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.
Times Fundamental Quiz: Now don’t ask…
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Headshot, It's My Life, Quizzing
30th of Oct, a day for which I was waiting for nearly a month finally came on the very same day! (What a dumb statement to begin a post with..!!) First, something for the uninitiated:
What is Times Fundamental..?? (For Dummies)
Times of India, as school kids might be knowing, sells its newspapers in schools belonging to various cities of India by the brand (read excuse) NIE, Newspaper In Education. So these guys invite all their subscribee schools, which includes almost all the private ones to a GRAND quizzing show hosted by Derek O’ Brien and Associates. Like every year, this year too, they held one of the largest quizzes to ever hit Delhi.
Rulez of the Game -
Pretty simple, a written round of 30 questions, with the top six teams going up the stage with Derek and the next 14 teams being certified achievers. But then, the catch is that each school could send in only one team to represent itself there. An anti-DPS initiative!
Our Team -
Me, Sambit and Sanket again, reteaming after the Columban Open. It was quite a problem to decide the team for ourselves, as we have multiple talented blokes in our quiz club. Since our team entirely consisted of CBQC-Finalists, so we dreamed of going up there on the stage, Derek recognizing us, or we telling it to the whole wide Siri Fort Auditorium that we were winners in the past!
Even the native KPS team wanted to go, but with a little bit of negotiation and understanding shown by our wonderful Principal, we finally were approved through.
The Experience: From KPS to Home…
This time however, the KPS people couldn’t actually arrange for an imported vehicle from their kind relatives, so we had resort to one of the worst pieces of automotive engineering, the auto-rickshaw. Not only that its expensive, and gives sucky fuel economy, but also is very very low on performance. Ours almost stopped at one of the fly-overs/over-bridges. To add to that, the drivers prefer running it on Kerosene at times instead of the fractionally expensive CNG, that degrades its performance even more. So even on an empty road, the auto-rickshaw is capable of getting you late to quizzes about which you can’t do šhìt!
Before I wander away too far from the topic, lemme get back to it. (another dumb statement!) We did luckily manage to reach on time and get into this massive auditorium custom built for quizzes like these. The setup simply reminded me of the Cadbury Bournvita Quiz Contest one… typical Derek O’ Brien and Associates. Well, the prelims were conducted by some golu-molu guy, which made me construct a theory on connecting the future of the quizzing career with the person’s physique.
Just like all Fundamental Prelims, and all Derek O’ Brien Quizzes, this was an astoundingly easy paper making the cut-offs for the finals really really high. There is absolutely no room for error in such quizzes, and silly mistakes and bad guessing always makes you feel like suiciding. The venue too was just perfect, the Siri Fort is furlong away from the auditorium, and most quizzers coming to the event may consider that as an ideal point to end it all. Although I had other plans, I thought, when I am destined to have a such an end, why not shift that end after losing the TCS?
The paper can be downloaded by clicking here.
Anyway, the quiz prelims were bloody easy with we getting 23 questions right out of the 30. That includes identifying Neil Nitin Mukesh, the name of the country featuring a Hindu temple, and other toughies. What it didn’t include, was the second largest state of India. We changed the answer multiple times here. We had a feud between Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh here. Just look at the map yourself, they do infact appear pretty much the same size. Finally, we chanted “Jai Maharashta” to shout a resounding “Shìt!” while the answers were announced. A similar confusion occurred between V.V.Giri and Zakir Hussain on being the oldest President of the country. Guesswork was terrible! And we finally, we didn’t even make it to the top 20 with a score 23 being the last position.
Almost every school seemed to have come there. I felt sooo embarrassed about the fact that quite a few of the people there do know me and have seen me before. Also, it feels as if someone formatted your entire hard drive of invaluable files when you watch big dreams, strongly hope to get it alive and finally lose it all! I know I have tons of quizzes to give int eh future, but still, I really wanted to go up there on stage and flaunt the fact that we are an all BQC finalist team. And it felt so dumb that an all BQC finalist team did not qualify there. Call it bad luck, call it bad decisions, and there isn’t a single bloody question in there for which we didn’t have a correct answer in mind.
Before we even came here, a KPS native intra team selection was held and they were all set to go. Just a few weeks before the quiz, we approached the Principal to allow us to go there. We told her about how we have done in quizzes in the past and how we did in quizzes at Delhi and she was quite keen on sending us. Now I feel really sorry for those KPS kids who couldn’t go. We had a heavy discussion amongst ourselves on the team composition of the quiz. (the density of quality students is exceptionally high at FIITJEE Pinnacle!) I really don’t know how many swear words swept across their mind when they saw the prelims paper and heard the story of ours tanking big time there…
Finals
Enough of ranting now. Readers, please understand that I do require someone to hear all these things. It makes me feel better after a disappointing time. I said to myself, “no WARP ‘06 attack this time buddy, just think that you are watching a BQC Episode in an IMAX theatre.”
Well that didn’t help a bit, and it terribly turned out to be the quiz of my nightmares. Bloody Ðámn easy finals. Perhaps this particular nature of DoBA (Derek O’ Brien and Associates) quizzes is what makes some people speculate that Derek is no good of a quizmaster. Anyway, good quizmaster or not, Derek is a brilliant MC. (For KPS students, MC actually means Master of Ceremonies, thats actually a commonly used term) He is one guy who can simply create interest amongst everyone, whether it is the uninterested teachers, dumb kids coming in as cheerleaders. Its an awful lot of fun to see him “Jhand-ing” someone for a crime like walking across the path in front of the stage while the quiz is going on or even prompting the answer.
Well the theme of the finals was Twenty20 Cricket and even Derek came dressed in the Indian Cricket Team gear. Although there were only a handful of questions on cricket there, the names of the rounds were all rip offs of cricket terminologies, Toss Up for example was the Agree/Disagree round. Chuck De! India soundtracks boomed across the auditorium with powerful and brilliant sounding JBL acoustics and then those songs were actually sounding good there.
Derek got the entire audience moving and he himself too was as mobile as an isolated atom in a vacuum chamber up there on stage. He jumping, dancing and extremely energetic there. (Ðámn, I sooo much wanted to be there!) He had everyone waving and clapping in the audio rounds and then the guests present there were eminent ones too… with Manpreet Kaur, one of the Miss India crown bearers. The show put up was flawless and stringently finished in time… Derek, may not be the world’s greatest quizmaster, but is an award winning MC. No one can beat him in that! And he has stayed just the same since I last saw him somewhere in the academic year of 2004-2005. Kudos to him for that!
Coming to questions, they were more of the IQ test sort of questions rather than raw GK tests. You literally had to solve puzzles on stage and make the pieces fit right. An easy thing to do to win the the coveted Fundamental tropie which came to DPS Noidea. Finally I was back home with a big sigh on the face. Disappointments? Yes. Regrets? Yes, for missing classes. Hopes? YES, for the next big event, Exun 2007.
PS- On stage, we had 4 schools from Noida and just 2 schools from Not-Noida!
Also, expect tons of rants like this one on the blog.
