Nowadays when I am surfing, the usual Google banner ads which will have some un-known face is showing a familiar face. In the last two months, it was only one face and tri-color ( Its only one – Saffron:) is what that captures attention. It is Mr. L K Adavni’s prime minister campaign - for the Indian 15th Lok Sabha Elections.

I did some googling to find out the amount of money spent for the Advertising campaign – Its huge – Rs.250 Crore campaign. In this economic scenario this is really a huge amount for advertisement campaign.

He has followed Barack Obama’s style campaign by completely utilizing the web for the campaign. He has created a Website , Forum ,Blog, Orkut Community , You Tube Channel & Facebook page. A huge money has been poured into the Google Adwords and Banners adds campaign.This is probably the first time by an Indian politician. I am not giving any personal opinion on the party or the candidate here. But I am impressed on the party’s effort ( or any consultant who gave the idea) in using the power of internet for the elections.

That is a great move for me because of one reason, this should create an awareness to many Indian people about the power of Technology. This I see as just a precursor. Now every politician will be forced to follow and flood the world wide web. This will bring out money from deep-black-pockets of India which is in a way useful for online ads community beneficiaries like me who display online ads in our websites, 

This term at XL is going to be really  hectic. This 3 months will be worse than Term II. In Term I,most of the time I spent in learning Micro-economics and I spared a little extra time in learning Indian Constitution & Preliminary Labor Laws. The way economics was taught and the approach in the testing pattern was totally alien for me till my graduation. The exams were completely a problem solving approach, whereas in lectures were about discussing concepts.

I expected to relax in Term II , but what I got was totally the opposite. I had to go through a new type of pedagogy, The Case Approach. Performance Management was the course which was completely a course which went by case approach. I struggled in the beginning but it helped during my Summer Placement. I never thought I could crack a E&Y‘s consult interview  especially a Case based GD. Amidst the tedious Term II, Summer Placement consumed enormous time and what followed after that was completely strenuous. Projects Submissions and Quizzes, End Term and at last a good learning in this  term. The subjects I enjoyed in this term were Compensation, Performance management and Appraisal, Macro- Economics ( Any day it is an interesting subject for me) and Financial Accounting.

When I came back from home last week, Term III started with a jolt with 4 classes of Corporate Finance I have done 5 assignments. Every other day I am now doing Financial analysis of my company – Hatsun Agro Products Limited – which was allocated for me. For those in South India know this company very well for its household brand names – Arun Ice cream, Arokya milk and Komatha milk. The subject is really very interesting and I am enjoying to the maximum in lectures. The way the subject is taught matters a lot. I came here due to my inclination for training and development, now teaching as a profession has become one of my aspiration.

A general perception with people - all subjects can be taught to students in one best way – i.e. Lecturing , as Fredrick Taylor’s Taylorism says about industrial labor. Every subject that is to be taught to students must be adapted to the target audience with the different pedagogical methods, testing methods and especially the course content. I don’t think this is being thought of in the huge number of newly opened engineering college in Tamil Nadu. I am saying especially about this place, because I belong to Coimabatore , a cosmopolitan city in Tamil Nadu, were I have seen in during my graduation days the number of engineering colleges increased ten folds. The new colleges co not have quality faculties and a good course plans. I strongly now feel, I must bring in a change to academia with whatever I could contribute. For now, I will wait for this term to get over and complete my internship in a well known software MNC at Hyderabad.

 Recently I had an opportunity to take part in a logo designing contest here at XL. The logo was to be used in a National Social Entrepreneurship Conference. The conference is being held for the first time in XL, which brings in all the Social Entrepreneurs in one forum. My logo was selected for the conference which portrays the conference theme “Providing Access to Sustainable Development”. When I saw the logo published in the conference brochures, I had a contemplation on how brand managers would have an intrinsic motivation when they see their brain child brand being used by commoners. Whenever I see people using XL Connect , and when I see the logo, it gives me a satisfaction in transforming existing thing and making it helpful to others. This is the relational benefits one gets as a brand manager other than transactional benefits like salary, perquisites in the job.

This logo designing also gave me an opportunity to design the website for the conference. This is my first functional website for an event, which would serve a social cause. Joomla CMS was the savior for me to create a quick website. I would advise everyone who would start to explore Joomla for the first time, install XAMPP bundle in their local system.XAMP is promoted by Apache friends, and its an open source bundle with a cross platform PHP, Apache HTTP Server, MySql database and Perl scripting. The first time Joomla experience was a great experience, you can exploit a huge list of web templates in the internet and also a vast set of plugins for the website. I used siteground-j15-59 theme, and tweaked a little in its script to have the complete browser occupied layout and this helped me in removing the blog layout. Also a bit of Photoshop efforts gave me a good webpage header.

The photos in the above header image were shot by me and our friends at XL during our rural visit here at Jharkhand. The left side of the header is existing conditions in most of Jharkhand villages and right side of the header is the image of farming which happens for a short period of just 2 months depending on monsoon. If monsoon fails agriculture here stops even for those two months. The Website its XL’s initiative towards Social Entrepreneurship.You can have a look at the website here.I am nor writing about the conference, as the website will be the source of information.Thanks to Sigma (Social Initiative Group for Managerial Assistance), the organizers of the event for giving me this opportunity.

Today was the end of the second term for me at XL. For me this term was quite a long term compared to the first term. The reasons could be many things. Maybe I am very badly homesick, or the grueling  projects and case presentations of this term or “Surprise” quizzes of special subjects that often signaled my ignorance or could be the summer placements that showcased my hesitation in expressing thoughts in every group discussions. Even could be for any other reason which I am not able to recollect now.

Almost 6 months of MBA - one quarter of my aspiration is complete today. When I look back to check whether I have really reached where I wished to be. Computers where my Passion and still it is, and a career in training and development was the attraction for me at XL when I came here. But what all I have read and understood in the last two terms are totally different. About 280 Sessions in the two terms,in the six months I have been inside class rooms listening to lectures,presentations or case discussion for about 420 hours. Writing multiple quizzes, last minute submissions and it looks like my four year engineering studies was compressed and given in this two terms.

But some good learning for me in the last two terms which I must preserve. Some excellent Professors who have inspired me to become a professor if I complete a PhD. Summer Internship was a good evaluation for me to find out my weakness, or probably a test to my strengths. Finally next term and summer placement will be giving me a better perspectives and changes for good.

And Miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep…

I have created a photo gallery, it was quite easy for me to do with the aid of Google Picasa. To check my photo gallery , Click the Photos link in the top navigation bar. I have made the slide shows with the auto code generated by Picasa. Followed the steps mentioned below.

You can embed a Flash slideshow of any web album. It’ll be automatically updated when you make changes to your album. Follow these steps to embed a slideshow:

1. On the My Photos page, click your album.
2. Click Link to this album on the right-hand side.
3. Click Embed Slideshow.
4. Choose your slideshow settings, such as image size, captions, and autoplay.
5. Once you’ve chosen your settings, copy the resulting HTML code (Ctrl-C).
6. Paste the HTML in the source code for your site (Ctrl-V).

- Google Help

This feature is very helpful having easy galleries instead of Static Image Folders which according to me is not an attraction in this Web 2.0 Era. Have a look at my Photo Gallery and you decide Static Image Folder Gallery Vs Flash based Slide Shows.

Almost the day lively came, I had mentioned earlier as Lively is bit lively But…May be for Children to Enjoy. Of course this was totally away from Google’s innovative product line. Finally the day has been marked by Google itself for Lively to be on Dec 31 2008. A good move by Google I would say, not to manage products which does not has any market.

Related Posts.

1. Lively is bit lively But…May be for Children to Enjoy
2. Google Enters - A new area not thought of

Today, I tried the new feature introduced by Google – Integrated Video and Voice Chat in Gmail. Truly a very innovative move, Google was first to integrate chat inside Email environment. They further improvised it now by adding video and voice to it. But you need a plug-in to be installed for the same. You can download it here.

The great news for me was, this works the same way with Google Apps users also. So I think all the XL users can now integrated further with this feature.

Google has created their every application more like a reusable template and hence they are able to easily adopt changes and do the same applicable for all the customized users. Their Apps is an innovation in terms of business strategy in this internet industry.

Only bad news now is this feature is not available for Linux users, only for the loyal Windows OS users. I think the Linux version of the plug-in would follow soon, so no need to comment on this.

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1. A Small Sense of Satisfaction
2. Students testimonial – Update from Google