NASSCOM - Student Connect Program Not just magnitude but also the direction! …pg 2 Reader Engagement Initiative Volume 12 SAMVAD 2015: Confluence of Industry Issue 03 and Academia September 2015 …pg 3 Circulated free to students of Vidyalankar (For private circulation only) India’s Tennis Greats …pg 4 In association with VIT students win VIT Snippets Football Paradise - a blog by VIT alumnus Gaurang Manjrekar has been nominated as In- dia's ONLY entry in the world-acclaimed FOOT- BALL BLOGGING AWARDS, in not just one but two different categories - the Best New Blog laurels @ TCS Contests (Football Paradise), and the Best Social Ac- count (@LFC_360). This nomination would take students from the startup to a new level. VIT is proud of Vidyalankar In- Gaurang’s efforts and wishes him all the very stitute of Tech- best! May Football Paradise break global re- nology have cords for the highest social media connect made it to the among football enthusiasts! 16list of top 1000 teams across the world in the recent CodeVita Programming Contest conduct- ed by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). CodeVita is TCS’ way of attracting young impressiona- ble college students to adopt the culture of looking at program- ming as a sport and experience the joy of programming. Af- ter having run two seasons of the competition in India, TCS CodeVita had gone global since 2014, and around 2 lakh students from India registered for the contest this year. These 16 champs from VIT are exempted from the aptitude test that will be conducted by TCS on the cam- pus recruitment day. They will be going directly to the inter- view round. In yet another victory, Anuj Khandewal (BE INFT) and Rahul A student contingent from VIT bagged the Sec- Kothawade ond Runners Up position (ranked third best) at (BE INFT) have KALEIDOSCOPE FEST 2015 organized by been offered jobs Sophia College for Women. The contingent par- Anuj in TCS based on ticipated in 37 out of 40 events and was led by Khandewal their perfor- Brian Faleiro, who was assisted by Komal Bap- mance in TESTi- na, Om Dhamdhere and Viraj Deshpande. Con- mony contest by gratulations to all the winners and participants TCS. TESTimony from the victorious contingent! is a platform that encourages stu- dents to enhance their knowledge Rahul Exam Alert! in software test- Kothawade ing as well as re- Exam: GATE 2016 ward them for exhibiting exem- Exam Window: 30 January plary talent and knowledge in Automated testing, Performance 2015 to 7 February 2015 testing, Test Management and Exam Slots: 9:00 am to 12:00 other Software Quality related topics, helping them jumpstart noon and 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm their careers. Anuj and Rahul’s 19 March 2015 spectacular performance earned Results: them a coveted spot in the top 50 For more information check: teams. By virtue of being one of provisional offer of employment The icing on the cake to this dents on the very first day of the top teams in TESTimony, with Tata Consultancy Services happy turn of events proved to be campus placements, thereby pav- http://www.gate.iitb.ac.in/ they have been shortlisted for a Limited. when TCS recruited 163 VIT stu- ing the way for future glory! Not just magnitude but also the direction! “Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.” In association with —Dale Carnegie September 2015 2 NASSCOM - STUDENT CONNECT PROGRAM SIT’s Department of Information Technology (Software Engineering Cluster) organized “Student Connect Program” with NASSCOM on 2 Sep- tember 2015. More than 250 students Vattended an inspiring talk on “Job opportuni- ties In IT” and “Entrepreneurship” by the Guest of Honour Mr Rajiv Vaishnav (Vice President – Member Outreach at NASSCOM). Mr. Rajiv is passionate about realizing the po- tential of the Indian IT Industry and is enthu- siastic about developing new IT destinations in the country and fostering platforms for indus- try-academia interactions as he believes that these are the two most critical requirements for the Indian IT Industry to maintain its globally advantageous position. The National Association of Software and Ser- vices Companies is a trade association of Indian Information Technology and Business Process tioned that to grow continuously in our life- Revolution”, “IT Industry from NoWhere To and eventually to the society. He said that there Outsourcing industry. Mr. Rajiv shared that time, one needs to identify the slowdown (lead- SomeWhere”, “India’s positioning in the world” is a lot of stability in India and a lot of job/ NASSCOM wanted India to gain recognition for ing to the bottom of the S-Curve) in one’s life and how NASSCOM contributes a major role in business opportunities for many and this will its software professionals. Today, they work on and act accordingly to again move up (which it by concentrating on the quality, productivity, increase in the near future. He encouraged stu- security, e-governance and innovation aspects. acts as the inclined in the S-Curve). He moti- innovation and cost every time there was a need dents to become entrepreneurs. Mr. Rajiv spoke about the passion and dedication vated students by mentioning the availability to provide IT services to clients across the It was a learning and interactive session for of Devang Mehta, the founder of NASSCOM. of a lot of start-up opportunities. He asked stu- globe. He mentioned, “Confidence is important students wherein he answered all the queries Mr. Rajiv beautifully explained the concept dents to identify their strengths, opportunities for each of us as a first step toward success”. put up by them. Mr Rajiv, through his excellent of ‘inclined’ and ‘declined’ as the phases in and challenges and try to generate solutions. He focused on the difference between an em- talk has really touched upon many important every one’s life with the concept of S-Curve He guided students on the approach one ployee and a contributor and that one should facts students should be aware of and follow for through which individuals and organizations should have towards becoming a successful per- always strive to be a contributor along with be- their continuous development and success. can rediscover themselves. According to him, son in life and about the thought process one ing a good employee which makes a big differ- - Ujwala Sav & Kedar Sawant one’s thoughts drive one’s life. He also men- should move on with. He focused a lot on “IT ence to an individual and his/ her organization Faculty, VSIT life situations to the best of our abilities. And by facilitating such a workshop, something apart from the curriculum, Vidyalankar Institute of Technology is certainly striving to give its stu- dents an upper edge over the rest. The world is a plethora of eccentricity. And to deal with such people too in our social and professional life is a challenging task! The training taught us how to deal with various types of people and react in different situa- tions. We were trained on our interpersonal skills, our interviewing and answering tech- niques. We were also given tips on our presenta- tion skills and effective communication tech- niques. An interesting activity was conducted where we were split into groups of six where every person had to face a bombardment of questions from the remaining five. The swift- ness, diplomacy and creativity of our answers were critically judged. This experience of a formal face to face assessment will certainly become useful for the students studying in Third Year Engineering for their future job in- terviews and placements. We were also taught techniques of marketing and the methods of establishing a connection with the audience. It would consider it a crucial part of one’s all was emphasized how advertising works on round development and this indeed is a great three levels of interplay with our brains. The opportunity given by Vidyalankar Institute of most successful marketing techniques are the Technology to the students pursuing their engi- ones which make us believe, the ones which neering. The training started off with an activ- arouse in us a sense of strong trust and belong- ity for testing our emotional intelligence where- ing to the product. 2 DAYS OF TRAINING - in we declared unlikely and likely statements The training session was overloaded with ac- about ourselves and our partner had to guess the tivities and interactive events. It just got better true ones and the ones which were false. Such a and better with every module. I remember the simple activity, but this made us realize how of- team event where every team had the same be- ten we judge people just by their appearances lief that how this training in spite of being only Memories of a lifetime! and how can we read the body language of peo- two days' duration gives us such a great deal of he Dale Carnegie Training is hold on our career. And the way the ink never ple while conversing. We were also taught about knowledge just like the principle of physics an ink pen", our trainer Mr. Joe fades out, the training leaves an everlasting stress management and how to deal with diffi- where even a very less force at a particular place Verghese jubilantly exclaimed. mark on our lives ". And indeed, the training cult situations. We were asked to role play real gives enough leverage to lift a large amount of He added, "Just like the barrel proved to be a package of excellence. life crisis situations and the ways to deal with weight. It is stupefying how we got certified for of an ink pen stores ink, the The Dale Carnegie training not only focuses them and not let the stress affect us mentally and a two days’ duration capsule but took back home "Ttraining in itself is a comprehensive collection on effective communication skills, but it also physically.