were more of that kind below us in the next batch of 22! These 22 would have to face a preliminary round clearing which they would get a wild card entry into the finals. We were in the final already! This was big news! HUGE! I can’t put enough exclamation marks to emphasize the fact that it was the biggest platform I’ve ever been on. Check out the results page here. It was the sole purpose of our existence from that moment on. We worked day and night (metaphorically), met new people who gave us great insights into the world of business and I had the prospect of going on my first ever out-station trip with friends. To be continued tomorwow………
I’ll start with something that was completely new for me and one of the very best experiences of my college life. I have this friend called Varuni (just V from here on) who was going through the Facebook profile of a guy she likes ( :P ) and she stumbled upon this ad from a site called ideawicket.com. She followed the link to a business plan contest being held in IIT Roorkee in April called ISIS ’08 for which the entries were open. The prize was supposedly Rs. 2 lakhs and a seed funding of upto $1 million!! So she got all excited and told me about it and said we should take part. I wanted to share her enthusiasm but I had too much on my plate. I still gave it a thought whenever I could. Then she had this brainwave and came up with a brilliant idea and started working upon it with full dedication. I chipped in now and then but had a lot of things to do at that time too. This is mid-Feb I’m talking about I think. It started at that time and I was busy with my project work then, along with Lingua Franca and the upcoming fest to boot. I wonder why I didn’t write about it earlier. I used to write for the fest blog, wrote an occasional post now and then. You can read them here. I was made part of the Core Team as Spokesperson, which wasn’t much of a job until the fest itself, but the real time consuming stuff was organizing the events. It was a major headache and our level of preparation wasn’t as good as I’d have wanted it to be, but the above stated law works for me. Being our first ever Inter-College fest, it was a huge success. I camped at Sridhar’s place for the duration of the fest and it was a lot of fun. Other people came in too and we used to have late night card games with fake money. A quick word for the LF team that worked really hard and did a great job in the end, well done guys!
Getting back to ISIS, I was so busy with all the stuff going on around me, that I couldn’t be involved with one more thing. V kept at it and asked Deepak and Shashwat (D and S similarly) to be a part of the team as well. They worked with her and made the executive summary and sent in the entry. I saw the document that was sent and I was bowled over. It was brilliant! We were going to make it surely. The result took longer than expected because the judges were having a hard time dealing with so many entries. When it finally came, we were left speechless and dumbfounded. We had made it to the top 8 and we had people from IIMs and IITs for company, better still there were more of that kind below us in the next batch of 22! These 22 would have to face a preliminary round clearing which they would get a wild card entry into the finals. We were in the final already! This was big news! HUGE! I can’t put enough exclamation marks to emphasize the fact that it was the biggest platform I’ve ever been on. Check out the results page here. It was the sole purpose of our existence from that moment on. We worked day and night (metaphorically), met new people who gave us great insights into the world of business and I had the prospect of going on my first ever out-station trip with friends. To be continued tomorwow………
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