CII iTalent 2008 - 09

Recently I was honoured for my project titled "Object Recognition of Image Sets Using Discriminative Canonical Correlations". My project got selected as one among top 30 in South India by CII. The initiative was to identify and showcase the talent of IT students. In this blog post, I am gonna narrate my experiences and exposures. The event was scheduled to be conducted on 27-28 Feb, 2009 at SRM University.

Day 1: Feb 27, 2009

I reached SRM University by 8:30 AM. Registration was over by 9:45 and the innaugural session started. Mr. N. Vittal IAS was the chief guest. After that a general aptitude test was conducted to assess the analytical ability of the candidates. This test was conducted by Merit Trac. Then the project presentation sessions started after the break. Dr. T V Gopal, professor/CSE, Anna University; Mr. Arunkumar Kalyanaraman, General Manager, Covansys; Mr. Ramesh Gopalaswamy, Independent Consultant were the esteemed judges. Dr. T V Gopal was more agressive and attacked the participants with ridiculous and at the same time mind revoking questions. He also gave suggestions to the students on how to improve their project. It was a nice experience to have a challenging judge to face. My presentation was scheduled for the second day. Though I enjoyed the whole day. In between HR PANEL was conducted on the theme "Importance of Ethics to be a Successful Organisation". Mr. Sanmitra Trivedi, Head - Human Resources, Verizon Data Services India Pvt Ltd and Mr. K. Ravi Sankar, General Manager & Regional Business Head, Wipro Infotech were the panelists and they answered various queries from the students. At the end of the day 1, IT QUIZ was conducted by Mr. Sumanth C Raman, Health Advisor, TCS. Mr. Sumanth C Raman is an eminent compere of Doordarshan Kendra, Chennai and he is famous for the tamil version of Extra innings and BSNL sports quiz.

Day 2: Feb 28, 2009

Day 2 was as energetic as Day 1. Project presentations were going on. I presented my projectthat day and got minimal questions and many good suggestions from Dr. T V Gopal. In between two panel discussions were conducted. First came the NEXT PRACTICES. In this session, Mr. R. Panchavarnam, Past Chairman, Panruti Municipality presented on eGovernance and how he computerized the Panruti Municipality office as a Chairman from 1996 to 2006. Then Mr. A Srinivasan, VP, TCS; presented on knowledge management and how it is implemented in TCS. Then came the CEO PANEL on the theme "Challenges in the Times of Economic Slowdown". Mr. Ranjit Pisharoty, Senior VP, Sutherland; Mr. G. Ramasubramaniam, Account Executive, IBM India; Mr. M R Sunderesan, Operations Director, Dell India. They answered very patiently to the queries from the students and also gave tips on how to groom themselves to get into software industry in this economic slow down. Ultimately came the valedictory session. Time to say Good bye! Mr. Ravi J Shah, VP, TCS; Dr. R. Mahadevan, Chairman, Education SC, CII-SR; Dr. Santhosh Babu IAS, MD, ELCOT; Mr. Sethuram, Registrar, SRM University and Mr. G. Kameshwar, Principal Consultant, TCS; were the dignitories on the dias. Prizes were distributed and the session ended with keynotes from chief guests.