Hunt for the best.

I and uday came up with an idea one day to institute an award for the best outgoing student for VVCE as I knew that there were complaints from all corners that the Alumni association is going dead. So the revival process had begun this process would make us more involved in the revival and also would generate more memberships and many people would start contributing to the same. So mails started to flow from my side. As there were many people who had given their consent for the award I did not need any more opinions from the members.

The first step was to advertise the award. Before that I had t form a panel, I wrote mails to 10 or 12 people for becoming the panel members, but some of them did not response, not to worry. Also no one came forward. I had to pull people for the same. I had already asked ,Madhu and Uday for this and they readily agreed. Also I asked Rohit (2001 batch), prasanna and chetan to become panel members. All gave their thumbs up. I was searching for more people, readily Chaddi ( akarsh ) was asked and he gave his consent. Then I asked Prajwal to represent mech dept, but he was forcefully pulled so finally he had no work to do here. So final list was made ready, with 7 people representing all the departments.

The process then began, I wrote mails to all HOD’s with the contents of the poster so that they could put it onto the notice board. Meanwhile I had a brief meeting with some HOD’s during this process. But still the ENV department was showing no response to anything, I really don’t know why they do like this? But who cares it will be a loss for them and I can’t pull people to come forward. It’s their responsibility to come forward.

The nomination process started with students nominating themselves, this would seem like wierid idea, but it was beginning, we wanted to try it out , after repeated information passing we got 10 nominations from 300 + people. It was quite a bad response, then was the nominations from the faculty side, there again less response as they were not enough people to be nominated, also students were asked to nominate their friends, here only 3 nominations came. All the profiles were sent to panel members for the screening. All were able to give the opinions. One fine Saturday I wanted to have face to face discussions with the nominated people, for that all people gave support and the process started. This discussion was to get the info from the people to know more about themselves and what they had achieved during the engineering days.

Then began the interview process, first I had discussions with mech nominated people. Ankit and Vivek were the one who had a discussion with me and Chetan had come with me to do the saem. The discussions went on and as the process went on I decided to drop out vivek as he was only telling about his academic achievements. The discussion with ankit was very good, this guy said, I have done it but it’s not to claim any prize or to get something from the college, but it was to make my department proud. Yes he had done his department proud, he had achieved what other people had not done so far, as he had done various Extra curricular activities and he also had all the skills that needed o make a perfect student who was deserving the award. Then chetan took leave and said he will give his feedback later. I had lunch at home and then I started interviewing EC nominated people, they were academically good and also had done in their extra curricular activities, but when asked about their achievements they were confined to their achievements. As per the award guidelines we were not looking for academic toppers.

The next discussion was with the CS people, hteir profiles were quite awesome with some good achievements to their name. First I started with Ashritha and Sunil , As the discussion went on ashritha told how she was able to achieve many accolades and why she deserved the award, truly she had done wonderfully good in academics, Extra curricular activities, paper presentations and she had qualified in gate with 90+ percentile , also she is involved in NGO founded by sudha murthy. Only one in the batch to do so. She said that she had raised funds for the same and also said how she is contributing for the up liftment of the needy; truly, it’s a skill that you won’t find in people who are really not for spending time for such activities. Then sunil also had a good session with his achievements he also said that Ashritha had done so much for the involvement of people into the NGO and for fund raising.

Then rajesh shenoy was interviewed, along with Priyank of IS , both were good at communication skills, rajesh had done a lot for the CS department for the technical fest which they organized. Also he had good academic records. He was also a forerunner for the award. Priyanka though had nothing much to present in terms of the achievements she was not considered for the award, also the profile looked good but the contributions and the failure to nominate herself for the award in time cost her. Then was the turn of Vishnu , yashawi and others form the CS and IS were interviewed. All were not so much good at the achievements they had done for the college. So they were also left out. So it was 5 PM when I finished the process and wrote down all the points which were +ve for the candidates, I made sure that I have taken feedback about the process so that we can be more competitive from the next year onwards.


After that the feedbacks about the candidates were sent to all the panel members and they gave their feedbacks and nominated the candidates for the award. Uday, madhu were for Ashritha as her achievements were too good and really she deserved the award. I, chetan and chaddi were for ankit as the first preference and Ashritha as the second preference. Then we decided to hand out prizes for both of them as they deserved the prize. All were for it. Then started the design of the trophy and certificates. Meanwhile HOD”s of various departments suggested that one from each department can be given the prize. This made us to rethink on the process and we the jury went on with the policy to make the prizes in the following manner. 2 best outgoing students and 3 best achievers as there were candidates who had done a lot for the college. Again this was Okayed by the panel. until this I had no idea of where the hell were the ENV dept students, I had got the list from their HOD who had nominated only the toppers, I had informed him to pass on my number to them so that I can have a formal discussion , but I didn’t receive any call. So I had to drop out all the ENV students.

Meanwhile the trophy designs were looked into and I had sent some weblinks for the jury to have a look at the designs and I was helped by Anish (2006 batch) who was my colleague. He was giving some designs also Uday gave an idea to include Late.Jeevans drawing on the trophy,. It was a gesture for the person who had contributed for various activities including Vidyuth. It was welcomed by me and I assured Uday that his design will go into the trophy and will be the part of it forever. Meanwhile prassana also gave his designs from the list and I put the final designs in front of the jury and I went to the place at Mysore where I had got the memento for the placement cell in 2005. The shop owner acknowledged our design and he said one of the designs could not be done as it was impossible to do it in India. So again we had to decide on a new design. Then Anish came to the rescue, he gave some design in which I was able to get a design that looked good also I googled for the design and on the election day ( 2 may 08) I gave the final design for modeling , the work was done. The certificate design was left out and meanwhile I was invited for the farewell function along with all the Alumni’s this was a good gesture ( of course after the complaint that alumni’s are ignored for all the things) from faculty. So the design of the certificate was Okayed by Madhu and Uday. The day I went to collect the trophy we had a surprise installed for us, the design of the certificate took time and I was not able to collect both certificates as well as the trophy. I had applied leave to attend the college function, but it was granted with great difficulty ( I don’t know why it happens?). The next day KP and Anish were busy and I had no one to help me to collect the trophy and I was in soup, meanwhile Anish assured that he will come to collect the trophy and he came with me thanks for the same man. So finally the trophies landed to my place and we were ready to hand over the same with some action in the function on the next day (May 16th). The snaps were taken as the entire panel wanted to see the trophy.

The may 16th began with as usual for me I woke up at 90 got ready and went to the campus at 10.by that time the chief guest had arrived, he was none other than Mysore’s Police commissioner, for the first time the chief guest had arrived on time. Good indeed, but the auditorium was half filled. The audi has a good design with “Bose “speakers. I wondered ho come this stingy management has installed “Bose “speakers? I asked arvind if all the people were gonna come? He said yes, I confirmed with ankit that ahritha, rajesh were there. After the function began, the Audi began to fill and it was overcrowded. As the sports day was also clubbed with the farewell function I wanted to hand over the award before the sports function. I messaged ravi kumar and he acknowledged the same.

After the college president’s speech, I occupied the stage. I wanted to take 10-15 mins I always got it. As I had strongly argued against the management in my last speech, they were curious faces in the management people’s face if again I would take them to task, but in hurry I was in no mood to speak those things. So I began by introducing the panel members and said to the audience why we went for this award. Then I began with the best achievers award. The list is as follows.

Mr. Raahul narayan: For constant contributions made towards Vidyuth and IEEE fest that happens in the college. He has also contributed towards the college placement activities as placement coordinator.

Mr.Sonu Abraham: Instrumental in creating vvce.org the official website of VVCE. He currently maintains the websites operations and also has contributed for the alumni association’s activity by maintaining the alumni database.

Mr.Rajesh Shenoy: For starting the “Technoblitz” event for the ASCIS. He has also contributed towards the success of Vidyuth and placement activities of the college.

All these people were the real contributors for the college and they wee honored by the police commissioner by handing them a trophy.

Then came the most awaited award Best outgoing student, all were expecting this moment, when I announced the award, the whole crowd applauded the winners. The following students were selected for the award by the jury.

Ms.Ashritha M S: Awarded All India Rank of 1003 in GATE-2008 with a percentile of 94.36. She is the only student in the Computer Science department to be placed in 2 companies, Siemens Information System Limited and Infosys. She came 1st in academics among C.S.E & I.S.E departments in the year 2007 (5th semester). Associated with “Vidya poshak”, Dharwad based NGO from past 6 months. She was the Class Representative in the year 2007. She was an active Member in organizing “TECHNOBLITZ” event and also an active volunteer for the Vidyuth.

Mr.Ankit: placement co-coordinator for the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He has taken active part in organizing the events of Vidyuth and other departmental fests. He has Organized Quiz competitions in Vidyuth. He has been the main organizer for the event “crusades” till 2008. He has designed website for Crusades every year, since its inception. Organized quizzes for Impulse from the past 2 years. He has also helped students of other departments like E&C, CS with regard to their project work. He also scored 78.3% in GATE Exam this time. He has also worked on projects on Towline Glider, Motorized Sail Boat.

These were the best of the best, I was really amazed when all the audience stood up for these two people when they received the award. It was just like honoring them by all the people. Truly they had done what others had not achieved. After that I had some inputs given to the students and asked them to join the association where they can contribute to their juniors. After wards I was back in my seat. Mr.Rajendra had captured my entire speech in video. Thanks for the same. Meanwhile ankit messaged me that he wanted to take snaps of all the winners, I also wanted to get the winners assembled at one place so that I can ge the snaps, but ankit had arranged for the same. So it was done earlier and the photo session went on and I handed certificates to the best student achievers as their names were not printed during the making of the certificate. The snaps are with the post u can have a look at them. After the lunch I had discussion with all the HOD’s and I was given feedback abt the award. There was all praise for the jury and the choic we had done. Of course there was lot of effort that had gone for the same. So we had chosen the best of the best. In future I would look on to more competition so that the process will get tougher. I am expecting this next year. So this was abt the award that we instituted for the college.


On behalf of the jury I am thankful to all the departments who helped us with their valuable feedbacks during this process special thanks to Prof.Bhojakaumar , Mr. Ravikumar, Mr.L.Basavaraj and Mr.Sadashivegowda for their efforts. Next year the event will add more awards along with this so that all the deserving candidates are honored. I wish all the students of the batch of 2008 a very happy and successful career. This is how our hunt for the best got completed for the year 2008, now its 2009 process. We shall begin it from next December or Jan and will be more streamlined as I have acquired feedback for the process. Now that the panel might be reshuffled, i think most of them will be retained, again time will tell. I also thank all the jury members who made this event a grand success.

The snaps are below:

Announcing the winners

Best of the 2008 Batch

Me along with the winners.

Revival of VVCE Alumni association

Dear All, this post is about the Vidya Vardhaka College of Engineering (VVCE) alumni association, which I am currently working as secretary of this association as part of my service to the college.

Since my engineering days I have been involved in many of the start up works at VVCE, be it be college placements, the Vidyuth, strikes… and the list continues. After I passed out of the college, bloody IT industry was down. So I had no campus placements nor off campus placements. One day an invitation came to my house inviting me for the “inauguration of VVCE Alumni association. I wondered how come the college people are doing this? So went in for that meeting, me madhukar, bharath were there, we had a nice lecture given by all the management people along with the Princi saying about the association. I voluntarily became the member of the executive committee. That was the last day for the association. Neither any one took interest nor any one bothered about it. So the chapter was closed temporarily.

The next revival was supposed to happen when I joined the college as a faculty. At that time Uday had called up Dr.Mahadevappa, then prince that he was doing work for Alumni association at US and he asked the help of college to mobilize the activity. Due to internal stuffs and non interest from [people in the college, it again went dead. Uday was the unhappy guy. After this incident I also felt bad as I got to know how it will feel after ur hard work goes in drain. So I decided to revive the alumni association. But due to lack of support it did not happen. But I did not loose heart, as people say “Fortune favours the brave” one fine day in 2007 the college decided to revive the association after Mr.Bhojakumar came to the college. This person was the first examiner for me in my engineering and I had witnessed his strictness during that time. But I had not met him after that as he did not come to our; lab exams as external examiner.

In the meeting I had decided to blast the management for their lack of interest shown towards the alumni association. When Mr.PSB(bhojkumar) announced that invitations were sent to people to attend the meeting, I was furious .( he is not to be blamed as the college people had all wrong addresses of people, I mean the expired ones). Then in my talk I blasted the entire college management and the organizers. That’s the way I got noticed form all the people. As I was known to all they wanted me to become the VP f the association, I was not ready to become as I had already done enough to college, but I wanted to be actively involved in the Alumni association so I decided to become the secretary. From that day onwards I started working for the association actively. Really it feels great to work for such an association where you get to know all people of your college. I started to hold weekly meetings with Mr.PSB and meanwhile Mr.Ravikumar of IS dept also pitched in with his support. This was a great beginning; also behind me was our EC HOD Mr.Basavaraj. Plans began to roll and the participation was still bleak as many still have a bad impression about the college. As I know the in and out of VVCE , I know that there is no fault in the college, the situation makes them to be like that , but I still hate the management for the reason that they ignore the staff and students and don’t consider any inputs what we give.

As the meetings went on, Mr.Sonu, the webmaster had come up with the new college web link. Really it was the one we needed, I was giving inputs to PSB for putting info into the web links as some alterations were needed. It was being done without any delay, thanks sonu for ur efforts. He also updated the alumni link and I gathered email ids from him of people who had registered in the web link as members. Believe it or not in one year we are able to get 350+ registrations. From being 20 in 2006 it is now grown to 390 in 2008. All the thanks go to the HOD’s of Mech, ECE, CS and IS department. I pressurized them to involve students into the activity of association.

Today I am the happiest man, I was able to constantly bug people to actively involve in the alumni association activities and make students to give back something to the departments. It has been a success. Many people have donated books to their departments, many are giving seminars, and many are helping them in off campus placements. Any how the campus placements are already stabilized by the efforts of me and Dr .M. Mahadevappa . [I am proud to say that because of my efforts along with some good fellows work we have a good placement at VVCE. No body can claim the same. Whole of the VVCE knows about the work that. Work has been done to make the companies to come and get the placements done. If any body objects it (I say F*** off) I know that they are fools.]
It’s good to see that many were with me for the amendments made and also were giving feed backs about how to improve the association, but mere saying will not be enough, somebody has to implement it. I am looking forward for people getting involved in this. To some extent it is getting successful.

The first step was the award for the best outgoing student. This was a great exercise for us. I along with some enthu people started this idea (Uday, madhu , rohit had their support). The awards history goes back to 2004 when the tusspatakis decided to give prize for the best skit team at Vidyuth. This event also involved me as I was the one point contact at the college at that time. Since that time I am involved in this and make sure that it is done every year by alerting the TP gang. The best outgoing student award was the first of this kind to be given out at VVCE. We know in colleges all toppers are honored for their efforts, but some deserving people loose out in these aspects. I wanted those people to get the real appreciation as they were the real heroes. So I had this draft proposed to all the HOD’s and they accepted. Also many alumni’s supported this idea. Then began the hunt. It was for the best students of VVCE for the year 2007-08. the next post will cover our efforts to find the student who really had stood out from the crowd.

The winning ways............

I am back once again. “Miracle drug” as U2 sang, I wrote this post. Really it was a miracle drug for me teaming up with Shsahi shekar , Ravi and Ankit. We really pulled rabbit out of the hat at Mysore open quiz organised by the greatest quiz master of India , arguably the best, Mr.Arul Mani at Mysore Infy. This post about the victory that I tasted in recent quizzing days of mine.

2 weeks back I had a torrid time at my company, literally I had blasted people for not organizing a quiz properly. I had literally said, the quiz which they are organizing is not “Professional”, and truly it was not a “Quiz” just …. Sorry I don’t want to talk more.

Ankit, VVCE student ad Aravind had organized a quiz (Open quiz) as part of their IEEE fest. I and achar had been there as I was invited to participate, truly speaking we knew that we will win the prize. As achar had to go to Bangalore that day, I told him,” if we win the prize, u will get ur bus charge”. Sandeep also had told the same thing so we went there with only 7 team turning up as it was a Sunday, we easily managed to make it into the finals. The final was as usual bit “OK” by achar’s standards, we started shakily as usual (my mantra: slow and steady wins the prize”). So we began cautiously and then manged t increase our lead, the answer which achar gave to crack stage 3 won the prize for us, it was bit closer victory for us , but it doesn’t matter ,we needed some cash prize, just kidding. This victory was the first with achar as we had royally got screwed in the finals of “Star of Mysore quiz” in 2003.

Then I was busy with my wok and meanwhile I had got mail from Arul mani that “Mysore Open quiz “will be held at Infy on May 11, 2008. I wanted to pair with achar as I badly wanted to make it to the finals of the quiz to tell my company people that the way I meant in the mail was the way I do. As achar said that he was unsure with which team will he be pairing with, but he suggested teaming up with Shsahi shekar, I have mentioned about this Linux genius in my previous post. I said I will wait and asked ankit if he can make it, he agreed. But meanwhile Sandesh, manoj, rajkiran and KP also wanted to make it to the quiz. They said to join with them, but I was sure that if I team up with them and go to Arul’s quiz then I would royally get screwed up in the prelims.

I finally approached Sandeep friend Bharth with whom he had won the SDM quiz, but again that guy delayed his decision to make t to the quiz. So finally the judgment day had come, I said to ankit that he can come with me to the quiz. We also decided to add karthik rao, VVCE mech junior to the team. So we had 3 in team and I finally registered. But the worst was yet to come. Karthik dropped out on Saturday as he had to go for work n Sunday, these IT companies say that we will work only 5 days but again ask people to work on weekends also. This made me clueless, my dream was sinking. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Ankit said he will try to find any one good quizzer so that we can be a formidable team, but all efforts went in vain. So the finale arrived, this day was the day where MANUTD and Chelsea were battling for the premiership championship. There was another battle going on at MG audi at infy between 90+ teams for the prize of Mysore open quiz. As usual I went with Sandeep to the venue, as he was the main organizer for Infy he helped me in avoiding the queue. We waited for Arul to come as he was supposed to receive him at the entrance. As we were waiting shashi and his brother, ravi came to the venue, I had met shashi long time ago. Just started to chat and he said can he join any team, I said that they can join our team as me and ankit were the only members present so the “Royal Local” team was ready. As Sandeep asked me to help him out in the registration counter as Arul arrived to the venue bit late I went there, meanwhile all three occupied a place at MG audi. I went with Sandeep to the venue after some time. Hari shenoy (the Crows team captain, famously got this name @ landmark quiz) and his team were next to us. As Arul introduced KQA to Mysore public after Sandeep gave out instructions the crowd started to murmur. It was not new for the KQA regulars. Then came the Q’s from Arul , the simple one from a lot, KC reddy was the first to occupy this seat and currently it’s vacant. What is this? The answer was simple the CM post of Karnataka. Or team was off to a cracker, and then came the Q’s on Moser bear, the Eurovision contest (which I liked the most and I cracked with ease). As the quiz went on local flavor was more, Ravi was good in that, we were able to crack some good Q’s easily. The Q’s were tricky and as the Q’s started to flow, I knew that some good teams would loose out as they did in the landmark quiz (it happened to our team there where we lost out to some rubbish decisions). The 35 Q’s rolled out in 40 odd mins and we answered all the Q’s (of course all would have done that). Then the answers were announced from Arul. We were doing well until 15 Q where we had 11 correct. Then serially 3 went wrong, then I remembered the landmark quiz where 4 answers in a row were wrong which cost us the place at the finals. This time around I thought we might not make it there, but luckily we had cracked some good Q’s which helped us to score 22. After answers were out, I walked around the stage, to checkout what was the cutoff; luckily I heard that it was 21. I was still not sure; I asked achar abt his score. He said they had royally screwed as they managed only 16. Then hari was telling sashi that he had cracked 21. As Arul was sorting out the finalists I saw our team’s paper. I was very much happy that I at last made it to the KQA finals.

As we were the last team to make it to the finals, I was sure that we will be the last in finals. The other teams to make it to finals were, Udupa’s team from Bangalore , Kunal’s ( JCE’s wonder Kid) team , 2 teams from infy and other team of Bangalore. We were the only local team in the finals. The quiz started with Arul asking 5 Q’s and we had to write the answers on paper and we scored ‘0’ in the first round. Ankit was shocked, he wanted us to start scoring, I said wait this is KQA quiz, we have to just guess and we cant be amongst top 5 we wanted to make it to finals and that’s what we have achieved, then in round tow the score started with Ravi cracking one Q , then there was no looking back. The score was increasing linearly. The crack in the round 4 was the one which put us into 3rd place. In this round we were not able to crack only one Q on Charlie Chaplin that would have fetched us 20 extra points, but nothing to loose we scored 15. Then the next round was a theme round were we were able to crack 1 by then team 4 cracked the theme. We were still cool. The final round was the derailer round where we got a Q from Arul about tech which was answered by Ravi. The Google fetched us 10 points and we were pretty sure that we had secured 3rd place. I felt happy after all the incidents that happened the previous week. The topic we gave the team 4 which were in 2nd place was the Myth ,there was an argument over the team but I stuck to my decision as team 4 were the closest to us and Aruls Q on myth would be too tough to answer. Any how Udupas team cracked it, but it sealed the fate of our rivals to secure 2nd place. Finally we had made it! A prize in KQA quiz. That’s was icing on the cake. Udupas team won the quiz convincingly with a huge margin of over 120 + points no team were able to match their quiz quotient, kudos to them.

All happened over a Sunday afternoon, it was just like fulham pulling out $35 million with a goal and Man united winning the premier championships. I felt like ganguly when India won the lords finals with 320 run chase. If our company people would have been in the audience (of course people, who shouted at me it’s a straight ……) they would have known why this guy was shouting and writing mails for nothing to gain. To all people who don’t no head and tail of quizzing, here’s how the quiz is organized in a professional way. No controversies, no shouting, no objections from any team. I would rather be the last team to loose out in the prelims in such a wonderful and “Real “quiz. I am not writing these statements to condemn people. When you say “biggest quiz” just make sure that you handle it very sensitively or involve people who do regular quizzing.


Kudos to Arul and his KQA team for organizing the “Mysore Open Quiz”. Thanks once again to Sandeep and his Infy team who had given such a wonderful venue to conduct the quiz and taking care of my transport. People who made this event possible hats off to you.

To my team mates, Shashi, Ravi and Ankit you were simply best in the quiz. Nothing much to say. Looking forward to attend more quizzes with you in future. Ok that ends here ….