Simile Exhibit @ VGSoM

Introduction

Simile stands for "Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in un-Like Environments". It was a joint research project run by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries and CSAIL (MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project ran from 2003 to August 2008. It focused on developing tools to increase the interoperability of disparate digital collections; much of SIMILE's technical focus is oriented towards Semantic Web technology and standards such as Resource Description Framework (RDF).

The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of data". It builds on the W3C's Resource Description Framework (RDF). The RDF is a family of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specifications. It has come to be used as a general method for conceptual description or modeling of information that is implemented in web resources, using a variety of syntax formats.

SIMILE was focused on developing robust, open source tools that empower users to access, manage, visualize and reuse digital assets. SIMILE seeks to enhance inter-operability among digital assets, schemata/vocabularies/ontologies, metadata, and services. 

SIMILE leverages and extends DSpace, enhancing its support for arbitrary schemata and metadata, primarily though the application of RDF and semantic web techniques mentioned above. The project also aims to implement a digital asset dissemination architecture based upon web standards. The dissemination architecture will provide a mechanism to add useful "views" to a particular digital artifact (i.e. asset, schema, or metadata instance), and bind those views to consuming services.

The SIMILE Project and its members are fully committed to the open source principles of software distribution and open development and for this reason, it releases the created intellectual property (both software and reports) under a BSD-style license.

The various tools published under SIMILE Project are as follows:

1.      Zotz

Zotz is a Firefox add-on giving you the ability to publish citations from your Zotero* to an Exhibit (via Citeline) in one step.

* Zotero is powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways.

2.      Longwell

A web-based highly-configurable faceted browser for RDF datasets. Longwell mixes the flexibility of the RDF data model with the effectiveness of the faceted browsing UI paradigm and enables you to visualize and browse any arbitrarily complex RDF dataset, allowing you to build a user-friendly web site out of your data within minutes and without requiring any code at all.

3.      Piggy Bank

An extension to the Firefox Web browser that turns it into a Semantic Web browser letting you make use of existing information on the Web in more useful and flexible ways not offered by the original Web sites. Piggy Bank is a Firefox extension that turns your browser into a mashup platform, by allowing you to extract data from different web sites and mix them together.

4.      Solvent

A Firefox extension that helps you write Javascript screen scrapers for Piggy Bank.

5.      Semantic Bank

The server companion of Piggy Bank that lets you persist, share and publish data collected by individuals, groups or communities.

6.      Welkin

A graphical graph visualizer powered by RDF data and capable of displaying graphs with a real-time interactive visualization.

7.      Timeline

A DHTML AJAX timeline widget for visualizing temporal information. With this widget, you can make beautiful interactive timelines.

8.      Gadget

An inspector for large quantities of XML data and it's useful for useful in situations like exploration, migration, cleanup, evaluation schema emergence.

This is normally useful in situations like:

·         data understanding and exploration

·         data migration/transformation

·         data cleanup

·         data complexity evaluation

·         schema adherence understanding

·         schema emergence

9.      Referee

Referee reads your web server logs, crawls your referrers (the links that point to your pages) and extract metadata from those pages and text around the links that pointed to your pages. The website says: “Ever wondered who links to your pages and what they say about them? Ever thought that trackback might be missing something? Ever subscribed an ego feed and hated the fact that the same stuff keeps coming up over and over like it was new? Ever hated those referrer spammers that pollute your autotrackback scripts? If so, Refree is for you”.

10.  Babel

Babel lets you convert between various data formats. In particular, it lets you convert data into the Exhibit JSON format and preview the data right inside Exhibit.

11.  Exhibit

Exhibit lets you create web pages with support for sorting, filtering, and rich visualizations by writing only HTML and optionally some CSS and Javascript code. There is no database and no web application technologies involved.

12.  Appalachian

Appalachian is a Firefox add-on that adds the ability to manage and use several OpenIDs to ease the login parts of your browsing experience.

13.  Timeplot

Timeplot is a cross-browser DHTML (canvas-based) time series plotting widget.

14.  Seek

Seek adds faceted browsing features to Mozilla Thunderbird and lets you search through your email more effectively.

15.  Potluck

Potluck is a research prototype for a user interface to mix and align structured data coming from different exhibits.

16.  jsTeX

jsTeX is a javascript library that is capable of interpreting some (basic) TeX encodings and transform them into HTML definitions right directly on a web page.

17.  Citeline

A web application to facilitate the web publishing of bibliographies and citation collections as interactive exhibits and facilitate the sharing of this type of data.

SIMILE EXHIBIT

It provides a Publishing Framework for Data-Rich Interactive Web Pages.

Exhibit lets you easily create web pages with advanced text search and filtering functionalities, with interactive maps, timelines, and other visualizations like the following examples:

Example-1: CSAIL Principal Investigators grouped by positions and their office

Example-2: Billionaires in history – Where they are from?

Example-3: US Cities by Population - Using Exhibit, this map can be made with just the two simple files.

Example-4: CIA World Factbook – People. It shows birth-rate Vs death-rate statistics. As the user has clicked “Chinese” under language group, it has shown statistics for 9 countries speaking Chinese language:

Example-5: Exhibit Timeline - 63 MIT-related Nobel Prize Winners being shown on a timeline according to the year in which they won Nobel Prize:

EXHIBIT 3.0

Exhibit 3.0 is the latest version of SIMILE EXHIBIT which lets you publish data-rich web pages without complicated programming. It can be used in two forms:

a)      Exhibit 3.0 Scripted (rc1): With Exhibit 3.0 Scripted mode, you can visualize data in a Web browser with a simple HTML-based configuration. No programming or server-side set up required. Exhibit 3.0 Scripted is designed for smaller data sets – for publishing rich interactive exhibits, with thousands of items, right in your Web browser.

b)      Exhibit 3.0 Staged (beta2): Staged mode requires the use of server software to publish bigger data sets. Exhibit 3.0 Staged mode extends the capacity of Exhibit by combining the in-browser software with greater capacity of a server-based component. The server stores and indexes data, and handles browser queries.

How to choose between Scripted and Staged Exhibit?

Smaller data sets numbering a few dozen, a few hundred, or up to a thousand items can run in the browser using the Scripted mode of Exhibit. There is no set item limit for Scripted mode. If your data set has smaller items with few properties and short values, you may find Scripted mode handles a few thousand smaller items. No programming is required beyond the basic HTML you use to author an Exhibit page.

Larger data sets – up to hundreds of thousands of items – are better suited to Staged mode. Running Staged mode requires that you host the server software yourself or locate a provider who can host it for you.

Installing and Setting up Exhibit 3.0:

Scripted

Simply include the scripts hosted at simile-widgets.org in your page: 

From within the repository, the code that needs to be served can be found at scripted/src/. Making the entire scripted/src/ directory available from your HTTP server is sufficient. Access your deployed Exhibit in your pages by using:

Staged

Exhibit 3.0 Staged runs on the Backstage server. Working with Backstage is not as simple as working with Exhibit Scripted. In addition to HTML and publishing Web pages, Backstage is Java software that acts as a server. 

·         Get the source:

Creation of webpage using Exhibit

This section will describe the step by step procedure of creating a webpage with the help of SIMILE Exhibit. 

This widget from the SIMILE project helps in building semantic web-pages without the need of advanced 

programming. The following shows the steps followed:

Step 1: Gathering the tools

Before embarking on the journey of preparing a webpage using Exhibit, one must gather couple of tools. 

These include the following:

1) Text Editor

The first thing required is an editor where one can write the HTML codes. Although it can be done with the 

help of common editors such as Notepad, Wordpad etc. it is better to go for Notepad++ (Windows user) / 

Text Wrangler (MAC users). For the purpose of this tutorial we will be using Notepad++. MAC users can 

download Text Wrangler here: Text Wrangler

Notepad++ has many features which are useful for coding purpose. Visit http://notepad-plus.en.softonic.com/ 

to download the software.

Once download is finished, the installer can be double clicked to start the installation. Proceed with your 

choice of installation language and installation directory. Complete the installation. Move on to the next step.

2). Web Browser

One needs to have a browser in order to run the webpage. Any of the following browsers will work: Mozilla 

Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer. For this tutorial Mozilla Firefox will utilized. Visit 

http://www.getfirefox.net/ and download the latest version of the browser.

3.) Microsoft Excel/Spreadsheet

You also must have an application capable of creating spreadsheet. Spreadsheets act as an input to the 

Exhibit which results in creation of the WebPages. One can use Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets or any 

other software. Google spreadsheets are available free of cost. One needs to follow the steps:

Step 2: Collect Data & Build Spreadsheet

For the purpose of this tutorial we have decided to build a webpage consisting of movies released in a given 

month in various industries. The data has been collected from various Wikipedia pages related to Bollywood 

movies. The data was then compiled to form a spreadsheet.

As you can see, the first row consists of the headers. It gives the field names of the various columns. Each 

row starting from the second represents a record. It consists of the movie name, the industry it has been 

released, date of release etc. The following things must be considered while constructing the spreadsheet:

a) Name one column “Label”. This column must contain unique data. The label will help in identifying each 

record. 

Label	YEAR	GENRE	CAST
Aggar	2007	Drama	Shreyas Talpade

b) To store multiple data in a single cell, enter each data separated by a semi-colon. For example suppose a 

movie can be listed under two Genres – Romance & Comedy. To record the genres under the Genre header 

enter Comedy; Romance.

TITLE	YEAR	GENRE	GENRE
Fool n Final	2007	Action	Comedy; Romance

c) Store dates in ISO 8601 format. It is important to make the date field compatible with Exhibit.

d) Do not use quotes, exclamation marks, commas etc while name a field

e) Be consistent in entering the data. Suppose you enter the Genre Comedy for one movie and comedy for 

another the movies will be considered to be from separate Genres.

One can also use Multiple Spreadsheets to create the input data for Exhibit. In case multiple 

spreadsheets are used, the tables must be differentiated on the basis of “type” – a separate column 

added in order to give an idea about the type of data the spreadsheet consists of. 

These two spreadsheets can then be combined while converting them to Exhibit usable format (JSON). The conversion process is explained in the next stage.

Step 3: Converting to Exhibit usable format

To use the spreadsheet in building of the webpage, it must be first converted into a JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) file. It is a lightweight data-interchange format which is easy for human users to read and write and also easier on the part of a machine to parse and understand. Exhibit requires that the data fed into it is in JSON format. The spreadsheet created can be converted to JSON format using Babel. Visit http://service.simile-widgets.org/babel/ to use the application.

It provides the option of converting various types of files to JSON format in addition to other output formats. The following table lists the various input and output options provided by babel.

Input Types	Output Types
Bibtex	Exhibit JSON
Excel	Exhibit JSONP
Exhibit JSON	N3
Exhibit embedding Web Page	RDF/XML
JPEG	RSS 1.0
KML	Text
N3
RDF/XML
Tab-Separated Values

A snippet of the JSON file created:

As can be seen, each column item has been defined for the item labeled “Hari Puttar: A comedy of Terrors”. The contents of each column item such as cast, director etc have been shown in the JSON file. The webpage while loading uses the styling techniques defined in the HTML file and the contents of this page. 

Step 4: Creation of the webpage

This stage involves the creation of the HTML page that will define the contents and formatting of the webpage.  We will provide with the ready to use code that you can directly copy and use. Make the changes as required by the type of data your spreadsheet consists of and you are ready to go. Follow the steps mentioned:

A) Preparing the basic structure

• Open your notepad++. Then go to    FileàNew
• Copy the following into the file and save it as movies.html (remember saving as type HTML)

The above figure shows the webpage created with the help of the codes just written.

Before moving on, some important points regarding Exhibit:

• and acts as templates for data display
• An is added to div or span in order to inform the Exhibit to handle it specially
• Views: Are used to define how a collection of data will be displayed onscreen
• Lenses: Lenses are used to define the formatting and styling of individual items
• Facets: These are used to include filtering features in the webpage 

B). Adding Filtering features 

Suppose you want to give options to the user of filtering the movies shown on the page based on Genre/Date of Release/Cast etc. As anyone with previous attempts on doing so will tell you, going by conventional way is very complex and requires programming skills. Exhibit really makes the whole task just a few clicks away (or rather a few Cltr+C & Cltr+V). To add the filtering feature one has to use the facet feature. This can be done by including the following codes in “Codes Area” of movies.html.

Just copy and paste it above the other facets code just added. This search button can be used to search for any text on the webpage.

C) Adding lenses:  To define how each individual item should look on the webpage lenses can be defined. They consist of the specific formatting for each of the element shown on the webpage. 

Also add the following code inside the 

Final Webpage:

D) Adding timeline

Another feature presented by SIMILE is timeline. It creates a pictorial showing various events categorized by the time of their occurrence. This can be included in the webpage with the following code:

Prepared by:- 

Kanishka Chakraborty

Rahul Aggarwal

2010-2012, VGSoM

IIT Kharagpur

Simile Exhibit

Introduction to the tool

SIMILE is a joint project carried out by Haystick Group, World Wide Web Consortium, MIT Librarians and CSAIL. The major technical focus of this project is towards Semantic web technology and standards. It stands for Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments. It is focused on developing robust, open source tools that empower users to access, manage, visualize and reuse digital assets. 

The various projects of Simile are as follows:

Exhibit	Appalachian
Babel	Citeline
HTTPTracer	JavaFirefoxExtension
jsTeX	Longwell
Piggy Bank	RDFizers
Referee	Solvent
Semantic Bank	Zotz

Simile Exhibit lets the user create web pages that has advanced text search and filtering functionalities, with interactive maps, timelines, and other visualizations. It lets the user create web pages with support for sorting, filtering, and rich visualizations by writing only HTML and optionally some CSS and Javascript code. No database and no web application technologies are involved. Through this application a user can get data in a webpage in a organised, interactive fashion.

The Exhibit page can be created from any of the following:

Google Spreadsheet	Excel Spreadsheet
Edit Grid Spreadsheet	Publications
JSON data source	ASP.NET

In computer programming, a widget (or control) is an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box. The defining characteristic of a widget is to provide a single interaction point for the direct manipulation of a given kind of data. In other words, widgets are basic visual building blocks which, combined in an application, hold all the data processed by the application and the available interactions on this data.

Business Value

The amount of data that is available on the web is immense and still counting. To go through this data and analyse it is in itself a mamoth task, but none the less very important. Exhibit is a tool that helps in deciphering the data available on the web and gives it to us in a manner which is easy to understand and use. This tool is very useful for every field of business be it marketing, consulting or an other field. Exhibit helps the business managers in developing pages by collecting data from multiple sources. In short it helps creating a repository of data from multiple webpages.

Data Source

Simile Exhibit requires us to select any webpage or particular spreadsheets to fetch the data. A particular webpage with relevant data will be selected and the data from this page will be fed to the application.

Methodology

The various steps that will be undertaken are as follows:

• Literature Review: Both primary and secondary research will be carried out in this stage. Information available on various websites and other articles will be studied. Also the home page of the software provides with various examples that will help us in understanding how this application works.
• Hands on: Since the application is an open source one, it can be downloaded free of cost. A hands of experience will be gained by using the application and creating some sample webpages. 
• Data Source: An appropriate data source will be found and studied. The data source can be any website or any spreadsheets that will help us in showing the working of the application.
• Tutorial: Finally the tutorial will be prepared by explaining in detail regarding the application. An exhibit webpage will be created using data from a particular/multiple websites. This webpage will be taken as an illustration and the tutorial will explain each stage of how to create such a page using the application.

Below figure shows how Simile Exhibit transforms loosely available data into organized one that can be sorted, filtered and managed easily:

Know your NjoyTV!

"NjoyTV is world's first and only Gtalk-Buzz-Facebook Hindi Music entertainment channel"


A.) GENESIS OF the word "NjoyTV"

One fine day during my final year at DCE, I was contemplating on a single "name" which I could use across all sources of entertainment(songs, videos, blogs, etc) which I create, so that just by seeing the name, my friends are able to guess who must have created it. 

On Jan-30-2006 on the eve of ma-papa's wedding anniversary, I was watching MTV in which one sexy VJ, before taking commercial break, said,
"Hey, We 'll be right back after a short break, don't go anywhere, keep watching MTV, Enjoy!" 

I focused on her last two words.."MTV+ENJOY"

From there I got idea of the name of my channel..Initially, I thought to replace M with some other alphabet but finally settled on without alphabet ENJOYTV..making it futher shorter to "NjoyTV"..Since then, I have been using this name as my umbrella brand for videos, chats, blogs, twitter, etc.

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B.) Launch of NjoyTV as a song suggestor/player on Gtalk

I always wanted to be a VJ/RJ since childhood and have recorded many cassettes speaking like a RJ [Still have those but they are useless because of obsolete technology.. :-(  ]. 

In mid-2007 While I was working in Cognizant Kolkata, I came upon an idea to start e-mail service everyday where I will send one most important/funniest/knowledge imparting news of the day along with any name of a song under the banner-cum-signature "99.5 Sky Blue FM" [Idea taken from "93.5 Red FM"]. 

I continued it till I left CTS in Oct-2007 to join CSC, Noida. There I saw that unlike in Cognizant, Gtalk is allowed here. So, instead of sending mails daily, I started suggesting songs to friends on my gtalk status by writing the name of the song on my gtalk-status under the heading, 'NjoyTV Song of the Day.' When youtube became popular in 2007-08, I started using the link of the song as well along with its name.

In early 2010, NjoyTV was launched on BUZZ as well where people could comment on the song which would be viewed by anybody on the BUZZ.

********************

C.) Why do I do this? What do I get out of this?

1. Peace: Even if I am not an RJ/VJ, I am doing something similar but in low tone!

2. Connectivity with friends: I started this channel with the main aim of connecting with friends always..consider this: One day I pinged one of my Cognizant friends to whom I hadnt talked/chatted since 2 years. I said, "You have forgotten me".. He said, "How can I forget you when I listen your song daily on NjoyTV? I have been following you on gtalk since last 2 years and havent missed even a single song"...Once in a while many friends keep in touch with me max. times to Comment/request/advice on a song for NjoyTV!

3. Satisfaction: When my friends ping me back and say:

 - "You made my day, what a song".

 - "Plz NEVER close ur channel, this is the first thing I do in office every morning before starting my work"

 - "What a song..I forgot it thanks for reminding", etc etc

4. Learning about new songs: Since the time I started playing song requests/dedications also in late 2010, I came across many songs which I also didn't know including non-hindi songs. This has helped increasing my songs database.

*********************

D.) NjoyTV Protocol for Facebook:

For more than a year, NjoyTV remained on Gtalk-BUZZ until the news came that Google is doing away with Buzz forever. Hence because of this and upon the suggestions from most of my friends, I am launching it open on Facebook to all its users on my birthday, Nov-9-2011. You can find it here.

1. It will be a Facebook page where I will put one Song daily and on which any Facebook user can comment.

2. Currently, a song request/dedication can be made only by my friends (max. of 2 per week per friend).  It will be played on the nearest available date (based on first-cum-first serve basis) with their name and dedication appearing beside the song. 

3. Total max. song requests in a week = 4. Also song request is subject to condition that the requested song must not have been played on NjoyTV in last 1 month.

4. Max. no. of non-Hindi song requests per week = 1

5. Song will be put up anytime between 11pm to 1am daily night on one song per day basis.

Amendment Note (Jan2013): Now, non-friends viewers can also suggest/request a song which will also be played on NjoyTV but without their name being displayed on the page. For this, they must message their song details and their name on NjoyTV page.

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E.) How to dedicate/request/suggest a song?

Please fill the following form for requesting your song.

Please note that due to enormous number of song requests, you may have to wait quite a long to listen to your song sometimes. However, in case of emergencies like love proposals where waiting can be fatal (;-) you must mention the reason for playing your song early in 'Dedication/Message' question of the form.

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HAVE FUN & KEEP SMILING as LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO WORRY..

- Rahul Aggarwal
Director, NjoyTV
Dated: 8-Nov-2011

Nokia-From Dawn to dusk

This article was published in Economic Times dated Mar-27-2011 that throws light on the factors responsible for Nokia's decreasing market share and stronghold in 3 years(2007-2010).

No handset-maker knows India better than Nokia, then why did it lose its stronghold?
Find out here.

What I learnt from this case study is that in a competitive environment, the three things are most important to survive and stay ahead of the market:
a) Constant Innovation - Creating VALUE for the customer
b) Operational Efficiency - faster, economical production, R&D and sales distribution system
c) Market Orientation - putting customer's needs at the center of all activities of the company

Life at IIT Kharagpur

“We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they're called memories. Some take us forward, they're called dreams.” 

-Jeremy Irons

When I look back now using the former of the two God-gifted machines, I find that last six months were truly one of the most enriching experiences of my life: academically, personally and socially. Like most of the software engineers, I was also leading a “Physically” comfortable and “Mentally” torturous life. When I joined VGSoM, things got reversed for at least first 2-3 weeks. In fact, the realization of the most basic thing that I was now enrolled in the coveted MBA degree from the most desired words on resume “IIT”, itself kept me motivated against the de-motivating forces of physical pain that I was to bear in the first 15 days.

These forces include:

• Hostel Rooms

When I was allotted the room: the cot was in broken condition; water was yellow in taps; walls were covered with spider webs; cistern was pissing; LAN socket had been raped; the speed of the ceiling fan was slower than the slowest rickshaw in Junglepur. It was almost going to be a remake of the horror movie, ‘The Ring’, had the tube light been not working; thankfully it was!

• Homesickness

This started when I consistently scored zero in Mathematical Models of Management Decisions (pronounced fondly as Triple M D) twice in the weekly class tests. Only Kamdhenu Diary’s milk could have helped me sail through this one! :(

• Jungle vehicle: A BICYCLE

Let me tell you that it is impossible to live and traverse on planet Junglepur unless you have a bicycle as motor vehicles are banned here for students. Though people flout these rules easily. 

Also, initially cycling caused my bum to pain, my legs to swell, my bowel movement to go upwards(:P) but believe me, in no time, everything became normal and I got used to it so much that I am thinking to take it with me to Delhi after the completion of the course.

• Food

Daily, we have dark-brown water (which is supposed to be sambhar); egg, bread-butter in the morning; Semi-half baked tawa rotis, rice, one vegetable (or Chicken for non-veg) and yellow water (which is supposed to be Dal) and curd (most tasty component of lunch) in the afternoon; edible snacks in the evening, and dinner similar to the lunch. Frankly speaking, I am not having issues with the lunch because I have seen how worse it can get esp. if you are a vegetarian. And yes, IIT Kharagpur is probably one of the biggest clients of Aquaguard.

Believe me, the above mentioned forces do not last for more than 15-20 days. After that, there’s more than everything to admire here. First, the 2200 acre campus is a self-sufficient ecosystem. It is so serene that you may even miss your partner (or would-be partner) here (though teachers usually make sure that the latter doesn’t happen). People from big cities will take a sigh of relief in this calm, beautiful and pollution-free ecosystem. In simple terms, it’s indeed heaven inside the campus.

Now, before you run your horses, I should make it clear that boy-girl ratio here is highly skewed. :( Though there are some nice maal (read: girls) in BTech but the issue is they remain in their nests the whole year and don't come out until Durga Puja in October or Spring fest in January. There is a sad story that says that earlier boys-girls hostel used to be combined but they were separated later by some @$$ %O^$.

Disregarding the availability though, still a few couples can be seen here inside the library or at Lover's point in front of the library. The institute's central library is one of the biggest libraries in India. It houses magazines, newspapers, journals, books, and lovers(:P).

With one CCD and more than 8 restaurants, you will never feel the need to go outside campus to “try” something new (:P). There are many small markets outside every hostel for the basic commodities. A techmarket is also there that houses shops for fulfilling all basic needs including a hot stuffed-Pakora shop that serves the yummiest green chutney in Kharagpur. 

For workouts, a world-class gym, swimming pool, tennis ground, badminton courts and football grounds are also there. You name a game and it is here.

Though all the above things are not unique to IIT but one thing that differentiates it from other colleges is DC++ which is a peer-to-peer file-sharing system that connects whole of the IIT and has data in excess of 152 Terabytes! From movies to documentaries, from serials to songs, from e-books to software, everything is available on the LAN. The high speed internet connectivity of 100 Mbps with no restriction on downloading makes this place a paradise for net savvy people.

Oh wait… I almost forgot that I have come here to study! So, let me throw some torch on life at VGSoM. Classes usually start at 8.15 in the morning and unlike other B-Schools, run only till 12:30pm except for Mondays when we subconsciously hone our oral or written communication skills in the context of business.
One thing I have not understood yet is that regardless of how many hours I sleep, I still feel sleepy in the class (If anybody knows why, please answer in comments section).

Nevertheless, in the first semester, we study the basics of all trades viz. finance, marketing, operations, IT and HR. The general mode of teaching is usually case study method coupled with theoretical insights from the books of renowned authors. It is a highly enriching experience to attend classes from the world class faculties who hail from institutes like London School of Business, University of Texas, IIM Ahmadabad, IIT Delhi, MICA, etc and have a long experience in industry & teaching. Their focus is primarily on building the conceptual clarity while making studies a fun and not on just completing the course and grades. For Example, in the subject, IT, we indulged in a very unique concept of examination this year where the students were asked to make either one movie or an online application using cloud computing in the groups of three. Also, we are asked to write a 12 page thesis on any innovative thing that has the potential to generate business but is not currently being practised.

To supplement our learning in classes, we also get to attend the series of guest lectures where the prominent industry leaders share their valuable industry experiences with us and provide us with the practical applications of the concepts in business.

So, do we study the whole day? Well of course not(:P). To supplement our learning in classes, we usually WATCH as many Bollywood flicks as we can!! ;-). Jokes apart, we take part in many student-managed committees and clubs for practically actuating whatever we learn here in theory. One such committee is Shraddha that works towards improving the lives of the underprivileged children through a school located within the IIT Kharagpur campus. Every once in while we go there, distribute goodies and celebrate festivals like Diwali, etc with the children. This gives a sense of peace in mind (that works as an antidote to the guilt of bunking few classes!).

All the above factors have contributed to a great deal in my personality development. Consider the fact that our class comprises of students from 19 different states of India. Where else do you get such diversity? I was allotted hostel with a south Indian Matka (slang for MTech here!) who doesn’t understand Hindi (though he likes Hindi songs and Katrina Kaif alias Sheila :P). But we are doing well. Sometimes, whenever he talked with his friends in Tamil:

Annaa, sapad pohiren...(Going for food, bro?)
Khanapurti Poda Poda, Ne muritiviten? (Moron, get lost, u are finished)


I used to feel that they were making noise because I did't understand Tamil. Plus, due to cultural differences between North and South, there were many adjustment issues. But then I realized, the only keyword that would work well here is "Co-operate-2-dominate".

It is this multiplicity of courses and diversity of people here that distinguish IITs from other institutes. The learning in behavioural aspects which I have got from here can never be taught in any class. Consequently, I am a more matured individual who knows how to deal with people from different backgrounds and how to manage the most precious resource called “time” to make myself “dedicated to the service of Nation”.

Trip to Puri-Konark-Chilika

Mid-sems got over at 4pm and we decided to go on a trip at 3:59pm!! After considering many options and brainstorming, we finalized Puri-Konark-Chilika trip. This we did even after knowing that we may not get entry to the dolphin island and Nalbana Island that houses migratory birds..but we didn't have any other option due to heavy rains in most parts of this side of the country..We decided to try our luck at it..

Presenting, the Itinerary (on demand of one of my friends) which we followed:

Well as luck had it, we were not able to go to Nalbana and Satpada Islands but will definitely go once again to fill the gap that remains to be filled..!!

Four-Year Transformation!

Finally, this week marks the end of the first phase of my work-ex that lasted for a total of 4 years as I have decided to overthrow my comfort zone and travel thru the scabrous alleys of a highly respected degree, now-a-days, called MBA. However, when I look back now, I am delighted to note that what a journey it has been. It has all of these called pain, emotions, tears, war, stress, glory, fun, rewards, friendships, etc. And all these things have impacted me considerably to an extent that I feel that I am a much better individual now than what I was 4 years back.

Some of the examples I discovered through introspection:

Before:

Very low self confidence

After:

Duniya ki &%@#!^.. High level of self confidence and belief. This is one lesson that I have learnt as a result of learning from so many failures in almost every field esp. during first serious CAT prep. in 2008 and 1st two projects in CSC during 2008-09. Everytime I failed, I read/listened something motivational. One such quote that is extremely close to my heart is:

"Courage doesn't always roar..Sometimes, it is the quite voice at the end of the day, saying I will again try tomorrow".

Similarly, Chak-de-India movie's title song(hunkar awaz wala paragraph)

And whenever I have tried again and again, almost everytime God has been kind to shower success on me just when I was on the verge of loosing it!
Also, I have experienced this myself that our body imitates our mind. If mind is confident, this will show in the performance by the body and hence, the results. (My first AIMCAT last year was in July first week in which I was not prepared at all so I had nothing to loose. Without any expectations, I went with full confidence that whatever I will do, I will do correct else I will not attempt. Result-98.3%tile, AIR-270 out of 17,000..!)

In this aspect specifically, literally speaking, "Main apna favourite hun"

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Before:

Extreme immaturity in almost everything, be it relationships, handling tasks, view of life, ability to judge people (Initially, it was like if somebody talked to me with smile, I took his goodness for granted)

After:

Perhaps the most important thing which is developed over these years is “Maturity to think rationally and practically”. Day dreaming is a crime. Learnt this, esp in Kolkata where I made certain mistakes in choosing relationships that taught me that you will never know when your best asset may become your worst one if your eyes and mind are not open.

Generally, most of things went against my wishes during:

1. Last 3-4 months of my 1 year long stay in Cognizant,

2. Two months with a psycho in a single room,

3. Under a super psycho landlord for approx another 2 months

4. And 1st two projects in CSC

These things broadminded my mind to an extent which reflect when you see me today with the perspective of now and then. But a very very important experience I must say, otherwise, I would have never matured to that extent had Cognizant been in Delhi!

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Before:

Poor emotional quotient

After:

Now, I do any work with full emotions but I don’t do any work emotionally! (Slight difference, only few people will be able to understand).
Please please please remember that if you are into a relationship, then it is imperative to give full space to your partner and respect his/her views, else things will not work out.

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Before:
Any big responsibility looked like a burden that used to create stress until I finished it

After:

Let’s have a cup of tea first!

-----------------------------WAIT, Tea se yaad aaya....

Before:
Didn’t used to even touch it

After:

At least 3 times a day else mind gets blocked!

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Before:

Average communication skills when it used to come to relationships

After:

“Express Yourself” is the funda for this! I believe that if you really want to say something to someone, then please go ahead and express yourself to him/her..Don’t think that ‘it is obvious’ or ‘it is a formality’ or ‘it is not my duty’, etc.. Believe me, your few words of motivation can make his/her whole day!

(A very important lesson in public relations)

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Before:
Average mentorship skills (I used to get miffed easily if other person didn’t understand what I wanted to say. This was the case when I used to teach tuitions to class-10th students while I was in DCE)

After:

Developed patience…Here, special thanks to Abhignan da in Cognizant and Devendar in CSC who were my mentors in the respective companies!! (Consider the case that tomorrow is project delivery and our work is just 60% complete at 9pm. Abhijnan da is cool. Also, we have to train 2 other people till tomorrow. Abhijnan da is still cool. Mainframe gets hanged for 2 hours in between. Abhijnan da is still cool as if he had delivered the project. Suddenly it rains heavily to the extent that no cab is available to go home. Abhijnan da is still cool!!)

How to hold your nerves while mentoring and in high-stress zones was the lesson I learnt.

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Before:

Car Driving skills – Above average

After:

Min. 2.5 hours daily driving from Delhi to Noida and vice-versa since Oct, 2007.. Need I say more? Aankh band karke bhi chalaunga toh bhi ghar pahunch jaunga!

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Before:

Laughing loudly and frequently.

After:

This hasn’t changed as yet! People still become victim of that, sometimes!

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So, these were a few examples of my four-year transformation that I went thru with such a highly enriching experience made possible, perhaps, by the blessings of the almighty!
In the same flow, I hope the learning will continue in my last formal education too and who knows I will be writing another post after 2 years with contents similar to this one but heading something like, "Two states, the story of my ******".
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