DynamiX ‘07… The Inside Story of Ramjas!
Posted by Uma Damle | Filed under Headshot, It's My Life, Quizzing, School Life
Note: This particular post is written by Prashanth on my behalf. I know its a bad mimicry of my writing style, but still… it pretty much says what I had in mind.
Adhering to the fact that each coin unfortunately has two sides, I am compelled to write something on top of Prashanth’s single sided vantage report on the making of this event. Despite being a small event, I know we are making it look like a making of a movie with a series of multiple posts coming up about the same thing! As Luminaries, its our duty to narrate the whole show to all those people who missed coming to the event. Before wasting more time of you future-IITians who couldn’t spare a few hours for the event off their package solving sprees, let me start off with the story.
The organization process started off with problems, and solutions to problems that do not exist, courtesy Prashanth! Ever since he came up with the concept of the Mouse Caramel (Its actually Mt. Car_mel, hidden so that Google’s dumb spiders don’t direct this page for some confidential stuff!) computer clan, namely GeekeD!, (which primarily consists of Varun Mishra, Gaurav Marmat and a few more) to help DX take this event off. Coming to think of it, it wasn’t a bad idea after all. DX, as you might have read in the touchy part of Prashanth’s post, has lost all its priceless alumni to Universities and Institutions outside Delhi. So a small group of technically sound people with great contacts in the geek community could help the event greatly. Prashanth hypnotically managed to convince everyone for sure, including the GeekeD clan that DynamiX GeekeD! would be a happening event. On second thought, he missed one person, and that wasn’t the DX incharge from Ramjas, Pandey Sir.It was Ramjas’s good old, respected but presently troubled Principal. With so many outlaws in the school, nobody in the seats of the Principal would be in a sound mind to listen, especially if the person suffers from a kind of reverse amnesia (a fancy term for incorrigible amounts of memory).
So that’s where the issues begin. Not with involving GeekeD, but involving Prashanth, who is actually a prized ex-student of Ramjas. As I mentioned before, Princi suffers from reverse amnesia, which means any kind of data in her head is as secure as it is in this blog’s Dreamhost servers. And Prashanth and his cocky nature finally made him pay after six loooong months of quitting school. Let’s move back in time… Prashanth wanted to quit school in style. He did it by giving the principal a piece of his mind about the school right in her face. For now, the Principal had a wonderful time ignoring him, lecturing him, refusing him, nodding her face sideways in front of him and scaring everyone who is for him to death. It almost felt as if it was easier to get GeekeD! in than Prashanth!
Prashanth and I finally decided that he would work for the event whether or not he is allowed to join on the day of the event . The hard point was to somehow send this message in the Princi’s head. Whenever this particular issue propped up in any DynamiX meeting, the others i.e the so called lions and Gothkings at gaming transformed into cowardly meerkats at the very thought of facing the principal, scared that she might whip her semi-automatic out and shoot ‘em up.
So it was me all alone as the only ‘Man in the Clan’ who trembled fearlessly into the Princi’s cabin almost daily making her mind up. And each time I came a step closer in doing so, some jackass sprays paints, someone bursts a cracker and loads bunk and disobey. With tons of law and order issues, Princi’s equilibrium was disturbed adding a whole lot of FUD, or Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about the whole event.
We were sooo sorry, yet helpless for ourselves as well as Geeked!, who were so excited about it and came up with lovely artwork for the event. Eventually, we did manage to boot Prashanth in, especially after she heard that he got the sponsors. Anyway, Prashanth was in, along with a new wave of problems with solutions to problems that do not exist!
I must really thank Tushar N. for taking care of most of the paper work, registration work and certificates and stuff, Sanchit and Anirudh for the programming paper, Shakti just for NOT creating any troubles on the two days and Sanchit, Tanmay, Tarun, Nisheeth, Kartikey and the rest of 11thies and 10thies for taking care of installation, refreshments, signboards and other stuff that from a distance appear to be pieces of cake tasks but in reality involve unbelievable amount of running from pillar to post. DynamiX was, is and will be a symposium planned, supported and executed ENTIRELY by students.
Ever since the sponsors finalized, a new surge of excitement made me give in my best yet work here for DynamiX ‘07. Yes, I had made quite a few questions and clues for last year’s edition as well, but this time… the work had something special. The next half of a week were spent with nothing but thoughts of anticipation, last minute reminders, invites to schools, query solving, and keeping both Pandey Sir and the Principal in good humor. The meerkats took away all the burden away of the critical logistics. Finally, the day had arrived. 26th and 27th… I guess Prashanth would be vela enough to blog about that!
DynamiX 2007… Behind the scenes first!
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Downloads, It's My Life, Quizzing, School Life, Technology
Well, as many of you regulars might know, DynamiX ‘07, Ramjas School’s 4th edition of sucky IT fests was more or less in the hands of Uma and me this year. I would like to start off the post the same way I started it off last year. We used to have really dynamic founders who have now turned alumni namely Roshan, Shashank, Anshuman, Som, Ayush and a few more. Even though these guys weren’t actually pros when coming to organizing events, they were however excellent competitors and used to make every other school chew dust in the computer symposiums before 2005. Since they passed away (Sob..Sob!), Ramjas, in the section of computer symposiums and stuff has been looking at only one direction of development, the negative y-axis. Well this year however, things were destined to be different. A recently turned alumnus, Prashanth Kanduri decides to power up this edition of DynamiX along with the existing clan primarily consisting of Uma and Sanchit. The saga of problems start here. And this time, since these problems are already solved, I decide to keep this to myself. Close buddies in the Geek Community know about them.
Anyway, we must pay a good deal of homage in the form of thankfulness to our alumni for teaching us with live demonstration for 3 years in a row on How not to organize a computer fest! If one of you is actually reading this, let me elaborate and explain myself correctly before you start thinking otherwise.You guys were technically very sound and had a great deal of gray matter in the head as well, but then none of the events seemed to have got competitive participation that it deserved. On top of that, the paper work was usually finished in the nick of time. The events were just way too innovative or high minded for the kind of participation they received.
This time however, I had different plans. Plans to start off the paper work much before the event dates were even decided. It was just me and Uma for the most brainstorming of events, i.e Quiz, Crossword, CodeX, Surprise Event and Group Discussion. Other than that, I wanted to settle things out and show some nuts in the geek community that a good quiz containing trivia means much more than a history test. And also that a clever crossword can contain answers that people have heard of. Other than that we wanted to have fun with our participants. Speaking of participation, I tried to mob in as much as I could through my tentacles spreading into the community. Although we officially sent invites to over 50 schools, just 22 could actually make it owing to the fact that the event date was decided on a Monday when most schools have a test. Bad Planning… I know but couldn’t actually do much. I am no Ramjasian.
Uma and I started working on the quiz and crossword way back, somewhere in the end of August, with quiz tilting on my side and the crossword tilting on hers. I wanted to keep the quiz current, the TCS IT Wiz way and still make it fun making people go “Sheesh! I knew this!!” after every pass. And then I did learn a great deal from some of the quizzes I attended this year and I decided to incorporate more visual rounds and the infinite bounce system in both the quiz and the crossword. The idea for the latter was omitted though. But then starting work early had its own paybacks and prices. For once, I could attend every successful event, borrow ideas from them as I have never done anything like it before. You probably might not know/believe this, but then I am fairly a newbie in the world of quizzing. But then after each event, we had to scrap out a great deal of questions and clues or to the least modify them to a great deal. I was especially scared during the TCS IT Wiz (which is actually my kind of a quiz) which was why I saw the entire final round despite suffering from successive attacks of Loser’s Lurgy of type WARP ‘06!
So then we also had the task of getting the sponsors. The task as such isn’t a big one. The companies start showing interest as soon as you start speaking of an IT fest, inter-school computer symposiums, prizes, publicity and stuff. But then all of them seemed to get cold feet as soon as it was announced that it was Ramjas School doing all this, whether it was Airtel, HCL, Chip and many more! “What’s the school name again?”, “Where is it?”, “Who is conducting the whole thing, students of the school?”… we were looked through the eyes of skepticism and doubt as I proceeded in selling our show to them like a marketing agent. Well, perhaps we are not the ones to blame for that kind of a response from the potential sponsors. Finally, after some good negotiation and grace from a supreme power, we finally got no cash sponsors, but then two great ones for the prizes. We had Jasubhai Media, the publishers of Digit and Skoar! giving away magazines and free issue coupons. We also had Cybermedia the publishers of PCQuest and Living Digital giving away annual subscription for the first comers. I know they are rival publishers, but then they don’t know that they co-existed! Ssshhhh….
But still, single-handedly I guess I did a pretty decent job at getting these two to the event. Anyway, the school agreed to spend some amount from its treasury for the trophies, certificates and the refreshments (about which I am not interested to write!). Coming back to the brainstorming work, let me remind you guys once again that it was just Uma and I involved. The alumni gang, which turned handy during last year’s fest has been scattered across the globe now. The reachable ones couldn’t make it either, due to 42 unique excuses which I wasn’t bothered to listen. And honestly, I must say brag that as a quizzer, as a thinker, as a techie, and as a guy on whom you can depend on organizing events, I have grown a lot in the past year after close association with one of our alumni Roshan Shariff, Uma as well as many close buddies and especially GQ in the geek community.
Anyway, after tons of efforts, countless hours of arguments, and Skoar!(s) of compromise, we finally got the date finalized on the 26th and 27th. As an external student, I wasn’t actually supposed have as much say in the event as an internal Dynamite should. Even then, with grace shown from Pandey sir, our computer HoD and cooperation shown from most members in the Dynamix Clan, I could actually suggest a lot for the event. Even though we had bigger plans, we couldn’t really execute them as we wanted. Will blog about this as soon as I receive my Letter of Acknowledgment from the Principal of Ramjas… Can’t take the risk you know!
For all those who missed coming to the event, please solve this CodeX clue. Read between the lines above… you have no idea on what you missed!
Finally we ended up with a kick-ášš crossword, a fun quiz and clever CodeX paper along with a nice idea for the Surprise Event (courtesy Dhawal, Uma’s biological brother!) courtesy the two of us. So many of the posts that you might read in the blogosphere might be actually praising the two of us. But then we do owe a lot to the rest of the clan, for getting the paper work done, convincing the Principal, installing stuff, getting the rusty computers usable, letting me in, for being co-operative and a lot more. Let me roll in the credits… Sanchit, Anirudh, Tanmay, Tushar, Nisheeth, Nikhil, Shakti, Tarun, Stefan and a few forgotten ones. Also ex-Dynamites Anshu and Rahul for the site as well as getting a laptop for us for the quiz and crossword finals. You know its Ramjas… A laptop might sound like a big thing there!
More about how the event took off and a review of it from the organizer’s eyes in the next post, till then… adios! FIITJEE Packages stay untouched since forever! For now, a few downloads for you people… Too impatient to add in answers to that. Just work it out till then. The answer keys should be up in the next post.
- DX 07 Quiz Archive (Slides + Prelims)
- DX 07 Crossword Archive (Finals + Prelims)
- CodeX Presentation (PPS Slideshow)
- and… Wallpapers!
Feedback would be appreciated, it wasn’t easy making all that stuff up. 
Dynamix 07 Official Wallpapers…
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under ArtWorx, General
With Dynamix 07, the event many of you readers might be attending coming closer by the minute, here you have the official wallpapers for download. These just might set you in the right mood for the event. We have two different wallpapers, the first one was designed by Uma, and the other by a rookie at Digital Imaging, Me.
The aspect ratio is 4:3. Downloads available in 2 sizes…
The next wallpaper has several attributes you must look at. Firstly, it was designed completely on Gimp, the open source image editor. Secondly, its a wide-screen wallpaper, with the aspect ratio of 16:10.
This one is also available in 2 sizes.
Anyway, do download these wallpapers and feedback would be appreciated. Hope to see all you people at DX ‘07.
