Launching the new India EStore

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Japa

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Merchandise

Thinking about what’s happening at Pilani campus for Oasis? Wondering what t-shirts are being sold on Goa campus this October? Curious to wear the Hyderabad campus’ festive merchandise? You don’t have to just think, wonder or be curious anymore! BITSAA is delighted to announce the re-launch of its India e-store for the alumni. This time we partnered with GoUntucked to make a wide range of merchandise available to our Indian junta. All you need to do is visit http://www.bitsaa.org/?page=eStoreIndia

Going forward we will be updating the e-store on a regular basis, with new designs from various events from all the Indian campuses. We’ll also bring you regular news on design competitions. Winning designs from these competitions will be up on the e-store accompanied with the suitable merchandise for sale. So here’s an open invitation to all BITSians to visit our new e-store and check out our latest designs! We’ll appreciate your valuable feedback on how much you like the merchandise, how pleased you are with buying from the new Indian e-store, how we could improve and enhance the store to make your overall experience as rich as possible.

eConnections – looking back and looking ahead

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Sukanya Vijayakumar

Most of us remember the times at Pilani when the IPC was our worship destination; the place you go to connect to the world, proud to use that ubiquitous BITS email address on that black hole of a unix screen. Unix had a very speedy and easy interface to use, geeks would claim. The email system called pine was similarly simple – you could ‘d’ for delete, ‘b’ for bounce and ‘n’ to read next emails. And then on ‘prithvi’, you could secretly ‘finger’ people and ‘talk’ or ‘write’ them. Oh, and you got to browse the www by ‘lynx’ing, then imagining where text would go and what sequence they would be in. All this if you found a spot in the 300-computer IPC. There was the beloved S9, of course, where you could pay days in advance to secure 30 min slots to check your gmail, print apps to MS & PhD programs, download journals and papers for your psenti-sem project or simply to savor the need for an electronic mouse.

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What does your Old Boy Network do?

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Sukanya Vijayakumar

This week, the BITSAA Leadership had yet another opportunity to celebrate the success of some of BITSAA International’s flagship programs.

: Rajiv Ranjan Singh

Prof Rajiv Singh teaches Embedded Systems Design and other CS/EEE courses and is a doctoral candidate at BITS. He had recently been invited to George Washington University to attend the Intelligent Transport Systems Conference held by IEEE in Washington, D.C. The prestigious conference promised great visibility not just for Prof Singh’s work, but also BITS, Pilani, which is resetting its focus on research.

Prof Singh was confident of availing UGC funding through the Institute, a grant of Rs 48,000. But the conference registration fees of $650 and estimated air fare of Rs 70,000 was steep. Prof Singh was also waiting to hear back from other organizations, such as Microsoft Research India Tarvel Grant, DST, CSIR and INSA for additional funding.

Mayank Mathur (’06, E&I), who has been in touch with Prof Singh, found out that the high costs of travel was threatening Prof Singh attendance at the conference. Mayank, himself a BITSAA Leader, swiftly rallied others to evaluate how Mr Singh could be helped. BITSAA runs several programs to help improve alumni student and faculty access to resources. Two of them – BITSAA Miles and BITSAA Credit Card – seemed apt applications in this case. Continue reading →

Celebrating 10 Years of BITSAA

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Chandy

Pilani. September 12^th, 2001

It was our first month at BITS. A time when we were all up to attend the 8 am Common Hours. And no, not just-in-time to attend class. We were up in time for a morning shower, a proper breakfast and a leisurely walk to FD-II. The wiser ones knew this as common fresher behavior that lasted all the way up to the First Test Series. On this particular Wednesday morning, the front page of The Hindu screamed at us with pictures of two of the highest buildings in the world engulfed in smoke.

Vamsikrishna Pendyala

The event changed many lives around the world, in many ways. It was a while before we on campus got to know about Vamsikrishna Pendyala (’88), on board American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into one of the twin towers. This tragedy of a life that came to an untimely end marked the start of a series of events that would transform every BITSian’s life. Continue reading →

The people behind the People

Posted on August 27, 2011 by PRD

Ever since its inception, BITSAA has grown to be the rallying point for BITSians across the globe who want to keep in touch with batchmates, give back to the BITSian community and in general, stay connected with the happenings back at the Alma Mater. The BITSian spirit is what makes BITSAA what it is today, one of the strongest and most active alumni networks on the planet.