Vista 2011 - as I saw it.

Vista started for me with Corporate Quiz titled “Images and words” by the quiz master, Sumeet Shetty, himself. We got our Macroeconomics quiz postponed so that we could all attend/organize this quiz. Quiz for a quiz :) Well, as always, it started off with prelimns( preliminary round). I have been so used to the word ‘Prelimns’ that I had long forgotten that it is nothing but Preliminary in short form. Thanks to MS Word, the ‘kumbh mela mein bichde hue’ types prelimns-preliminary Jodi is now united in my memory map.

Prelimns had around 25 questions, with questions related to wide variety of topics all under the sun. It started off with an easy one on Vista. It was followed by questions like, “Impossibly named heroine in one of the James Bond movie, when Bond hears it, makes him say ‘I must be dreaming’” to a question on Kannada song sounding similar to the ever-playing-same-guy-singing song on the city’s FM radio stations “Ninnindale ninnidale” of “Mungaru male” fame, the quiz had everyone go “{unmentionable}!! I knew this!!! But can’t seem to recollect it now”. “Dat thing is in edge of my tongue I say, not coming out only!!” – my south-bengaluru-bred-darshini-fed RapidX English speaking pardner. For the uninitiated, it is a loose translation of the Kannada expression “naalige tudiyallide”, meaning I seem to know it but unable to recollect it at the moment. Something to this effect - “But don’t worry saar, my tongue is ready to speak out the answer, as soon as my brain supplies the answer, I will spit it out.”

After the prelimns, we had the finals. Oh wait! No wild-card round?? Of course not, this was not some directed-TRP-influencing-SMS-sending-reality show, it was a plain-old-java-object-quiz. Six teams made it to the final and we had a thrilling contest between them. One round in particular was a visual connect round with clues on songs of Michael Jackson, which was cracked by ‘yours truly’ but didn’t get any points for that. You guessed it right, I was sitting in the audience. Hah! It was not in vain, my-high-decibel-cricket-fielder-cum-commentator partner drew quiz master’s attention and got himself an Audience prize. No team on the stage had any significant lead and it was a photo finish. The team from TCS won it by answering the last question of the quiz!! Overall it was pure fun.

Another event of Vista that I attended was Corporate Czars. Teams were asked to prepare a corporate strategy for the BIG 3 Apple, Google and Microsoft in the Smart Phone market. Lots of entries poured in for this event till the deadline. After intense analysis and evaluation, 6 teams were selected for the final. The venue was hosted at The Park Hotel. Each team presented their case in front of the Jury and the audience, post which, they were posed questions from Jury and the audience. With a youthful audience at the event, and smart phones being closer to their hearts, questions from audience generated a healthy debate about some of the plans proposed by the teams for their chosen companies. With one team suggesting that their company go ahead with a focus on the Near field communications(NFC) while another suggesting, much to the surprise of audience, that Microsoft go and buy Facebook as their strategic plan in the future. Then there was a team that focused on Apple saying that Apple should release all it’s products simultaneously all around the world. It did put out a smile on some of our faces who were not happy that India was not treated as a market at par with the west for Apple products. At the end, the Jury, after evaluating the reports and the presentations, came out with their observations. The team from IIM Shillong was the winner. With that Vista 2011 came to a close for me. I hope to be involved more actively in the next edition.