Seminar on B2B Branding

The Welingkar Institute of Management, Bangalore and FICCI FLO is jointly hosting a one-day seminar on B2B Branding.

This one day event would be featuring good practices in the space of Corporate Brand Management. Speakers include: Sachin Mulay (GM, Strategy Marketing at Wipro); Raghu B. Viswanath (MD of Vertebrand), Pandrang Row (Partner at Vertibrand), and Dr. Githa Heggde (Head of Marketing at Welingkar School).

The areas addressed would be:

• Importance of branding for B2B,
• Developing a good/ strong brand,
• A company's intelligence and personality
• What is means for corporate brand, design, creativity and difference it can make to corporate brand.

The venue for the event is the campus of Welingkar Institute of Management, Electronic City, Bangalore.

The even fee is: Rs. 1,500 for Corporate Executives, Rs. 1,000 for Academicians, and Rs. 500 for students. To register for the session, write to: Soumya Chakraborty.

What makes IIM A stand apart?

This is a sure questions that intrigues many.

While I am no qualified to attempt an answer, but here's a honest confession. I didn't do my post graduation from IIMA (let alone IIM). It was from NITIE Mumbai. But I always wished to (and still do) to spend some time of my life under these famed arches at the coveted IIM A.

It would have been such a loss of opportunity if I were not to visit IIM A having been to Ahmedabad. It was the Sunday (yesterday), the campus was preparing for the Summer Intern Interview process and not many mortals were seen around. I along with Sudip, a final year student there. spent an hour visiting the campus and fathoming the spirit it has to offer. Apart from a brilliant architecture and facilities, what really was impressive about this institute was the utmost importance given to simplicity.

There wasn't anything fancy about this place. The classrooms were usual with black boards and Over Head Projectors installed amid wooden furniture. Simple canteens and neat dorms.

Let's have a look at the typical day-in-life of a first year student here. From the day one the classes are on from 8:45 in the morning till about lunch time. There are surprise quizzes at least 4 days a week given a notice of about an hour. They have to read upwards of 200 pages of cases/ text a day. Typically students go the bed by 4 AM.

The profs are extremely strict with class assignments, cases, notes and presentations and have their own ways of dealing with under performers. Sudip remembered in one of his first year classes where for one student failing to submit the assignment, the prof walked away and the whole class got a lower grade.

Talking about the library. The Vikram Sarabhai Library with over 163,000 books and 38,000 journals and access to another 57 online database stands out as one of the largest knowledge centres anywhere in country. It's a different thing that not many students were seen around!

To this Sudip quipped- we rarely get books issued from here as the class assignments and reading material keeps us drowned most of the time.

Comes the final year, the students have to choose from a set of largest possible electives and compete with the best to grab the top jobs. With no more than one day of vacation in the whole of first year and a few more in the final, the college ensures that students have the best experience of a rigorous institute.

In conclusion- What makes IIM A stand apart is- DISCIPLINE and ACADEMIC RIGOUR. Many institutes might clam so, but now I have a reason to believe!

When Sparks Flew at DA-IICT

The second of the institutes that I visited at Ahmedabad was- DA- IICT. The Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of ICT is a very unique institute in terms of the specific courses offered as well the intellectual infrastructure. For about 1,200 students there are over 50 faculty members- All holding PhDs. Now that's something even famed IITs can't boast of.

That apart, the institute located at Gandhinagar resides in a lush green serene, and one could see more than a few species of birds and animals on campus.

As for the Let Sparks Fly session there were around 40 students participating across undergraduate branches as well a few post graduates. Through a series of brainstorming sessions and group activities, they could come up with some really wacky ideas. Some of these include: a machine replenishing Oxygen in atmosphere (artificial plants); a gun that could freeze the subject w/o killing; active buildings with moving layers; implants to understand animal needs/ emotions; devices to store and retrieve human memory; smart, afforbale homes for elderly; etc.

Surely some of these ideas might sound ridiculous and at best futuristic, but remember one funny thing about great innovations. They always looks impossible at the foresight while obvious at the hindsight.

So the morale is- Let Sparks Fly.

Generating Patentable Innovative Ideas- A Workshop

Last week I attended a two day workshop on the Ideation Techniques offered by Peer Technical hosted at the CII Naoroji Godrej Centre of Excellence in Mumbai. Conducted by Prof. SD Tase and Mr. Vijay Tase, the event was attended by 11 executives from diverse backgrounds. These included managers, patent champions, engineers, designers, consultants and HR executives. Quite a diverse mix for a topic of creativity. Apart from these tools and techniques, what was of great impression was the enthusiasm level of Prof. Tase even at an age of 72. That was surely contagious. Here's a brief summary of the two day session and the techniques delved into.

Vijay Tase started the session with a brief on Patentability Criteria. The trident of patentability being- Novelty, Inventiveness (non-obviousness) and Industry Utility. He further delved into the test of each of these criteria and the significance of being creative while presenting an invention. Also were discussions on Offensive vs Defensive patents where former suites small firms while large firms go with the latter. Further he impressed upon the significance of building a fortress of patents towards a stronger portfolio.

And then Prof. Tase took over with the tools designed to generate patentable ideas. These were:

• FAX Technique: FAX stands for Factoring, Altering and Xenerating. This starts with identifying the Factors pertaining to a problem/ object; Choosing a set of Change Agents that can be leveraged; and finally applying these Change Agents to the Factors to generate ideas. These Agents include: Push/Pull, Explode, Control, etc. The technique is suitable while exploiting a problem.
• Matrix Method: Based on the concept of Morphology, the technique looks into mapping various possible alternatives in two independent parameters and generating ideas from there. These can range from a 2x2 matrix to nxm matrix, and can serve as a rich source of possible combinations. For instance, the independent parameters for a notebook could be paper type and page orientation. One task remains to seperate the vital ideas from trivial.
• Patent Dissection Technique (PADIT): Here a one on one comparison is conducted between various available patents wrt selective parameters. This helps check the uniqueness quotient as well help fine tune the invention for the purpose of patenting. Parameters here could be: field details, technical problem addressed, components and interactions, and proposal of any new theory, among others.
• Disruptive Analysis: One of the most powerful techniques, the Disruptive Analysis attempts to defy the logical thinking with an intent of breaking paradigms. The illogical approach involves: challenging the existing product/ process/ problem, challenging needs and requirements, and drilling down to the fundamentals. A very suitable techniques during the start of a project.
• Hybrid Method: The technique takes up attributes of the problem/ product at hand and randomly tries mapping it with attributes of an unrelated product, such as a water bottle, or a pencil, etc. This helps stumble upon a unique combination that could lit up a spark.

Further there were sufficient demonstration on the significance of Chance Elements in reativity as well on Intuition.Overall, a well conducted and received program which has a rather simple approach and vast applicability. Thanks CII and Peer Technical.

When Sparks Flew at Nirma Ahmedabad

This time with a difference.

There were about 42 faculty members from the various colleges of Nirma University based at Ahmadabad.

A quick bit about the university first. There are in all six colleges here. These are: Institutes of Technology, Management, Diploma Studies, Pharmacy, Science and Law. All in one 120 acres of campus. Lush green and a fantastic architecture. Housing close to 10,000 students across colleges and another 1,000 faculty members, the institute stands out as one of the top private universities in India.

The session was for faculty members from across these colleges and from all levels. Through a systematic creativity approach the participants were encouraged to arrive at solutions to their typical problems. Further taking such learning back to the class rooms and impart to students.

With these two objectives in mind, we kick started the wonderful day.

After initial deliberation, areas of brainstorming soon emerged as: Faculty related, Students related, Research and Admin related.

The groups used a series of tools and techniques for the brainstorming sessions such as Mind Mapping, Exploration, Random Object Mapping, etc. The result was a set of 500 ideas germinated towards the end. The top 50 ideas were then demonstrated through clay modelling, 3- D models, etc. Then voted in a democratic fashion and finally up for proposal.

In the words of one of the oldest faculty members for the session, "even at an age of 62 I was enjoying like a kid".

Remember, Let Sparks Fly sessions are for kids of all age!

Microsoft- World's Biggest Green Engine

They say- You can love it, hate it but can never ignore it. That's Microsoft for you and its famed founder Bill Gates. Apart from being one of the most successful capitalist of the previous century, Bill is also a great transformer. The role that his vision in the form of Microsoft has played is often ignored on the wake of criticism that his proprietary software business receives. The Open Source enthusiasts would vouch for it and so do Apple fans. But none of this can steal the credit that he deserves.

Of all the things in terms of job creation, wealth creation, market creation and dream creation, one of the largest contributions of Bill to the world has been Sustainability and Green. Did you ever think of Microsoft this way?

The last time I was writing an e-mail to my colleague sitting in the US it just struck me how would otherwise I be sending a document to him- Fax or may be a courier or worse dictate? What about jointly working on something critical? How about a series of plastic transparencies getting tossed away? How much time, effort and emotions would that have consumer in past?... What about the thousands of paper (hand written or printed material) that we save on while using MS Word. Or for that matter when was a last time you made multiple copies of the same document to be sent to many people as To, CC or BCC?

As always things which are pervasive and with us for long, loose value. MS is the victim in this case. With products ranging from Office Tools to other collaboration applications and you name it- MS has impacted the world in an irreversible way. Am not debating here that all that you see from MS was invented there, but frankly it doesn't matter. What is of value is- Diffusion. How does one take it to masses, and that's precisely MS did. Even today Apple is with the freaky few and Linux OS has yet to reach the main stream market. So still for the first time users it is very much MS.

And never can you forget the millions of people MS inspired and as a result thousands of software and IT companies world over. Think of India for a moment. The impact MS had here.

Here's a summary of the Green impacts of MS in the world we live in (remember not all was invented at MS, but as I said it doesn't matter):

• E-mails (no more paper based message transfer)
• Word Processors, Power Point and Excel (paperless presentation, no plastic transparencies and edition)
• Collaboration Tool (no travel of people, exchange of duplicate content)

Not sure if this post helped sway your mindset on the Sustainability dimension of MS, but the firm merits a place in the history of a transformation.

When Sparks Flew at BMS College of Engineering

Here comes another episode of the coveted Let Sparks Fly Session. Hosted this time around at one of Bangalore's premier engineering colleges- BMS College of Engineering.

With some 80 participants (not all in photo though), there was yet another set of exhibitions from the students community. Before that, here's is a preview of the college.

Being one of India's first private engineering colleges, BMS College of Engg intakes about 630 students in various branches of IT engineering as well another 460 in core engineering, making it one of the largest in India. Having visited the institute, I can vouch for the infrastructure that can house such an audience. About 252 permanent faculties as well 38 visiting faculties makes it a good student-teacher ratio as well. One of the most impressive assets of the institute is its Data Centre which offers high performance computing and networking capabilities (one of the largest in India); and is been used for the research purpose.

The vast library is another feature here housing over a lakh of books and 38,000 titles. This coupled with a vast suite of online journals make is one of India's best.

As for the session, the teams came up with above 50 very powerful ideas. A couple of these include: Bio-Wall (emitting oxygen); Nano-material helmets (caps that blow up as helmets); touch data transfer (chip on the finger); Self healing body parts (implants); and others.

In all it was a nice experience interacting with bright sparks and letting them fly.

Building a Strong Relationship- Amity Bangalore

Last evening I attended a Corporate Meet hosted by Amity Global Business School Bangalore at there campus. I was one of the panelists for a discussion on the topic- Building Relationship for Corporate Growth.

This was an interesting and apt topic in the view the there's a significant need for collaboration between industry and academia towards mutual growth.

Amongst the panelist were:

S Janakiraman, the President and Group CEO of MindTree; V. Kovaichelvan, Senior VP- HR of TVS Motor Company; and Sushant Tharappan, Associate VP and Head of Org Development at Infosys. And self as the Innovation Evangelist with Wipro Technologies. The discussion was moderated by Prof. Narendra M Agrawal, Chairperson of Centre for Software and IT Management at IIM Bangalore. It was quite an interesting debate on how academia can add value to corporate growth and what corporate needs to do for nurturing academia. Here's a snippet from the session:

• Janakiraman (aka Jani) depicted the engagement types being short lived or strategic and the urgent need for the latter. The ingredients being- Shared Vision, On Going engagements and having a Long Term Impact. He depicted that how Wipro (he was the third employee there!) was incubated at the IISc campus way back in 1979. In Jani's view the three As for such a relationship are: Attitude; Assets and Achievements. Attitude calls for Diversity, Ethics and Depth; Assets in terms of having more Indian Role Models, Cross-pollination, India Case Studies, and Achievements in having a scenario planned for the future as well having incubation funding. A well received talk
• Kovaichelvan (aka Kovai) stated the expectation industry is having largely from the academia. He strongly believes that talent is selected for motivation while is taught skills. The elements involve: Curiosity, Qualitative + Quantitative aptitude, ability to Network, Co-Creation and above all Emotional Intelligence. He appealed the academia to look into assignments which are carried out right at the college or in near community, co-create internship with the corporate, students having pet projects and institutes being flexible in terms of take talent for the working professionals. His vast amount of experience and rigor was felt in his talk.
• Sushant took the discussion forward in terms of elaborating on the various programs at Infosys addressing the institute- academia relationship. These are the Campus Connect; InStep; SPARK and the Leaders for Tomorrow Program. The Campus Connect program aims at enhancing the employability of engineering graduates and aligning the curriculum to suite industry needs. The InStep program is the global internship for foreign university students that aims at giving a cross-culture exposure to students and Infosys employees as well seeking bright new ideas. The SPARK program looks at giving school and college students an exposure to the corporate world through a campus tour of various Infosys Development Centres and giving them an overview of the IT industry and on Project Management aspects. The Leaders for Tomorrow is a program that Infosys has with IIM A and Duke University to nurture the talent at leadership level.
• Pavan (self) spoke about the various experiments and experiences that Wipro has had around nurturing innovation at the grassroots level and how a few of these learnings can be borrowed by academia. These includes- WiCamp (un-conference on creativity with diverse audience); Innovation Bazaar (exhibition of inventions and bright concepts); Let Sparks Fly (a hands-on workshop with college students on creativity solving real business problems); and Story Book of Innovation (publication of bright stories on creativity from the institute). The key being having an experimental mindset!

Prof. Agarwal moderated the session very well drawing a right insight from his vast academic career and corporate life in connecting the dots and the need for academia to have more serious and long term relationship with corporate.

The license to express

This is Google's site I saw this morning when I just booted (Google is my Home Page)!

I just can't read Google anywhere on the logo, but I and million others know (it's obvious) that that's a Google logo. Called the Google doodle.

It just threw me in surprise how on earth a company can play gleefully with it's most important identity- its Logo.

Google has been recognized as one of the Best Global Brand, brushing shoulder with the likes of Coca Cola and McDonalds. While other major brands, including IBM, Microsoft, GE, Intel and Nokia dare disturb their logo, Google does it all the time.

Just to tell you what I mean when I say- dare touch their logos.

The most valuable virtual-estate on earth- www.google.com 'plays' with its logo. With over 6.9 billion searches done for the month of August, am sure Google's brand has as many Moments of Truth!

But this is one such company that just doesn't live by the Conventional Wisdom of Brand Identity. That's cool (cuil)!

Not only that, Google takes a lot of pride in associating itself with the most important events in human history. That's wonderful and informative too. You see how Google's Home Page has moved from being a mere Search Engine to a Trivia Site.

To view the collection of all Google doodles, visit the site- Google Logos.

So here's the message for all Branding Gurus- Is logo still the most important asset of a brand or there's more to it?

To get answers- Google!

Nandan Nilekani's ideas for India's future

Let me highlight here one of the very influential talks given by Nandan Nilekani at the TED Talk held at Long Beach California this February. Nandan spoke about the various ideas in his view that define India and why the world at large needs to be concerned about the same. Being a responsible India and a great fan of Nandan, am taking this liberty in paraphrasing Nandan's talk. But the real essence of what he said and his passion could be absorbed by seeing the TED video on YouTube. Till such time, here's the summary.

The Four kind of ideas having really made an impact on India are:

• Ideas that have arrived
• Ideas in progress
• Ideas in conflict, and
• Ideas in anticipation.

As the name suggests, each of these ideas have different bearing on the country and India needs to leverage each accordingly. These ideas along each kind are:

Ideas that have arrived

• People- Demographic Divide, being a young country in this aging world
• Entrepreneurs- who have today become the role models to millions of young Indians
• Attitude towards English Language- which has transitioned from the clutches of imperialism to aspiration
• Technology- that's empowering millions of India and helping them connect better
• Globalization- and the comfort that Indians share with it, and
• Democracy- which is bottom-up and participative making India the largest of it's kind in the world

Ideas in progress

• Primary Education- is becoming the emerging focus as government schools aren't keeping the pace
• Infrastructure- which again needs to keep pace with India's straightening economy
• Urbanization- leading to making better cities which are the growth engines for economy, and
• Single Market- which really refers to internal globalization.

Ideas in Conflict

• Political ideologies
• Labor reforms
• Higher education

Ideas in Anticipation

• E-Governance
• Health
• Pension and Entitlement
• Environment, and
• Energy

I believe this has been a very comprehensive and well studies view of India's identity and its changing form for a global audience. Well done Nandan!

The Great Chasms

I often hear elderly people speaking- In our days things were like this and that... and today people are just running after this and that....

And I am doubly sure that you would have experienced the same and even those who speak (the old ones) didn't escape these comments in their wee days.

This becomes all the more acute when I visit country side and back home talking to my cousin who haven't been much exposed to what I live with.

Their way of life is a far cry from what I (and most of us) live with. For them the window to the world is still pretty much a radio or at best a TV. While here we're taking about Twitter and Second Life. So where does all of this come from? And should one really be worried about such comments and the stark differences? So here's my view:

There are two types of chasms (gaps) that I can point out here:

• First is between our elderly and us (or between them and their elderly). Classically called the Generation Gap;
• And the second one is between me and my cousin back home. The rural-urban gap, the Digital Divide or what ever one may call it as.

Interestingly both the gaps are widening, very fast. With every passing generation, the lifestyle is changing so much more that it's hard to contrast. Think for a moment, the comfort level we have as against our parents in using Internet and its gifts? Or for that matter our view towards life of not conserving for that 'rainy day' while they spent their lives without really spending? And believe me this gap would only widen as generations pass by to the level of absolute disconnect.It's already happening with migrated Indians at UK and the US.

The second one also doesn't look relenting. There's a huge disconnect that I am already experiencing between me and my relatives back home. Nothing is bad or wrong, but it's different. I don't know for sure that where this will lead both of us, but it's for real that we are diverging and diverging fast.

If Darwin were present today, (Dawkins is though playing that role), he would have reasoned out the second Evolution, caused much by the Technology Divide. So let's work towards crossing the Chasm!

Few may opine that Technology can only bridge the Technology Chasm.

Let me share this very interesting Hierarchy of Cyber needs as depicted by Evgeny Morozov in one of the TED Talks where he opines that Cyber Access may not necessarily make economies develop and people connect. In fact 'digital-natives' may (and are) become isolated more than being connected. So think about it.

Willkommen in Indien

There was a team of students visiting India last week from the University of HNU. This was as a part of their cross-culture learning expedition. While they were here in Bangalore, I took an opportunity to introduce them to the Indian IT Industry.

While I was on with my presentation and the visit to Wipro's Electronic City Campus, I realized that there's a huge chasm between the reality of the Indian IT industry and the perspective that people outside India carry. Especially those who have not interfaced with it directly.

I am talking about 'Managers of Tomorrow'. Through the informal interaction I had, I gathered that their view about outsourcing was that of 'Non-Core' - 'Back-Office' operations. Those tasks which are of least value add to the firm and hence bargained with ecomonies of scale.

While they went through the presentation and saw a couple of Innovation Labs at Wipro as well learnt about the Talent Transformation investment done over here. Am sure the sincerety remains the same when it comes to Infosys or TCS. Each of these IT companies have moved very clearly from managing the low-end tasks to becoming strategic partners for some of the largest firms on earth. It's no more the cost arbitrage that that drives business to India, it's the expertise that these firms offer. They are all moving from CHEAPER --> BETTER --> MORE.

So here's the remark from one of the students towards the end of the day - 'Our view about the Indian IT Industry underwent a sea change speaking to you and seeing things in action'.

What better a gift to India!

Luck by Design

If you are wondering what the image here is- it's Velcro. One of the most important innovations of the last century and an accident that created a billion dollar business. A series of other serendipitous inventions include- Teflon by DuPont, TNT by Alfred Nobel, X-Rays by William Roentgen, Telephone by Alexander Graham Bell, Phonograph by Thomas Edison, and who can forget Penicillin by Dr. Alexander Fleming. In fact some say that even the Internet and C Language were stoke of luck than proper planning.

Rightly so- good inventions are born out of necessity while great are born out of luck!

So here's my proposal- If so many land-sliding inventions emerge from pure luck or accidents; why can't we have these accidents Designed. Or what about LUCK BY DESIGN?

Further, while individuals can be attributed to having luck, can even organizations become lucky? Here I am not talking of chance events, am taking about a discipline towards introducing such instances in the life of an organization, artificially that the reaction results into something unexpected. And leadership has a role to play here.

Remember- There's nothing called Solitary Genius when it comes to Innovation. Inventions might emerge out of a stroke of genius, but when it comes to realizing the commercial value, a System/ an Institution is needed.

So here's my five point agenda on how to hone Luck at the workplace such that this serendipity results into great new insight and ideas.

• Attract Outliers: It is an imperative to judiciously move away from a comfort zone to that of discomfort and outliers help an organization do that. They are misfits (nothing wrong or bad about it); they don't go by the rules; and often questions the norms. Important to attract such a talent and be tolerant towards them. Remember- you can only attract them, you can't hire them!
• Budget Planned Experiments in everybody's Job: I often look at people's Goals and Objectives, and what strikes me is the absence of activities that stretch the envelop. Mostly these are repetitive tasks with defined goal and even well laid path. They achieve the obvious and hence get rewarded. Would be better to install some portion of time/ efforts towards carrying planned experiments, and remember no penalties of failing over here!
• Expose Employees to Outside of own Industry: Often employees' mindset gets shaped/ limited by the norms of the own industry. It is good to know about the good practices from the industry but dangerous to not know about what happens outside of it. As there's a much higher potential to learn from non-aligned industries, it's important to have such planned exposures at all levels.
• Avenues for Loosely Structured Knowledge Sharing: The best of the knowledge is shared in loosely structured fashion, when people socialize. This may happen over lunch tables, tea breaks, bus ride or when people just are left alone to gossip. Remember- gossip is a healthy practice if done constructively. So create avenues for employees to engage in emotional talks where they are not driven by immediate business goals. Barcamps are great avenues for that matter.
• Create Artificial Sense of Urgency: Those who exercise remain healthy. Same applies to organizations. The leaders have to ensure the most of discomfort, better artificial, sets employees exercise their vital senses to solve tough problems, get out of comfort zones and set stretched targets. Remember- you exercise your muscles or you would never be able to use them.

So here's the idea- Luck can be designed, as much as everything else in an organization. This calls for a new breed of managers. Are you ready!

Developers should not become Janitors!

These days when I look at the army of software engineers around me I feel a sense of worry about their future as well the future of the industry.

While the very term Engineering means Creating something, it seldom is done in the context of the IT industry (at least in India).

Let's look at the history a bit to get a clearer perspective on the subject.

The whole industry was born from a paradigm shift that why can't work come offshore, instead of people travelling (brain drain). This migration of work (tasks) to low cost destinations, such as India, led to the birth and then boom of the Global Delivery Model. Pioneers such as TCS perfected the art till about making it a Factory Model. Others including Infosys and more recently Satyam and Cognizant joined the bandwagon. The likes of Wipro and HCL which were primarily Hardware and Software firms didn't take much time either to the taste of easy money making.

So what's the Business Model?

It's simply about bringing a large chunk of IT related task (primarily development and maintenance), breaking it down into smaller chunks and getting some low-cost labor to work on it. The cost arbitrage between India and West is the revenue the company accrues. As Brand India rose in credibility, more work got outsourced and hence more employment got generated back home. I distinctly remember from engineering friends from core branches such as Mechanical, Electrical and even Civil Engg. boarding the IT bandwagon. It was a classic Irrational Exuberance.

Developers in the true sense of word would typically design a system or a part of it and would be ingenuous while doing so. But to little surprise, that doesn't really happen in most of the Indian IT industry today. What happens is Resource Billing for some mundane and repetitive task.

And now when the tough time comes, you have people getting disappointed, to an extent of committing suicide.

I just can't believe it. Are we really worth beyond the trivial?

I am just afraid of the whole generation getting corrupt of making easy money and being a consumerist economy. Time for a sanity check over here for both companies and individuals on - Are you doing a Value Adding work? I just hope that-

Developers should not become Janitors!

graVITas '09- A Visit to VIT University

This time around I was at the VIT University Campus. One of country's top ranked private engineering colleges. The occasion was graVITas '09, the Inter-College Tech Fest.

Though almost every college worth the name has a tech fest these days, but graVITas, I must admit was a league apart.

A few things that caught my attention were scale, novelty and discipline. The type of events that went by were amazing, to say the least, as well the participation was rich and diverse. Some of the events include- Social Transformers, Model United Nations, and Industrial Problem Solving, among other workshops and talks. In all some Rs. 1.2 million worth of prizes to be won, 55 events and over 50 participating colleges. Truly a Knowledge Carnival.

Of a dozen odd speakers, I was one of them! Not a speakers in the true sense of word, but I hosted a day long creativity workshop called- Let Sparks Fly.

Here is a session meant to unleash the creative spirit of students towards thinking about the ground breaking innovations. With a firm belief that Creativity Can be Taught, provided there's a desire and a conducive environment, students were engaged in this session.

To my affirmation, and students' amazement this fanfare ended in some really cool ideas. To name a few- A reality show for trans-genders; a pneumatic package for carrying shopping items (instead of polythene bags); a household detector for all important items (such as mobile, keys, wallet, watch, etc); and an affordable Unified Communications; among others.

These ideas were presented as an elevator pitch, a skit was made around these and of course booths were setup.

While the students were busy directing their creative energy towards generating newer concepts and technology applications, I took some time off to visit the campus.

I started with the famed VIT Library called the Periyar EVR Central Library, named after the great saint Periyar EVR. Being a state-of-art library, this four-storied building hosts some 160,000 books, 800 journals, 4,000 e-journals, 10,000 CDs, 19,000 back volumes; close to 40 newspapers, a V-Con facility and a Digital Library with 120 terminals. An investment that was very apparent and well utilized.

Next on the tour came the main VIT Technology Tower housing all departments, class rooms, a couple of large seminar halls and was indeed another engineering marvel. VIT University with over 16,000 students on campus and 1,000 faculty members would surely be needing a technology tower of such magnitude. Not to mince the diversity of youth at campus from over 30 nationalities and kids literally from all parts of India.

True to my character, I didn't miss visiting a few labs, speaking to a few researchers, faculty members and even peeping into one of the live sessions.

It was a treat visiting this college and what better a time than the college busy hosting its most important event of the year. I do look forward to some fresh sparks next year.