(Report and Photos forwarded by Siddharth Gupta (ECE 05), Anirudh Dhurka (ECE 05), Sudeep Tandon (ECE 06) and Ratnanabh Sain (MIN 2005).
Email: siliconvalley@itbhuglobal.org)
The 4th Silicon Valley Chapter IT-BHU Alumni meet was held at Stanford University on the April 5th, 2008.
As scheduled, alumni and their families started coming in around 2:30pm. After the initial buzz and chitchat, the formal event finally got off to a start at 3:15pm with the ceremonial Kulgeet of the Banaras Hindu University. It was a very memorable occasion when everyone stood up for the Kulgeet and sang along (A snippet of those magical minutes can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
The event then kicked off with a presentation from Animesh Pathak (CSE 2003) who has been actively involved with the formation of IT-BHU Global Alumni Association. He addressed the gathering via internet conferencing from Los Angeles and talked about updates on the decision of the HRD ministry of government of India to grant IIT-BHU status to IT-BHU and the formation and incorporation of IT-BHU Global Alumni Association. It was an interactive session with a lot of alumni chipping in with their questions. A presentation by Sudeep Tandon (ECE 2006) followed Animesh’s talk and informed the alumni about the recent happenings at IT-BHU like the library automation efforts and Opulence – the new management festival.
Interspersed with these insightful presentations were a dance performance and a photo auction. We had a wonderful dance performance by Mrs. Jaya Sharma (CSE 1995) and Mrs. Sangeeta Chugh, w/o Mr. Navin Chugh (MET 1985), on the song Dola Re from Devdas. At the end of the performance all the attendees gave a hearty ovation to both of them. This event was of special mention as it happened for the first time in the history of the Silicon Valley Chapter and was possible only because of the enthusiasm of both the performers! We also auctioned off a very beautiful photograph of Sunrise over Ganges taken by Anirudh Dhurka (ECE 2005) during one of his early morning escapades to the ghats. Mr. Shrish Ranjan (CSE 2000) won the auction and appropriately dedicated the photograph as a memory to his entire batch. The funds raised from the auction were directed to the alumni fund.
It was the intention of the organizers to ensure that most people are time-shifted back to the good old BHU days and the refreshments reflected the same. The 'Limbdi corner' theme based food stall ensured that the alumni tasted some mouth watering samosa-chhole, chutney, and gulab-jamun along with chai. Vishal Mehta (ECE 2005), Saurav Suman (MIN 2005) and Shrish Mishra (CHE 2002) did a commendable job by taking care of different event management details.
All alumni freely mingled with each other and actively participated in the discussions. Special mention of Mr. Vish Mishra (EEE 1967), Mr. Anil Garg (MEC 1978), Mr. Jaiom Sambyal (MEC 1981) and Mr. Rajneesh Kumar (CSE 1995), along with many others, who volunteered to take forward the Silicon Valley Chapter and had many great ideas to make it more useful in helping IT-BHU. Many alumni also attended the Haasya Kavi Sammelan - UPMA at the TiE office, Santa Clara, CA the very next day on an invitation from Mr. Vish Mishra.
During the intro part, many alumni recalled and shared their favorite incidents from BHU-days. Most people forgot the time and chatted away with each other long after the scheduled closing time for the gathering. It was aptly reminiscent of the wonderful times spent at IT-BHU.
We look forward to the next meet hopefully sooner than later. In terms of numbers, about 40 alumni attended the meet along with their families. Though this meet could not reach out to many alumni in the area this time, but all the alumni attending the event pledged to have at least 200-300 alumni next time!
Some Comments from alumni after the event:
- Dear All,
It was so nice to meet ALL OF YOU this afternoon!! You sure brought fond memories of BHU. I went back 45 years when I joined BENCO! Let us keep this tradition going.....and GROWING!!! We can put BHU on the map since we are in Silicon Valley! - Hi Guys,
This was a great event - Kudos to you and team for pulling this together. Let’s build on this momentum.
- Hi,
Kudos to you all to have put up y/days program. And promoting Alma mater is a good thing to do. 20 years ago, I heard that the city of Cambridge real-estate is owned 70% by the MIT+ Harvard thanks to strong alumni. I feel BHU-IT also deserves a strong Alumni group. And we can start with baby steps here in Silicon Valley.
- Hello All,
It was really nice to have met you all at the get together. In addition, I went to UPMA the next day and it was quite exhilarating.
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The photo album (prepared by Anirudh Dhurka, Electronics 2005) can be viewed at:
http://picasaweb.google.com
PowerPoint Presentation
Animesh Pathak could not attend the meeting due to personal reasons. However he interacted with alumni about his PowerPoint presentation using CrossLoop and Google Talk.
Photos:
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