Aspirational Graphs and Social Tagging

Need of the hour: Aspirational Graphs and Social Tagging

When I write these words, I know very well how far I am from my Alma matter with respect to my contributions, visits, attendance in Alumni meets and the physical distance as well. Still in this odd hours of a working day what makes me write is some of my ideas and experiences in the social media space.

And I feel it can contribute at least to a small extent when we convene for the Alumni meet.Due to an important family get together I may be forced to not attend the meeting this time as well :-( Yet, without burdening you all with more of introduction let me pen down my observations.

I believe the social media space is undergoing major twists and turns nowadays. Facebook is no longer a megalith and the final destination in this space due to various issues with social media campaigning and their inability to integrate user experiences with their aspirations. Yet as long as user generated content (UGC) remains the spine of social media, Facebook will remain to thrive in this ecosystem. 

LinkedIn has generated enough social capital to drive aspirational discussions under its hood. And it has always been focused not to mess with the influence of Facebook and created its own special locus. SlideShare and Scribd has become sources of immense popular content. Quora and ResearchGate has innovated the web2.0 to the next level of interactive web. I am not aiming to annotate about the multitude of social media incarnations to you here. My intention is to say that we, GECians need to absorb the aspirations and experiences of the GECians through this.

We can implement the concept of social tagging in this blog. Each day, the bloggers from this community can try to interview or interact with one of the alumni or the passing out student of our college and add his / her profile here. So in the matter of time, this blog will be the collection of so much social capital. And time and again when each of those people achieve new heights in life and pass through special moments of life, it should be added in their page. Hence blogs should go beyond the experiences at a single point of time. Instead, they should grow to become multidimensional content. This much for today.

Let me wander more in the coming days in the social media space to get more pearls and gems for our Alma matter! And hope to see more action here ....

In Retrospection

It was a pleasant morning; here in Dalseo today, I had begun my walk to work early.

It was the thoughts on the sensational rescue mission in Chile that got preference over the intrigue over the Indo-Aussies tests in Bangalore and Delhi.

Pleasant mornings are supposed to bring the good news; for the families of the trapped miners, for the fans of the men in blue and even me.

Mine was delivered in the form of a friend’s Facebook status message;

And it read:

“Hey GECBians ....'Edex', the supplement to Indian Express newspaper has listed our very own Aagneya among South India's most happening college fests..and it’s the only one from Kerala besides NITC's Ragam and CET's Dhwani!!”

And ........

all those small small sacrifices.......

those sleepless nights........

those threats on your lives .......

and those final tears of triumph……

To all the brave young men and women; I bow my head in reverent salutation.

Hope the show goes on forever :)

Where are the Criminals?!

I can have a glimpse of quite a few notorious blogsters  listed as partners in this crime syndicate. But the long stretch of inactivity makes me wonder if all of them are confined in prisons and their keyboards consficated by the newly floated Goonda Act!

Or is that they had run out of topics to blog about? Nothing worth blogging here happening out there?!

Adiós

GECB...
The life was a mix of funs and falls...of intoxicating highs and intolerable lows....
No hard feelings though.......blame it on the terrain......

Clubs and SIG’s.

Yesterday while reading Rohin’s Blog about his stay @ IIM A, I had come across a term, SIG or Special Interest Group. I had heard about the SIG’s in IIM’s before also through Pagalguy.com and also from a few books I’m reading about the life @ IIM. One of those is Joker in the Pack, a very good description of what to expect at IIM’s in the two years I might spend there. I’d known about the clubs and SIG’s putting up presentations in front of the newly arrived juniors. Now I thought about what if the same thing happened in our college. What will the seniors pitch to attract the new freshers’ to their SIG’s and Clubs? This is my take on the possible clubs that could be there in GECB.

1 Quiz Club

Since I was a member of this club and possibly ran the show for a long time along with Abhilash sir, I feel that this should be right on top of my list. I feel it’ll be Dhiraj putting up the PPT for the Quiz club. The 1st slide should be about the origin of the club, winding back to 2003(copy pasted from the Quiz Club Community description). Then the next slide would be two smiling poses of me and Alen, for being the most successful team that has represented GECB in various fests and TV Programs and also for winning a few of them(am I asking too much from the PPT?). Next up would be the BENEFITS of joining this club. YES benefits, assuming that our juniors are so illiterate about what quizzing can be, lets think that they need to be told this. The 1st and foremost benefit, they get to escape the ragging sessions on Friday’s coz of the quiz club meeting:). I feel that would be the best benefit for any junior to join this club. Secondly they would have the benefit of going to any fest and ogling at all the gals and buildings in the OTHER colleges and then cursing themselves or their parents for selecting GECB. Then lastly Dhiru can also tell how much money they get by going to quizzing(only if they win it). After this I think a stunning speech from Praseeth would be the finishing touch.

PS: Forgot to mention that Quiz Club can be an excellent bullet point in your resume.

2 Readers club

Something that exists only in the virtual world in GECB, I rate this as the 2nd most useful club for any college going guy/gal. I feel for this the PPT would be hosted by Soji, Sindhya or Hari, assuming he’s not busy with other projects:). Here since there is no MONEY or GLAMOUR involved, I don’t think what they can tell the juniors in the benefits. Maybe they can enlighten the juniors about the pleasures of reading.

3 Placement Cell

Something that I’ve cherished all my student life in GECB are the numerous biriyani’s I’ve had because of lifting a few benches or getting a cigarette for the guys who come to interview in the placement weeks. Thanks to Remesh sir, we’ve had a great placement cell (don’t know the status since he left it). I feel the placement cell would be best represented by Abhijith (not me, but the one in my junior batch). He’d possibly say about the free biriyani’s you could get, and also the number of free question papers, real interviews viewed from outside, contacts with HR people (coz u had shared your biriyani with them, or got them a cig the last time they visited the college), also a look at all the résumé’s of your seniors (so that you know what-not-to-do). This would also mean getting to know how to setup the LCD projector and laptop within 5 mins and getting to know a few things about amplifiers and microphones :)

4 Music Club

We badly need this in place in GECB, I feel many a talented singer and musician walk the hallowed portals of GECB and its high time we recognize these talented guys and gals and get them together to form a band or an orchestra and hopefully put up a good show in Dhwani 2k10 :). For this club I think the best person to put in the sales pitch would be Abhinav (mainly coz I don’t know someone else who sings and plays an instrument and is so good at both).

5 Mudravaakyam Club

This is something that we are in sure need of in the college. The rallies in the college aren’t what they used to be in the old times. We hardly see more than 20 people in them these days. So I feel this club needs to be formed and for this both SFI and KSU can come together and form a single club and derive members out of this whenever they have a need. The sales pitch can be lead by the Chairman of the union assisted by some vaagdanam’s like a seat in the elections for the one with the best voice and so on.

6 Lover’s club

Boy-oh-boy, ithu njan engene marannu! There’s a great need for a lover’s club, or union. They should have some kind of freedom of expression as well, isn’t it? For pitching this I don’t know whom I should name. So many names are coming to my mind, but I don’t want to get kicks in my butt from my dear friends. Also some might name me as well in this game. So you decide who should come for this.

7 Free Software Club

I think the club already exists in college, and if I’m not wrong Suraj is the one leading the pack. So guess he’d come with some free CD’s of Ubuntu to lure the juniors to join up. :)

8 Gundukaad Gunda Liaisoning group

We definitely need a group of students to maintain a good liaison with the people in the colony, mainly to avoid hiccups in future while organizing many fests and intra college events. I don’t want to name anyone here, again for the sake of my good health.

Comments please.

PS: If I missed anything please mention in the comments.