Shiva's post on MSEC Alumni meet and Alumni Association

This post was something that i have wanted to write for a long long time.... at last here it is. This contains various queries that i get everyday from our college mates and some general questions in FAQ form. So lets get on with the FAQ's about alumni meet.

Q) Do we need to pay any money towards Alumni meet/association?

A) No. Nope. Nahi. illa. here is a list of No in another 520 languages :P absolutely not needed. Even i was apprehensive when i went for the first meeting but it has been categorically conveyed to the management that none of the alumnus will contribute any money towards the college or towards Lions/Leo club. You might contribute to the Alumni scholarship fund if you are interested and yeah you don't have to pay for the dinner for the Feb 12th alumni meet (Seriously one guy asked me this and he also said that he will not come for the meet if they ask money for dinner :D ). Our caution deposit of Rs.5000 was taken towards the Alumni fund and the college will take care of all these expenses.

Q) I heard that some of you are meeting in college regarding the Alumni meet/association. I did not get invite from anyone so i didn't attend any of the meetings.

 A) I am very sorry. We have been trying to reach out to everyone. But it is really difficult to contact  everyone who has passed out of MSEC. We have been regularly posting the meeting dates in this blog and in the Facebook group. We are in the process of collecting the latest email address from each class SPOC and so you will be intimated about each and every meet soon.

Q) How many meets have been held so far?

A) Two

Q) Who all attended the meets?

A) First meeting on 4th December 2010 - Totally 12 attended this meeting - Vijay Venkatesh (ECE2007), Kaushik (CSE2006), Rajesh kumar (ECE2005), Aadit Vaidyanathan (EEE2007), VijayElumalai (CSE2006), Praveen KJVS (ECE2006),Ananth (IT2007), Raghavendran (IT2007), Murali Krishna (CSE2007),Vinoth (ECE2007), Bharath (2009), Venkataraman(CSE2007)

Second meeting on 18th December 2010 - Totally 12 attended this meeting - Vijay Venkatesh (ECE2007), Kaushik (CSE2006) Rajesh kumar(ECE2005), VijayElumalai(CSE2006), Naresh (IT2007), Kesavan (IT 2007), Ajay Bharathi (ECE2007),Anand Babu (EEE2007), Srilatha (IT2007), Pallavi (CSE2007), Rama Rajendran (CSE2007), Raja Shekar (EEE2008), Meera Sundar (CSE 2007)

Q) Who are all the SPOCS for the various batches?

A) Check out this table for more answers:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ajf4cnqzxVs5dEFVcDRSN1lhUURUTXpNZWV1MVVQLUE&hl=en&single=true&gid=0&output=html

Q) What do the SPOCS do?

A) They will act as an interface. SPOCS will convey the important decisions that were made during the meets and will also gather information which is required for the successful organization of the event.

Example: We are planning to make a video for the alumni video based out of the photographs taken during our college time. So each SPOC will help the video team by gathering photographs from that particular class and will provide it to the video team.  

Q) When is the next meet?

A) January 8th at 5pm in MSEC conference hall.

Q) The most important question of all. Why an Alumni Association in the first place?

A) Let me list down the reasons

• Every college has it. No, seriously from Harvard to IIM to IIT, every college has an alumni association :P
• Amazing opportunity to network with everyone who has studied in our college.
• Chance to guide/mentor our juniors still in college.
• Share a special bond with our alma mater. 
• A chance to help our juniors who are innovative and creative by offering help for their projects.
• To provide career guidance for the Juniors
• To Organize guest lectures and workshops with the Alumni
• Provide Domain knowledge/Industry knowledge to juniors.
• To help needy students through Alumni scholarships ( a separate bank account will be created for the Alumni Association Scholarships).
  
• As a final point i want to reiterate that the association will not involve any of the administrative work of the college.

Q) So what is the structure of the Alumni Association?

A) Princi had a small chat with us and said she wanted our association to follow something like IIT, Anna univ association which has a President, Secretary and all... But my personal view is to have a board of members with no hierarchy which will lead to the smooth functioning of the association. I think its better to decide about the structure and the functioning of the association when we all meet for the Grand Alumni Meet on February 12th.

Q) So what is planned for the Alumni Day?

A) During the meets that we had the overall consensus was not to have meaningless skits and dance programs by the juniors like what we have had all these years. Its just a waste of time and most importantly the college juniors create such a chaos during dinner and so we have decided to handle not to invite juniors to participate in the alumni reunion meet.

The rough agenda goes like this:
4:00 - 5:00 PM - High Tea and Informal Chit-Chat :D
5:00 - 5:45 PM - Speech from the management + Alumni Site Launch + Speech about Alumni Association.
5:45 - 7:15 PM - Each batch will give a short presentation about their alumni.*
7:15 - 7:30 PM - Alumni Video
7:30 - 7:45 PM - Speech by Raman Sir
7:45 PM onwards - Dinner

 *The individual batch presentation might be clubbed into a single presentation for 15 to 30 minutes. Apart from that if anyone else is interested to perform on that day do let us know and we can accommodate that accordingly.

Q) Why are you wasting your time on all these?

 A) Because its exciting to be a part of all these. But frankly speaking there is too much to do and its getting extremely difficult to work on it with a small team actively contributing.
 Moreover there are lot of interested people who are not in Chennai and only a handful of Msecians are in Chennai who take part in the meets and work towards the alumni meet. If you are in Chennai and if you are interested please do attend the alumni meetings. It will take maximum one hour and mostly we will have only one meeting every month. As of now we are meeting very frequently to plan and work for the grand reunion in Feb.

Q) No i am not interested in anything related to MSEC or the Alumni Association. Why should i waste my precious time for these?

A) You have already wasted 6 minutes and 37 seconds by reading this blog. Please don't waste your precious time by ever visiting this site again. Thanks :)

Q) I am interested to help and be a part of the Alumni Association. What should i do?


A) Thanks a lot. Please try to come to coll for the Jan 8th meeting.

If you have any other queries please send a mail to msecalumni@gmail.com and if you want to abuse me for the above post please send a mail to shivf1@gmail.com

Adios,
Shiva (IT2007)