MastishK

Anyone wanna have Chatpate Snakes??

2011-01-18T13:08:00.000+05:30

Seen at the Food Court of the Indian Pavilion of Global Village in Dubai ...

Chatpate Snakes ????

I lost my appetite ...

We are back

2005-07-30T00:05:00.000+05:30

Its been long since I last posted...So whats happening in mastishk?????A lots actually.....all the game coordinators have completed their conceptualisation ....training has been given to the junior team.....and the 'M' word that I hate Marketing......the team of saadhu,mandar and hemi are burning the midnight oil to get the necessary moolah and numbers...the junior team...well it is a good mix of ppl who r born and brought up in IT and ppl for whom shutting down the computer means switching off the main switch.....but one thing is common between all 33(that's the team strength) of us..........the burning PASSION to make mastishk a stupendous success.....the gears have shifted...the adrenalin is pumpling.....the butterflies have taken their place in our stomachs...Mastishk 2005 here we come

Aswin

Mastishk '05......The start of a journey

2005-02-27T20:17:00.000+05:30

Well....when Aswin sent the invite to join the blog......I was whiling away my time listen to some good old Hindi film music.......And finding the invite in my mailbox, thought let me try my hand at this....before I go and find out, who has done the assignments, we need to submit tomorrow :)

I'm Jagandeep alias Jagan as my friends call me, the Creative Coordinator for Mastishk -05 and also the brains behind "Venture into Capitalism" (watch out for what it is:))).......As far as Mastishk-05 is concerned.......we have an envious task at hand; Mastishk-04 was a huge success and we plan to go one better in '05........The blog may have been dormant for a little while but the team wasn't and the ECs and the Marketing Team and the GCs (Game Coordinators) have all been working to create something which we and the Management community at NITIE can be proud of.

I've spent quite some time on this and its better I find out someone now......so that I'm able to submit the assignments tomorrow. Before I leave, I promise that I'll be back pretty regulalrly till M'05, with the anecdotes, stories and also some status updates on where we are heading.....

Hoping to see your comments and ideas for Mastishk'05.

The end and the beginning

2005-02-27T12:17:00.000+05:30

It's a lazy sunday afternoon when I sit down to write the first blog of my life. Who am I? What am I doing here. To know more read on.
I am Aswin known as GAS to all my friends not because I give too much of global gyan(really??) but because of my initials(G.ASwin). So what is it that made me write this blog. I was a part of an event which transgressed all expectations and became such a huge success which even we didn't imagine was possible when it all began. Yes I am talking about Mastishk. What a journey it was.....from the moment Nikhil gave the presentation abt the online games event then called POT to the final courier which we posted to the prize winners. many sleepless nights, hours and hours of sitting in front of the computer, discussing(shld I say fighting) abt all the logical and technical issues that cropped up, that super slog which we did after the end of the first day... man those are the unforgettable moments of my NITIE life till now.That was the first time i was a part of something so succesful and acclaimed by one and all from the students in IIMA to a BSchool which has jus finished its first year. When we saw a college giving advertisements by saying one of their students won a prize in Mastishk that too in my game I felt like.....yaar I cant describe that feeling in words.
So what has happened to mastishk now? Why this blog has suddenly stopped functioning....Hmmm we were in a sort of Hibernation mode putting things in place for the next year's event to be a bigger and better one than the maiden attempt. Suraj,Anirban and yours truly have been selected as the event coordinators of Mastishk 2005 and the unenvious job of making it a success lies on our whole team of 15 members and the junior batch which will come in during the month of june.....So what has happened till now in Mastishk 2005? Wait for the next blog

Mastishk 2004 over ... what Next ??

2004-10-30T15:01:00.000+05:30

hi friendzz .....

its shoOOonya here .... back on the blog ....

well .... MastishK 2004 is over ...
the main event lasted 15 days from Sep. 27th to Oct. 11th.

Then came Prerana ... the Flagship event of PGDIM, NITIE
and we all got busy with that ....

well ... MastishK 2004 ... the event is over but not the work ... even after the event got over ... the site had to be given a finalised look ... the prizes had to be announced immediately ....

Now all that is done .... the only task remaining is the dispatching of prizes .... work in progress on that too .... hope to get that done in the next few days .... dussehra ... weekend ... other institute competitions ... have kept us busy ... and so the p[rocessing slowed down ... i hope the processing is done b4 diwali or else a lot more delay will be introduced ....

Looking back at MastishK 2004 . . . It has been a very satisfying experience ....
For the debut year .... the figures are very overwhelming ....

17,500 Hits on the MastishK website
2.500 Registrations
Paricipation from B schools across the country ....
.... some from international schools too .....
Participation from over 25 countries
Participants from more than 50 Corporate offices

So now what next .... well ... pretty obvious .. MastishK 2005 ....

you might feel it is too early to start .... but the matter is not so simple ...

We (senior batch) are there in the campus for another 3/4 months only ...

I will have to ensure that there is complete Knowledge Transfer about MastishK before we leave campus . . . or else they will have to re-invent the wheel and start from scratch ...

Maybe somewhere in the very near future ... as soon as the prizes are dispatched and we can relax a bit ... after a short break ... i will have to start putting MastishK 2005 Team in place .... will have to pass on the Torch to new bearers ....

Right now ... I am trying to figure out how will I be going about this Knowledge Transfer and Knowledge Management thing .... hope to do the best of it ....

Hey guys .... you have any ideas .... let me know ....
send your feedback / sugestions / ideas regarding the above KT/KM to hemantkumarjain@gmail.com

keep smiling and have a nice day .....

. . . shoOOonya . . .

Everything that has a beginning has an end!

2004-10-14T05:48:00.000+05:30

Well Friends ..
Its 6.00 Am, 14th October and I have just dispatched the Mastishk Conclusion mail to all participants. . . .MastishK 2004 is formally over. So many sleepless nights (including today’s) and so many tireless days – the effort has been worth it. Lots and lots of appreciation, feedback and lots of interaction; MastishK has become a phenomenon in the very first year of its inception.
I would like to post some learning that I have got from Mastishk:
First and foremost – nothing succeeds like success.
Second – attitude matters; aptitude is but a corollary
Third – If you feel you are correct, never shy away from trying; the world will follow you
Fourth – When you develop an offering, always try to understand how useful it will be for its users
Fifth (which is also our motto) – If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

These are pretty general learnings; well I will post more in the coming days about a lot more details and their effects. For now its Adieu

..and it goes on & on...

2004-10-07T11:34:00.000+05:30

Blog….me ?? Nahhhhhhhhh…………

Hey ppl,
Me neither a member of mastishk team nor Prerana, but I came on this blog just to congratulate the entire team behind this awesome conceptualization of the idea of
“India's First Ever Fully and Truly Online B School Event of Management Games !"…..
as shoonya puts it….. So true!!
I’ve always been a regular visitor of all the blogs written in my campus and so I pretty well know the kind of emotional and physical turmoil this team has underwent. Well I don’t think I’ve contributed anything for “MASTISHK” ever. But everytime I visit the site I feel proud of being associated with it, one way or other.
One of the profs, today, in a class pointed out the fact that we, humans can’t be happy about someone else’s achievements. I fully agree that its difficult. But then when I realize the magnitude of hard work my batch mates, along with juniors, have invested into this, I cant feel anything but happy for them.
I am sure these are the kinda people who achieve success in life, because to be successful, I believe, u need 3D’s in urself……. dreams , determination and dedication …
And “mastishk” holds it all for them.
Good work guys !!!
Keep it up.
Me as a NITIEAN congratulate u all !!!

Snehal…

MastishK - India's First !!

2004-10-05T21:37:00.000+05:30

hi friendzz ....
its shoOOonya again ....

Well . . . I m back on the MastishK Team Blog after a long long time ....

In the past several days ... a lot of things have happened ...exams started ... site launched .... exams over .... games launched ....last minute hurdles and technology problems ..... regualr updation of games and pages .... keeping track of all the games deadlines and data flow. Announcing results for the daily quiz , crossword and Khoj. Launching a new strip of Arbit chaoudhury everyday. Updating the Downloads section of MastishK Informalzz with a minimum of 3 new wallpapers daily. whew !! so many and many more ..... i m not even aware of the total number of things we are handling simultaneously.

We have one big helluva team.
Everyone is contributing their bit ... and the 'bit' is more than 100% of their capacity.

I would like to share with you the most significant achievement of MastishK ; being
India's First Ever Fully and Truly Online B School Event of Management Games !

The thing was that earlier competitions and events were organised and the communication of the same was through posters and website. These events were dominantly On-the-grounds events or simply off-line (Case Studies etc.). In case of elimination rounds , entries were submitted by email.

Then came a time when some events tried to go online but they accepted most of the entries by email/post etc. thus losing out on the 'online' part of the game.

Our vision was to launch India's First Truly Online Event.

No off-line submission of entries. No emails.
All Games on the websites. All contests on the website.
The games to be played online and entries to be submitted in forms on the website itself.

This vision of going completely Online met with a lot of sceptism from both inside and outside the institute.

We were told ... No one is doing it.
We said .... Thats why we will be the first one to do it. Isn't that great !

We were told ... It cannot be done so it is not being done by the Big B's
We said .... It was now our turn to become a big B and do it so that others cud do it too.

We were told ... You will fail. The servers will fail. the games will fail.
We said ... We are ready for the worst .. Now ... Lets concentrate on the Best ....

We were told ... You don't have technical expertise.
We said ... we have a great teacher called "Google"

We were told ... You will need a good enough website for the Event.
We said ... Just Good Enough !! Sorry ... we won't deliver anything less than "Excellent" !

We were told ... You are wasting your time ...
We said .... Time will tell ...

Today ... October 5th 2004 ....
almost a month after the MastishK homepage was launched
almost 10 days after the MastishK Event actually began ....

The MastishK Hit Counters have crossed 12,000 Hits
Averaging about 1000 hits per day ...
MastishK site being viewed in 24+ Countries
Corporate Participants from over 50 corporates.

Truly speaking ....
We had great expectation from MastishK and even imagined some unimaginable things about it. But the Reality has surpassed all expectations & imaginations.

For a first timer ... the response is both great and overwhelming.
I would like to thank ALL the visitors and participants of MastishK.
Your response is the greaatest appreciation for the entire Team MastishK.

Thank You !!

You can send in your comments at
prerana.mastishk@nitie.edu and/or mastishk@gmail.com

XP: Extreme programming

2004-09-23T22:54:00.000+05:30

MastishK was born (as I have said in earlier posts) out of the network culture in NITIE… there was another thing that drove us, the want to implement our knowledge … whether it’s the quizzers or the case study solvers – out here all use technology to apply their newly learnt concepts ….
A similar attempt was made by one of our friends Jatin Grover. He was reading “The Goal” where he discovered the ‘matchstick game’ [hey btw matchstick is so similar to MastishK ;)]. So he set out create a simulation of this game. The simulation is still evolving. When I talked to Jatin about including it in MastishK, he said that this thing will take time to evolve, probably next year it could become a game ;))
So I thought why not take the readers of this blog (i.e. participants of MastishK) through the saga of evolution? After all this is how most of our games were evolved – slowly, steadily – as prototypes first and final versions later. So folks, here is the link

http://jatingrover.co.nr/

enjoy and participate in the evolution of this simulation
all suggestions for this simulation can be sent to prerana.mastishk@nitie.edu, mastishk@gmail.com, jatin.im10@nitie.edu

cya

What MastishK gave Me !!

2004-09-12T21:23:00.000+05:30

Hi friendzz ....

its shoOOonya again . . . . . .

Hope you guys are having fun visiting the MastishK website and Blog .....

Ashi's assurance ki "saath mein padhenge aur pass ho jaayenge" made me realise two things ....
1. I realised that exams are just round the corner from 20th September ... (I'm not sure how much will i study and how am i going to detach myself ) from MastishK.
2. I haven't touched books for the entire module ... Not attended lectures properly (PPMA types = Physically Present Mentally Absent)
3. I have a set of friends who are going to take care of me . . .
(hey ... counting mistake ... I had said two things ....)

MastishK has given me 6 very good friends .... Nikhil, Milind, Shubham, Payal, Ashita and Medda (he is yet to write in this blog) ! We are an inseparable group of 7 individuals now (I call it G7) ....

With the Module end phenomena of assignments / reports / projects submissions on the head on one side AND the launch of MastishK website on the other . . . i would have surely gone crazy under the pressure. It is this group of solid seven that is holding me together.

Daily we have lunch / snacks / dinner together and go for a walk in and around our NITIE Campus. The lush greenery , the NITIE pond and the Mumbai Monsoon ... walking up and down the roadway ... we share a few laughs and live life in tranquility. Once we are back to the hostel rooms, we are refreshed, re-energized ; ready to scratch the head ... the MastishK over the different aspects of MastishK.

I had always thought that I am not good at multi-tasking .... but being the co-pilot seat of Mastishk .. I have relaised that i am handling soooo many things simultaneously. What an experience.

Infact ... I will take this opportunity to thank first the whole of G7 to keep me going. In their absence, I would have not been able to do sooo much. Its their presence around me that has motivated me to keep going. Of course, there are others who influence me and motivate me, but the G7 is like a support system for me.

Coming back to MastishK ... The past few days have been hectic like hell .... Me and Nikhil were literally the only ones making pages and keeping them ready for uploading. The others were busy with other kind of work.

But it was fun ... sleepless nights ... 3 am Night mess rounds ... I did not go to the lectures for almost a week ... whew ....

Now that the Quiz and Crossword is launched, its another challenge to keep things going on. Technology cannot be always trusted. And after the ones who handle technology are humans. And To err is human ... to mess up things requires technology. hehehehehe.

The Counters at the MastishK Onlines games site as well as this Blog are ringing and continuously increasing in leaps and bounds. The MastishK Site counter crossed 900 in just two days (Saturday - Sunday) and the Blog caught more than 222 .

It's actually performing much better than i expected considering that many campuses are somewhat empty with exams getting over and students visiting their homes. I guess I had somewhat under-estimated MastishK and its potential to spread like a virus. Let me quote Agent Smith from the MATRIX (sounds like MastishK ;-) [This one is Nikhil's favourite ... so i will dedicate this to him ....]

"I'd like to share a revelation I had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we, are the cure." Agent Smith in "The Matrix"

Chalo .. ciao ... will connect with you later. Got a test and a series of presentations.

You keep smiling and have a nice day .....

Keep visiting MastishK ... Blog and Gaming Site !!

... shoOOonya ...

"Mast"- "Ishk" n project management

2004-09-10T14:31:00.000+05:30

Hi everybody

ashii is back again with another bLOG for the LOG ;-)

Now since everybody in the mastishk team is involved almost 24*7 we are discussing nothing but Mastishk all the time.

We guys have been given an assignment in project management to prepare a report on any project and map it on Microsft software. Our im10 mastishk team minus medda( payal, tappu, shoonya, bill gates, shubham & myself) are in the same group and the project which we chose had to be MastishK only...

While preparing the assignment we are learning the nuances of project management... We actually realized that how much time, effort and resources and gone into MastishK.. It gave us a new way of looking at MastishK....

So Shoooonya boss don't worry..... Our project management assignment will be the best(hopefully the only one LIVE) and will get you thru this subject.. Baaki doosre subjects main we all will study together and crack the exams.. :-)

btw we have started referring MastishK as "MAST"- "ISHK" since we have fallen in love with it....

Finally its Up and Running ... on a new address !!

2004-09-07T20:05:00.000+05:30

hi friendz ...

It's shoOOonya again ... back after a long long time .... almost 10 days ...

The last 10 days have been very very hectic ... the junior teams were busy and so i and nikhil were left with very few 'technical' hands to work on the website. We had to launch the second phase of MastishK .. open up the registrations and launch the Informalzz section along with India's First ever B School Comic character "Arbit Choudhury" !

We hardly slept ... attending the minimum reqd lectures and coming back to our terminals and designing pages ... awake till 5 or 6 am in the morning and then going to sleep for 2/3 hours .... nikhil being the more technical one was looking into pure coding things ... me being the non-technical one looking after th look adn feel of the website ... but we cud not work in isolation ...

I used to refer to him to give feedback on the look and he used to get me on the flow adn logic of the functioning of things ..... and we used to have long discussions .... arguments ... compromises ... convincing .. ad yes ... agreeing to disagree ... but it was ll so much fun ...

we used to fight over text size , fonts , colours , placements of objects on the screen , naming of secdtio0ns ... adn then also on how a person would folw thro the website ... how the pages would function behind the consoles ....

since the informalzz section was to be launched first ... Shubham was alos involved in these discussions .... we used to discuss every small n big thing ... how wud the visitors enzoy the sections ... how to present Arbit Choudhury ... how to make it easier fo the user to view the latest content ... since the informalzz section is going to be very very dynamic ... with content changing every 24 hours ....

After all those arguments adn difference of opinions ... shubham came across a thought / quote while we were searching quotes for the manageMints section .... after reading that we had a very very good laugh .... it went like this .....

"When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary."

Well ... all i wud add to it is that a single musical instrument is good ... but the entire orchestra produces the best results .... Team Work is nothing but the churning out the best ideas from a group and deleting the ones which are just 'good' or 'good enough' .....

this reminds me of yet another quote ... one which we accepted as a Motto for Team MastisK

"It's a funny thing about life;
If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."

well ... today the MastishK site is up .... final testing is in progress .... soon a mail will go to the world informing and inviting them to experience one of the best online experiences ... an experience of a life time ....

In the past few days ... one thing i realised was that i was suddenly finding an enormous amount of energy within me to continue to work ... this came as a shockinhg realization b'coz i am basically a lazy person ... i realised that the source of my energy was nothing but the pure passion within me to make mastishK a very BiiiiG success .... pure unadulterated passion ...

I noticed the same around me ... on the entire MastishK team ... tirelessly working on making things perfect ... the passion to make MastishK Biig was common to all ... it was driving all ... as nikhil had once remarked ... if all organisations cud be motivated by such passion ... what a corporate powerhouse that organisation could become.

Coming back to myself ... i have noticed this big change in me ... i am working most of my time ... no time wasting ... thinking all the time ... my MastishK is working 24 X 7 on Mastishk ....

At the same time... the flip side of the whole thing ... i havent touched books in this entire module ... exams are just 12 days away and i dont know a thing about anything ... i dont know how m i going to sail or drown thro the exams .... but the satisfaction of seeing MastishK up on the net is something which is right now blocking my mind ... i m still not realising the gravity of the situation ... i will need to study ...

and yes ... how cud i miss this ... we got a new URL for mastishk .... its ...

http://mastishk.nitie.net/

the old url will also remain active ...[

http://prerana-nitie.com/mastishk

have a look ... register yourself .... see the informalzz section ... enZoy ...
and yes ... we are waiting for your feedback ... do write in ...

keep smiling and have a nice day ....

---> Hemantkumar 'shoOOonya' Jain

Mobile Man-Eater

2004-09-03T23:03:00.000+05:30

Hey guys

This is ashita and my friends call me ashii..To start with what mastishk has done to our lives it has made my Monitor mobile.. Now you can imagine the power of Mastishk(its all in your mind)..Reminds me of MATRIX...

Neways the reason behind this is that milind's monitor has gone for repairs so we have to manage with one monitor. Since guys are not allowed in our rooms i have to take my monitor to his room whenever we want to work together. Interesting part is that the day we started working together for POT my monitor stopped working. After a few days i tinkered with mine and it worked but the same day his MAN-EATER(That's what we have named the display device after the leopard incidents on campus) conked off. Since that day we are working on the Mobile Man-EAter.

Now how my Mastishk was involed in the Mastishk(erstwhile POT). We had just started with our 5th module after our summers when one day milind asked me that if i could help him in the Quantitative modelling of an online game which he was doing for POT. I readily agreed thinking that it would just take a day or two. But once we started conceptualizing the game i was more than involved. We were discussing the game in the class, in the room ,on Ip,everywhere. The game changed every minute we deliberated on it. Any topic which was being covered in any subject we somehow related to our game. It was becoming complicated. There were times where we thought that nothing was going ahead. But every lull sparked a new idea.

Milind and I complemented each other in the sense that he was focused more on marketing side whereas i looked more into numbers and the supply chain side. I was good at bulleting and he at Story writing. All this was a perfect recipe for our game.

But since both of us were non IT people, our junior team from IM11 helped us out. One of the funny incidents which i remember was that one day i was explaining the concept to our juniors. I explained everything with full passion when milind reminded me that i was using HINGLISH and one of our juniors did not understand Hindi at all ;-)

Another day Nikhil called a meeting at 1 am at night. We had to give him a write up and i asked him that i would submit the next day. He did not agree. I asked him again but still he did not budge. I was pissed off and told him that he would get the write up within an hour. Till then he had also mellowed down and asked me to submit the next day. But i ensured that i completed the write up that night night only although i had to remain awake till 4 am.

More trivia from ashii soon

ciao

The Marathi Maanus....

2004-09-03T01:59:00.000+05:30

namaskar mandali...

for those not conversant in marathi, it was "hullo folks"!
u guessed it right by now...am a POTter who is marathi by origins and mother tongue, very much like our mastishk originator, Nikhil.

to begin with lemme tell u what is POT...mentioned above and previously by Payal too. POT is simply Prerana Online Team, in short ofcourse. It was a name we had to keep before we landed up with Mastishk. Basically coined for ease of usage in mentioning the reason for us burning oil midnight and much beyond.

Now to my little story of HOW I CAME TO BE A POTter...

Some time way back in March, Nikhil approached me with the idea of an online game. i said, "hey am a hathhoda chhap mechie...and not any comp. guy like u....and wud prefer to be away from the same" and he was like "u don't have to code...just think of a game" and i said, "oh that shud be cool....will do it". and then that was it!! i was on the team. Nikhil told me a few days later that i was teamed up with Anish and we were to make some sort of a strategy game.

Now lazy and not quite so convinced as we were, neither Anish or me bothered to do much. also the idea of Prerana Online seemed dwindling, and we were getting geared up for the endterm and the approaching summers. the endterms came n went, and most of us packed off to our destinations, mine being chennai with castrol. i was told by nikhil, on my way out of mumbai that i was to now team up with shooOOoonya (is that the correct no. of 'o's in ur name, hemant??) since he was to be posted in hosur!! i said chalo dekh lenge....

cut to june last week. came back to campus on 22nd to welcome n make junior batch feel completely at home, away from home. me n hemant were here for that job, and guess we organized the best induction ever in pgdim's short 10 year history! anyways, nikhil was back and so was my guilt of not doing anything for the past 3 months....he's after my life again, i thought....

just then, (and i take the liberty of introducing my pardner....) ashita came to my mind as a person who cud help me with the mind-boggling numerics required to run the game.....YA, I COMMITTED MYSELF TO IT AGAIN. july 15th was our first deadline which we managed to beat (black n blue). and it went on n on....and on n off too! and the game is done now. we were then allotted a set of brilliant youngsters by nikhil, each one a master in the world of html, javascript, blah, blah....in which our game was to take shape.

thats about all i want to write about my game for now....more shud come up from ashita shortly....i expect her to be more serious and quantitative in her post ;)

till then,
parat bhetu....
(meaning fir milenge)

p.s: just noticed....i haven't put my name anywhere....not that it matters.....phir bhi....
its milind m. tapaswi (tappu)

The naming ceremony

2004-08-31T11:56:00.000+05:30

Hi there,
After the coordinators, co–coordinators, creative consultants and conceptualizers, this comes from the Mastishk team. Me and Medda been working on “Media Moguls” - the Media Plan game. The game is all about advertising acumen and managing resources.
Many sleepless nights went by as we tried to capture the right mélange to get what the elusive customer might want. Will need a blog solely dedicated to talk about the project.
But I’ll keep my introductory blog short….
will just tell a bit of my experiences..
Of all the nights we have spent working on Mastishk, the one that I particularly remember is the one of “naming ceremony”. Yes, it’s true, the naming. It was a baby and like all babies, we were deciding what to call him. Nikhil and shoooonya brainstormed and came up with a long list of “techie” and some not-so-techie names for the baby.
But we all had different views. Somehow, none of the names could gain majority of votes. It seemed that the names were covering one aspect and touching another but not quite spanning the whole idea and feel of “The Baby”.
Then after dinner the routine walk was over shadowed with serious thought apart from some casual remarks which drew the occasional laugh but not much substance. We all were defending the names that we had picked from the list. Ultimately we came down to suggesting radical names.
As usual from the punster’s mouth came “Mastishk - The Encephalon” he he..
Cool type and the whole idea is about the brain and the connections so kinda clicked.
And this is how the transition from POTters to Mastishk happened
will soon follow up with more stories..
till then ciao
Payal.

The new blood

2004-08-30T03:23:00.000+05:30

After our summer internship when we rejoined the campus, the new batch had already joined. We as the MastishK team were definitely short of manpower and I had hopes from the next batch to join us. So under the aegis of TechnoMatrix, we introduced this event to the whole PGDIM-XI batch, in the very first forum meeting.
At the end of this meeting I asked for volunteers who would like to join us in this endeavor. I heard later from one of my friends that I spoke passionately in that meeting; however my first feeling after the meeting was that we would hardly have more than 5 or 6 volunteers – I had earlier hoped for 10.
To my surprise, about 17 volunteers came out on that very day. My room was full of people as I explained the concept to each group in detail. The next day we had more, and more volunteers flowed in during the week as news about the event spread by word of mouth. The number finally stabilized around 21. (But we had people joining us as late as 26th august i.e. after the launch of the event). The numbers grew so large that I used excel sheets to map their competencies and interests, so that I could divide them among different game development teams.
With so many hands to work on the games the quality, complexity and expanse of the games and the event itself expanded manifold. The earlier (senior) team members could now devote time to conceptualizing better ideas for the games while the new-comers took up operational roles. This in fact helped me and Hemant to conceptualize more aspects of the event, we moved full speed astern for developing the infromalzz section - the idea of the Comic Strip (as mentioned by Shubham in his last post) came up. We also conceptualized 'Khoj' -the serch game. . .
From a team of 5 we have grown to a massive size of 30+ today. We have, as I sometimes feel, ceased to remain a team and become an organization – and I have even faced issues like attrition and worker motivation, relationship management in the course of the past 3-4 months. Getting work done, setting targets, measuring work, making and following schedules, macro planning, brainstorming etc have become a part of the way we work on the event. I should acknowledge that I have come to appreciate my Management studies better in the light of all aspects that I have discovered during the past few months of working on Mastishk.
My Mastishk has grown with Mastishk (the event) in its ability to comprehend the world.

The Early Quest . . .

2004-08-28T04:37:00.000+05:30

hi friendz ...

its shoOOonya again ...

Its 4:00 am early morning Aug 28th. I and Shubham have just finished a long discussion on ARC … our Cartoon Strip which we conceptualised specially for MastishK. The first ever cartoon strip to be launched by a B School in India (probably world too). We have been experimenting with the idea of sketching scanning colouring the cartoon strip and its characters. Finally we have reached some conclusion. I guess I will write only this much. ARC is designated as Shubham's "Baby" now; so he will do the talking abt it. Nikhil has sent an invite to him too and he will also post as soon as he gets time off his busy 'cartooning' schedule. In the mean while ... Let me get nostalgic and tell you abt my early days with Nikhil in Prerana Online (now MastishK) . . .

In those early days when the Idea of Prerana Online was just that … an Idea … a concept … ; we had several meetings and envisioned a whole game plan for the online event. We first chalked out a rough draft of what the different games would be with the basic concept. Then we started building the team of our batch mates and then tried to explain them the concept.

Some understood, some were skeptical, some left, some simply encouraged.
Finally, some joined. !!!

It was a tough time! Getting together a team of 7/8 batch mates to take responsibility of the games. This whole exercise took almost 15-20 days. We had the exams approaching in April first week. It was already March first weekend.

We prepared a one page document about the event mentioning the names of the events as MahaBaharat, Media Moguls, Logic-ticks, Googlistics, Crossword and Quiz. As of today (Aug 2004), only the ‘Media Moguls’ name survives, all the rest were hit by winds of change. They are now known by better names. Anyway, in those days no practical work was done on the games, except naming them and forming 2 member teams for each game.

The exams came and went away. And then we were out for summers. We knew that the gap of 2 to 3 months from April to June might diffuse the enthusiasm we had created about the event. So me and Nikhil continuously kept in touch regarding the same , shooting mails with new-new ideas every now and then. During the summers, the concept of an Informal section was born. We kept shooting mails to refine the idea of informals during the summers. That is one of the reasons why the informal section is a mini site in itself with a lot of interaction.

When the summers came to an end, we came back to the institute. I was busy with the Induction Program for the junior batch and Nikhil came late into the campus. We started discussing Prerana Online once again from July 2nd. (Innovators and Entrepreuners as we are, we also discussed a serious theatre concept and very soon launched "shoOOonya talkies" the complete theatre club of NITIE !) ....

hmmm ... i guess i need to sleep now .... mornig 9 O Clock lecture is a sure pain in the neck .. infact the whole body ... still praying for a clone ... (hey bhagwaan ... judwaa bhi chalega ... i have completed more than 20 years of my life and so now i m eligible to meet a long lost judwaa bhai according to bollywood standards ....) ...

I better sleep ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz ............... zzzzzzzzzz ...........

Enter shoOOonya ....

2004-08-27T08:12:00.000+05:30

hi friends,

This is Hemantkumar 'shoOOonya' Jain ! The other Event Coordinator for MastishK (need not add ... Nikhil is the first One ;-)

Yesterday during the class, Nikhil told me about the MatishK Team Blog. Well ... we have been writing blogs since quite some time but this ‘team blog’ concept was new to me. He said he had sent an invite to me to join. I said fine … will have a look but we need to do something abt the homepage today itself. Now or Never.

The rest of the day and the whole night too ... we spent figuring out how to optimize the home page ... the beautiful homepage with the silvered background and 'the MastishK' in the center and silver 3D balls with section names rotating around it. After trying a lot of things, we decided to do away with the individual balls and replace them by a single ball with no text. It worked. We even came up with a textual work around to display shadow effect in the text. Early morning 3 am we finished it. Uploaded the page. Heaved a sigh of relief and fell to the bed like logs. here ... have a sneak preview of the home page .... (you can visit the MastishK site by clicking on the pic below or by clicking on the MastishK link in side bar.)

I managed to wake up by 7:30 with no more sleep in my eyes (strange) .. so i decided to make some productive use of time by posting on this blog. So here i m early morning 7:45 .. August 27th, 2004, posting my first post on the MastishK Team blog. Let me tell you how I got into this dream project called MastishK ....

I had known Nikhil (better known as Bill G@te$ or Baba in our NITIE Campus ... I am known as shoOOonya) since the last one year but we had never worked together or were in a kind of common friends circle. It was on Febreuary 13, 2004 when someone asked us to come up with some sort of a skit/play for the Valentine Day celebration the next day. We came up with a script and managed to create something entertaining in matter of 3 hours inspite of V Day constrainsts and attrition ;-).

That was the first time when i personally interacted and got connected to both Nikhil and Shubham. (Hey Nikhil ... Shubham has been with us since the very beginning too ... i guess he is the next most eligible member to receive the invite to blog here ;- )

After the V Day interaction we found many of our interests matching and also some of our principles in life. It was fun knowing him. And then after some days ... Nikhil sent me the first ever official document on the online event. At that time, it was called Prerana Online. I was pretty much excited by his vision of having Online Games and joined in with full support for it. We have been together since then. Inseparable & Unshakeable.

well ... i guess that’s all I would like to put in this first post ... its already 8:10 and i need to get ready for the 9:00 O clock lecture. (I wish i had a clone who would do all this lecture attending thing for me .... )

Bye for now ... c ya soon .... ;-)

The humble beginnings

2004-08-26T17:15:00.000+05:30

We experimented all day today trying to figure out the optimised page-design. Checked out a lot of effects etc . . but now its too late and we decided to give it a break because we cannot afford to miss the class tommorow . . I think we are almost near the solution . . its just a matter of time .. am sure we can complete the page optimisation tommorow . . . back again . . . let me continue the story where I left . . the beginnings of the team MastishK . .

I sent the document (whose excerpt I quoted in the previous post) to many people in the batch, and finally I could create a team of few (5 to be precise) people who were to start the work. They were Hemant, Shubham, Milind, Payal and Kartik - apart from me of course.
I bet none of us realized that we could end up with such a large event. To start with I had in mind crude ideas for a strategy and media game and Kartik came up with an idea of a logistics game. We trudged slowly – very slowly. I did get a lot of assurances form friends outside this team too that they would help as and when need arises. But the challenge was to create that need, to create a basic structure for the event that would lay the foundation for the rest of the development to follow.
It was hard time, especially because all of us were soon to get busy with our summer internships. We trudged slowly, and when I started for my summer internship in April, we had hardly come any far from where we started. But it never occurred to me that we would not succeed, I somehow had a lot of faith in future – that was pretty eccentric of me I believe.

Well it seems that this blog is getting very personal, which I didn’t intend it to. It’s high time I bring in newer characters in the story and actually hand over the baton to them.
The beginning of the Mastishk team was also a beginning of my relationship with Hemant. His enthusiasm is infectious (so is mine probably ;D). Slowly as we started working he became as passionate about the idea as me; no wonder he today is coordinating the event with me. I plan to introduce this blog to him tomorrow morning, hope the next post here will be by him.

The Twilight Times

2004-08-25T16:10:00.000+05:30

Day 3 . . . Had a discussion with Amit about converting the homepage to flash from HTML . . it is a good option , but might reduce the customisability of it and more so wont significantly lessen the page loading time . . We have decided that we wil give it our best shot . . trying to optimise the page for faster loading (without sacrificing quality) . . . so tomoorow (or rather today) is a going to be long day . . So let me start with narration of the second part of the Mastishk story . .

Soon after Prerana team aproached me with the idea, we started discussions as to how we should go about conducting the event. I was not at all convinced that online games can be simply case studies whose answers are submitted by email. I mean, c’mon just because you are using email doesn’t mean that you call the event online. An online event should be transient, dynamic and fast. The scenarios should change everyday and if possible even in hours….. just like real life. After all the net was an agent of speedy change.
But all this tall talk was not becoming convincing. Somewhere even I realized that the Prerana team was finding it hard to convince themselves of the possibility of the online event. Somehow, the support of the batch was also dwindling. At one point of time it seemed as if I was the only person who believed that such and event could be successful. Nevertheless, I got moral support from many quarters; many of my batch mates encouraged me. But almost everyone was skeptical. The Prerana team also, in spite of their enthusiasm was slowly loosing interest in this venture.
Then on 20th February 2004, I finally asked the Prerana team to allow me to join them in a meeting and discuss a final yes/no for the event. I had a hard time convincing them about the possibility of the event. They also laid bare the problems they foresaw. Finally, I put out a clear proposal – I take up the complete responsibility of this event without any continuous day-to-day support from Prerana team as such.
To their credit, Prerana team agreed to this proposal. As I look back today, I would say it was a courageous decision. Appended below are the first few lines of the document that I made immediately after the meeting . . . the first ever document for Mastishk

“ I had a talk with Prerana team today (20/2/2004), and got go-ahead for Online games. But there are 3 conditions
a. I should come up with a team as soon as possible, especially excluding people who are already working in relation to Prerana.
b. I should come up ideas of games ASAP
c. I should demonstrate that they are possible”

The cyber-seed

2004-08-24T16:30:00.000+05:30

Day 2 . . . received lots of applause from the batch for the work on the homepage . . some foreign responses have also come (ie other B-schools ;) . . the teams are are enthused . . . but I am worried about the high loading time the page is taking . . Since morning I have been coordinating with teams, solving their queires, managing their schedules; I havent found time to look into this problem . . will do it tommorow . . but I did not start this post to narrate today's activities . . . this post is the first part of the story behind Mastishk . . here you go . . . .

NITIE hostels are customarily marked with high network activity levels. Starting from studies to time pass – the whole array of campus activities are done over the network; so much so that we feel lost if there has been no message on IP messenger in a span of an hour. It was quite natural for the cyber-seed of Mastishk to sprout in such conditions.
In November last year when the intranet-server was upgraded, all forums were also asked to revamp their space. As the coordinator of TechnoMatrix, I was to revamp its space. I put all our previous presentations and other reference stuff; and then I thought why not put some fun stuff on the space? So I found some JavaScript based fun games and put them on the server. In other quarters of the hostel our quiz-buffs started quizzing on the network using a LAN messaging tool. We were already discussing our assignments and notes on the IP messenger – such IP-meetings often substituted physical meetings that we did earlier.
Amongst all this I (and as I was to realize later, many others too) came up with an idea of an online management fest and I had briefly put the idea in front of the class. Soon the Prerana team, looking for avenues to expand the scope of our flagship event approached me with the idea to host an online event under the aegis of Prerana.

The beginning . . . . . .

2004-08-23T18:21:00.000+05:30

I can see that the outside is lighting up dimly and the first rays of the sun will soon break out. While the dawn in the physical world is yet to break . . . . Mastishk has dawned upon the cyber-world just about 30 minutes ago as of 23rd August 2004, 0550 hours.

"MastishK" the online management fest on which we have been working since the past 6 months is finally seeing the 'light of the day'. For me personally the launch of Mastishk signifies a great feat in itself!
The event has a story of a kind behind it and lot more anecdotes are still being generated as we continue working on the project. A concept which started miniscule has grown into a full event. We have grown from a 5 member team to a large team of 30 plus. each one of us has something to narrate in respect to the event . . .
So I thought why not start up a team-blog for MastishK. So here it is . . .

...the minds behind MastishK