New Year's Celebrations at TDC

After a successful Christmas Party, our spirits were high for another party. New Year was a perfect opportunity, and the first friday of 2009 was a nice excuse to kick start our Friday Fun events. We organized a Turncoat competition and asked the participants to speak both for and against a given topic.

Abhijeet agreed to start the event and was given the topic, "Casual Wear should be allowed in Office" and stated that Casual wear brings a refreshing ambiance, reduces protocols, increases productivity and also the colorful atmosphere has a positive effect on subconscious human mind. Switching to the cons, he brought to attention that Formal wear helps in imbibing the sense of equality and conveys professionalism. It also posts a decent picture in front of our clients.

Vidhya got a very interesting topic, "24 hrs News channels - Boon or Bane" and said its a boon because we can get minute to minute updates of our world but a bane because showing news whole day will be boring and a wastage of money and energy.

Rohan got a contemporary topic of whether to choose IT or not, if entering the job market today. He said that joining other industries will give a chance to explore more creativity and possibly better working hours, whereas IT industry is still India's hub and we can contribute to it.

Premjith got a topic, which even US congress is debating, "Should the Auto Industry be bailed out". He pointed out that saving Auto industry is necessary to save millions of jobs and also to save the already faltering economy. They also need a bailout to keep their eco-friendly researches going on. On the other hand, the industry had earned billions since many years and did not make good use of it. Also, failure to curb this tendency may set a bad example for others.

I, Ankush, was asked to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working in a very large organization and I highlighted the advantages being the brand name, wider options in choosing projects, technologies, businesses and even location to work; while the disadvantages being not a fast career growth, difficult to reach top management and not many options to choose, while leaving the company.

There were also some remarkable discussions on Work-from-home policy, Life without Google.com, and many such interesting topics. Ravikumar Vavilla and Jayaraman Keerthi, who also were the judges for the event, must have brainstormed a lot to find such interesting and yet debatable topics. The event culminated with the distribution of prizes where Abhijeet bagged a well deserved first prize, Nipun - 2nd Prize, Premjith, Vidhya and myself the consolation prizes.

Hence, we celebrated the new year, not only having fun, but also pushing ourselves to think from all the perspectives for a point. Even the audience enjoyed the discussion and learned a lot from it.

Hoping, we'll be able to remember the lessons learnt from this event whole year, and also wishing everyone a very happy 2009, I close.