November 21, 2010

Four Movies from VGSoM, IIT Kharagpur

Traditional MIS courses in Business Schools very often tend to focus on programming and systems analysis but the needs of the corporate world seem to be moving away from such "hard" technology. Today, it is all about the rich interactivity of Web 2.0 and the ability to "mashup" a whole slew of occassionally half baked ( or still baking ) technological ideas and deliver value to the business.

In an earlier post, I had highlighted some of the "hard" technology of Cloud Computing that our students have learnt to package together to deliver a useful product. But there is more to the usage of technology than crafting smart applications. Today's managers are very often faced with the task of communicating complex ideas to an impatient audience and the only arrow in the quiver could be technology. Hence students were given the opportunity to explore the use of movie making as a technical tool to further their business goals.

Students were asked to choose a complex business topic and create a 5 minute movie to explain the same. Creating a movie is rare combination of both left and right brain skills : One has to plan, organise locations & actors, shoot, edit and upload -- and this calls for a mix of technical and managerial skills that are essential in any business.

We were fortunate, the Mr K V Sridhar the Creative Head of Leo Burnett helped us evaluate the final products and the four best movies are featured here.







Mary Kom : A World Champion from India

When will people realise that there is a world beyond the corrupt antics that goes by the name of Cricket
Image scanned from EyE / Indian Express

November 19, 2010

Cloud Computing at VGSoM, IIT Kharagpur

As a concept, Cloud Computing is neither new nor anything unique -- in fact the business proposition  around this model of system architecture is so compelling, that one wonders -- as I have explained in the Economic Times --  why people do not see it as an inevitability !

Of late the idea seems to have exploded into the public psyche with the unstoppable force of an idea whose time has come and we in the Vinod Gupta School of Management at IIT Kharagpur have included this into our curriculum.

I have been exploring Cloud Computing on the Zoho platform for the past couple of years and this year our students have built some very smart applications -- in fact a nano ERP if I may say so -- that were evaluated by two executives from Zoho itself. I am grateful to Mr Aravind Natarajan for helping me with this evaluation.

You can see the three top applications here on this page, or you can follow the links to the actual application


Go to application : Zoho-Order2Cash
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Go to application : Hindustan MultiLever Ltd
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Go to application : The Permanent Parivartan

November 11, 2010

Shankarpur : From Sunset to Sunrise





The Sandy Bay Hotel : Excellent place to stay when you are here. We booked our rooms here through Unicorn Travels in Calcutta.









Morning 5th November 2010