San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
Report on the 1996 Bay Area Alumni Picnic
Bright California sunshine, lots of pizza and a beautiful location made
for a great afternoon of fun and games at the IIT Kharagpur Alumni
picnic on September 7th. About 150 people showed up from all parts of
the San Francisco Bay area to meet their long lost friends.
A surprise news of a picnic being held in the New Jersey area seemed to wake up some alumni over here and with awseome tempo they decided to organize a picnic of their own. Anand M Das('87) promptly fired off an email saying, "How about a picnic in the bay area?" Before long a "tiger team" (if you haven't heard this term before, you are new to corporate America!) was formed - Sunil Vemula('91), Dipankar Bhattacharya('83), Joyjit Nath ('87'), Pran Kurup ('89) and Anand M Das being the most ferocious of these tigers.The team had one tigress ( Ishita Goswami '91 ), a tigress without email but more tempo than any of the males. (OK, OK, I haath tolo on that one!!) Then there were the snoozing tigers like Kanoj Sarcar ('92), Joydeep Nath ('92) and Anupam Sahai ('87). Kanoj woke up after a few insults and was like a man possessed, Anupam and Joydeep roared into action at the very end, and Robi Banerjee ('88) joined in too. It was great to see so many come together and do a great job in such a short time.
The organizational activities were all in tune with the "internet age" we live in. The organizers communicated through an email alias setup by our "Chhedis on the infobahn" KGPNET team. Ideas, fundas and counter-fundas were exchanged in an unbelievable frenzy. It took one lunch meeting and another Sunday evening beer bash to thrash out the details of who would do what. In typical coporate America style, junta followed these meetings with minutes. Efficiency was at its best, junta was excited, motivated and committed...there was no need for re- engineering, or focusing on core competencies, junta just picked up tasks and executed.
Phone calls were made to junta on the alumni roster, the local desi press was flooded with announcements, the internet was clogged with postings. So incredible was the publicity machinery, that one alumni showed up at the picnic site one week before the actual picnic!
The location at the picnic site, which was right next to the lake,
could not have been better, thanks to Dipankar and Ishita who showed up
early in the morning to occupy the spot. Junta trickled in after 12.00 pm
although it was announced to start at 11.00 am. About 40% of the 150 odd
attendees showed up at the picnic without advance notice, forcing the
"tiger team" to scurry for more food. There was plenty of beer - or
rather very few people seemed to be drinking, although those who were
drinking were making up for the others. There was plenty of enthu for
volleyball, but little enthu for cricket. Babu ('85) launched a "word"
game which was very well-received especially by the "young and the restless"
crowd.
The youngest batch spotted were from 1995, the oldest was from 1962!. With people from various generations attending, there were some really interesting conversations. Heard at the picnic - "Was Patel hall called Basti hall even during your times?".
Soon after the picnic the organizers promptly documented their fundings after an email post-mortem. Being the Silicon Valley, there was a plan to transform the funda into a book, "How to organize picnics..." However, after a few brainstorming sessions, the plan was abandoned after somebody suggested maybe it was too much of a niche... The complete funda is now available online!
More photographs from the picnic are now
available on the web.
You can also view the initial announcement.
Photographs courtesy of Lachmi Khemlani ('90).