The 31st Annual Convocation

The countdown to the convocation next Tuesday, March 28 2006, is underway. I am quite excited at the prospect of seeing Mukesh Ambani and Sunil Mittal there - I haven't met that many billionaires you see... I did see Bill Gates at an Indian restaurant in Bellevue many years back, but that's a different story.
I have heard Sunil Mittal speak in person once before - at the 2004 Oracle World Conference in Mumbai, and I came away suitably impressed by his straight and simple thinking. In particular, one comment he made was quite telling: he said that Airtel were not in the business of running a network. That they were in the business of providing services to their customers. Network equipment were a means of doing that. Not the end. It also explained why Airtel was perhaps the first company in India to outsource the running of their network operations and capacity planning to Nokia and other equipment providers.
Anyway, I hope to take lots of photos at the convocation. And shall post them next week.


Correction: the title of the post had the word 'convocation' missepelled. Corrected that.