Reminisce - Recalling the past

Everyone has an aim in life, and that gradually becomes clearer as one progresses in their college life. But rarely we get the right gyaan about the path that needs to be taken to achieve that target, as our interaction is mostly limited to our immediate seniors or seniors above them, and never with those who have gone the full stretch and have already reached their goal.

Reminisce is a novel initiative in this direction. It aims to bring students like you and me, closer to our alumni and get fruitful advice right from them. Alumni have always been an inspiration for us, for we look up to them and strive to carve out a niche for ourselves and in the process bring distinction to our institute.

Reminisce is NSIT's first official alumni magazine. We (Myself, and Ankur Verma- Founders of Reminisce) have split up the magazine in 5 categories,

1. Management Studies(MBA/PGDM)
2. M.S / Research
3. Entrepreneurs
4. Private sector(people without master's but great work-ex)
   
5. Civil Service(IAS/PSU service)

to serve to queries and common doubts of the respective field aspirants directly. After a lot of brainstorming we framed up a questionnaire for each category, so that alumni can directly provide pointers to juniors. Most of the questions are such that even we, fourth years have never been able to find an answer to, hence can best be answered by our illustrious alumni. The responses have been taken from alumni having great profile and sufficient industry exposure. Alumni that have contributed range from 1993 to 2005 graduating batch. The video below is a teaser as to how the magazine is developing as of 28-March-09[shown on NSIT Alumni meet].

N.S.I.T./D.I.T.'s First Official Alumni Magazine

We have presently a whole team of 20+ ebullient NSITians working on each and every aspect from Content gathering, Compiling, Designing, managing the work flow, etc. We are trying to make this magazine as informative as possible, and also make it completely funded by college so that it can be distributed freely to all students in college.

Personally, I have been receiving great feedback from alumni and also from peers and juniors and many are asking when will the magazine be released. For this, I would like to say that magazine is taking time only because we do not want to compromise on quality. We are still awaiting few replies, and as and when we get it we will be heading towards the printing press :) .

After the placement manual, for which also I received some great feedback, it feels nice to be involved in creating something substantial again, that would really help the juniors make some informed decisions and also better plan out their path. For me, It has till date been a great experience talking directly to highly illustrious & meritorious alumni of ours either on mail, on phone, or conducting face to face interviews, and while discussing their responses within team, interacting with team members from first to final year, having team meetings, collaborating on how the work is progressing at different ends, etc etc.

The best part about the magazine is that it's completely evolved from scratch in BH-1. I would particularly like to name few people without which this magazine would have never been a reality. First of all, Ankur Verma who along with me is the founder of this magazine. Pratik Prakash(ICE - 4th year) doing the excellent work on editing front, Neerav and Siddharth(ICE - 3rd year), who are working day and night on the design part of the magazine , Parasu Kishan, the relationship head, and Animesh Garg (MPAE - 3rd year) managing the team of 1st and 2nd years, and helping us in Administration work.

I would also like to say plenty of future opportunities are there to take Reminisce to great height, and we have hereby started and taken the first step. I hope that future editions of magazine keep coming and both alumni and students keep adding value by contributing to the magazine and the culture we intend to begin in NSIT. Juniors who would like to take the magazine further are most welcome to contact us on mail or group.

How you can reach us / share your views

1. Mail
2. Reminisce Site
   
3. NSITlounge Thread
4. NSIT-Reminisce group
   

Comments/feedback/Appreciation most welcome. Cheers!!

Recession -- Past, Present and Future

Now now.. I can not feel more sad hearing news from my friends fearing Job cuts, and I myself is a part of this whole state of affairs. A global recession means lower earnings for most businesses and industrial sectors. Many of the businesses, especially those that are dependent on exports, may even suffer losses just as it happened during the last recession, which began in 2000 (after the “tech bubble” burst) and ended around May 2003. Today, we’re seeing a replay. Now a days we are also seeing salary and job cuts, and even if someone is securely employed, chances are that one’s next increment may not be as good as last year’s. :(



The chart above compares the job loss so far in this recession in USA, to job losses in the 1990 recession and the 2001 recession. This clearly shows how unprecedented the job losses over the last 13 months have been.
On comparing we see, US lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and it lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession. Over the last 13 months, US economy has already lost a total of 3.6 million jobs and more losses in the next few months are predicted. Shit!!!

Although the facts talk of US economy, but they aren’t different for Indian scenario. It is rightly said "When the Wall Street sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold ". The US comprises of 30% of the world GDP and if there is a slowdown in that 30%, surely other markets are directly or indirectly affected.
Just 8 months back, some people in India thought that the country will be free from the negative impact of ongoing global economic recession. However, it is now clear that India is suffering from the same problem too. So, many fresh graduates and even highly skilled and experienced educated workers are worried about their future prospects.
But, as an Expert Analyst working in MCkinsey said “I’ve seen several slowdowns, and there’s nothing abnormal about these ups and downs. The reports surely scare everone. Pick up old newspapers from 2001 and you’ll read the same kind of doomsday stories. Yet we saw the best of times after that. Without downturns like these, you can’t make really great profits.”

Taking out the Positives

Our Indian banking system is overall very good. So we didn't face any mortgage related issues. Imagine a similar situation that happened in USA happening in India, say ICICI, or Standard Charted going bankrupt would trigger huge losses in many corporates, and the Markets would have gone crashing to rock bottom levels. But that didn’t happen for good. :)
Even our IT companies are changing their focus to European countries to reduce their exposure to the US markets. I heard few days back that TCS bagged a major project in European Market. Similarly with Wipro.. Well that's great.
Indian Govt is also trying to negotiate with other countries and increase our exports. Even US Govt and Fed reserve are trying their best to avoid recession and control the inflation in US. But this all will take some time to settle. Till then we have to bear the brunt.

Things where we should Improve

One of the things that is absent among most students and educated people in India is lack of entrepreneurship mentality. They are too obsessed with doing jobs rather than taking a risk and setting up a venture. I think that this is a very good time for Indian government to address this issue (ofcourse the Govt. won’t do so as it’s already quite busy in the forging alliances and chalking out campaigning strategies). Indian Mentality will not change overnight but there should be a concerted effort among the government, universities and the media to motivate fresh graduates about this matter. The students need to have a change in mind set too.

Thus although the situation does seem bleak, we should not lose hope, and should work harder. One should not lose out on any opportunity, and create or grab as many opportunities as one can. Networking, by talking to friends, alumni and even your own relatives may bring even better opportunities. Recessions are by definition temporary, so do not overreact, keep it cool and let God do the rest.
Do write comments on how you found the post.. Tata..

The End of Vacations.

So, finally my last college vacations are ending, and thank God I have lived to see this day again.. which I thought would never be possible as the vacations never seem to end.

So, what did I do in Vacations?? Oh, this is as tough a question as "What are your weaknesses" in an Interview. Ya.. because you have to speakout an answer even if you don't want to answer it.

First of all, My Congratulations to President Obama. He surely has and will pump doses of fresh Oxygen in US Economy. Talking of Obama, I still could not understand why the term Black was being associated with Obama more than his first name on 20th Jan by Aaj Tak, the totally f* up news channel. I don't expect FBI to arrest me for this, like they did in US for some blog articles regarding racism.. Oh no.. not that word again.

I did manage to change the subject but not for long, and a question always has an answer.
I spent quite some time travelling to Punjab, Mathura, and MP in the vacations.. as it's the last time I would be able to meet my old family members before starting with my job with D.E Shaw & Co. at Hyderabad. I also started reading some management articles online and really feel how much more inclined I am towards Management aspects of thing then towards hardcore coding thing. I also developed a taste of reading more Psychology based Novels, and those who have read some, kindly advise me more of same.

I have also started work as GreenHat Ventures Campus Associate and in effect I will be again contributing my part to improve the college placements by boosting inhouse talent and skills, and making my juniors more aware of opportunities and improving their Career Quotients which we engineers usually lack because of our Mind-set. But more on that later. For those who thought "again" was wrongly written above, I am more than pleased to tell that I have written a placement Manual exclusively for NSITians, keeping in mind what are Software companies expecting from NSIT grads, and it has been received with much appreciation.

Also the MBA season has long gone, and my personal congratulations to all friends who received calls from IIM's and especially those who scored a BLACKI. Hail-o-NSIT that recorded 250+ IIM Calls, with 2 100%ilers(last updated in March). Ghosh.. we have outskinned IITians. Cheers.

I also had a little taste of outsourcing this month, just for the sake of it by providing Online Tuition to children in US and also getting a good pay for it. One only needs a mike, decent net-connection and the right opportunity for it.

Thus went my last few weeks at home. Please keep posting comments, so that I am encouraged to write more.. Writing is a good habit, in retrospect, this makes me think why didn't I started writing earlier.. Oh lazy me... Nevertheless Cheers again!!! Tata.