It was learning with fun at this month’s Project Meet. This event held on Wednesday, the 26th was attended by over 30 WAites which included our COO(Bipin Sir) and Management Representative(Claudian).
The event began with Rahul Bile welcoming everyone.
Report by Rahul Bile:
Rahul Bile gave a report on the ongoing projects in our company to keep everyone informed about the variety of interesting projects being developed by our company.
Presentation by Pratamesh:
Prathamesh updated everyone on the latest happenings in our industry. It was interesting to know the new features of Netbeans 6.5 and also to know that Intel had launched it latest processors(which were highly priced). The information about freely usable flash gadgets was also interesting.
Presentation by Altaf and Jijo:
I personally learnt a lot about a great new marketing product built by our company(I knew it only by name before) and to know that not only did it use a framework that was touted of on the web(Zend Framework) but also that it was built from scratch. The team accepted that learning and implementing these new technologies were quite challenging but interesting when the product was in its nascent stages.
Presentation by Anuradha:
The Zend Framework used in the marketing product was further explained by Anuradha who seemed to have lucid understanding of the framework.
Q/A Sessions:
The presenters faced the questions shot at them bravely. It was very good to see the management as well as the attendees interacting with the presenters in the Q/A Sessions. Claudian explained about the VoiceStar service. Another comment which came as a surprise to me was the implementation of ALARM in Zend Framework. Zend Framework seemed to have the benefits of maintainability and RAD due to its inbuilt libraries.
Goal Session by Milind and me:
Milind conducted a Game session which involved throwing a TT ball from two levels into a bucket. The attendees took part in the game overwhelmingly. Jiten wasn’t satisfied with his performance in his first round and tried again and got both the TT balls inside the bucket. It was later explained as to why the game was played and what it symbolized in our lives. In life you should think big and come out of your comfort zone and aim from the level which is not your comfort zone.
The game session was followed by a presentation on goals by me, explaining as to what goals are, what happens when they are achieved and what keeps one motivated to achieve their goals. The session was very well responded by the attendees who shared their views on their goals and what feeling they get when they complete it.
WAites celebrating their birthday in the month of November were given cards and refreshments were served to conclude the event.
After the event, Bipin Sir and Claudian said that the new concept met the standards of what should we followed in each Project Meet. Many reported that the Project Meet was interactive and that the presentations were well prepared. These positive comments came as a relieving cool wave to us, the Project Meet Team, who were anxious about the acceptance of this new Project Meet concept. As we enjoyed the cakes and the pizzas and saw the smiles of satisfaction on the faces of the attendees, we knew that our concept had succeeded not forgetting that now the main challenge was to continue the same performance in the months to come.
Did you know:
The Project Meet Team(and the Presenters) had prepared for this day well in advance to change the notion of the event which was considered humdrum. For this the presentations were selected and the presenters assigned were continually monitored by Kavita, Altaf, Smita. Shekar and Pramod had to face some amount of frustration to make sure that quality of the presentations were improved. To give more information on the ongoing projects, Rahul Bile and Khyati did rounds in our offices to collect details from the teams. To keep the attendees informed about the interestingly freshest developments in the IT industry, Prathamesh collected information from the web. Pradip and Rahul Jagtap looked after the arrangements for the event like the conference room environment, the seating arrangement, the refreshments and the birthday cards. Laxman and Jiten kept everyone informed about the latest developments of the event by mailing and sparking everyone and also screening and limiting the number of attendees to attend the event. Jayashree and Rahul Nayak made sure that the event was properly minuted and the presentations were saved in the Knowledge Base for future references. Milind helped us all to reflect on our goals by means of a value game. Last but not least, the presenters(Altaf, Jijo and Anuradha) cooperated with the team in modifying their presentations and for a demo on Monday amidst their work.