The place was Shanku’s Water Park at Mehsana and we were going to have lot of fun. It is still the best water park of the state and weather on the day was truly on our side.

Everyone was supposed to gather at 7 am in the morning at Digicorp house and slowly but steadily everyone was there.

Instead of going into the office we went away from the office with loud cheers and noises in 2 buses.

One bus was filled up with the all the unmarried boys and the other one had couples and girls. Well the boys thought they had all the fun but mind well we too had lot of it during the journey.

The best thing about the journey was, its duration. It took us only one and half hour to reach the place and that too went by very fast as we played dumb charades in the bus. (I know girls won’t believe this but boys’ team actually won )

And guess what, we reached early at the place and the breakfast was not ready! Great. Anyways it did not take long and we fed our hungry bellies with Tea/Coffee, Sandwiches and Masala Dosa.

After that we played some team building games. Payal and I had selected these games. Couple of games we also played in our last team building activities held at Digicorp House in 2008.

Description of those games are as follow:

1) Do you know me? (15 to 25 mins)
– make groups of 12 people
- make them tightly coupled with each other
- ask them to introduce themselves and
- A proud moment in your work or personal life,
- Something most people do not know about you,
- Interviewer’s choice of any question.

• What is your favourite season?
• What colour are your eyes?
• What’s your shoe size?
• What type of shoes are your wearing?
• What’s your favourite colour
• What’s your star sign?
• Which leg do you put into your pants first?
• Which eye do you prefer to wink with?
• Which side of the bed (left or right) do you get out of in the morning?

2) Do you know what I mean? (20 mins)
Have a volunteer hold a sheet you have created with different shapes drawn on it. With their back to the group, the volunteer describes the shapes on the paper; everyone else tries to draw the same design based on only the verbal instruction of the volunteer.

How it helps: The group’s pictures will not be exactly the same as the original and some will be really far off. Everyone will be reminded of the importance of communication.

The new ones were:

3) Pictionary

This is a famous board game which is kind of dumb charades but instead of actions you have to explain the word by drawing on a piece of paper. We had to tweak the game little bit for our environment but it was a great fun.

After the games everyone was free to explore the place. Boys played cricket and few of us played memory game. We have to accept that girls have better memory as both the finalists were girls!

After lunch almost every one went in for a dive and enjoyed the water park at fullest. Some were resistant to dive in initially but due to peer pressure they all had to jump in. You see peer pressure works everywhere not only at workplaces!

I guess following photographs shows it all.

But now comes the best part of the day. The “Tad Mad Show”. Slightly altered version of Ad Mad Show we had last time in 2008 and before that in our picnic to Tirupathi Natural Park.

Instead of a commercial, Digicorpians had to make “Trailers” or “Promos” of the movie name given to them.

We managed to came up with some crazy movie names based on real movie names.

1) Tera Pati Sirf Mera Hai (from Mera Pati Sirf Mera Hai! , I know its a pathetic movie and title but its best for such games)

2) Arjun, the Cheetah (from our favorite Indra, the Tiger!)

3) My name is Thakrey (ok you know this one)

4) 3 Junglees (You know this one too…one of the best movies in recent times)

5) Chaa (Any guesses…….!!!!!!!! well from our own Mr Big B’s “Paa”. I know this is hilarious and this was Kuntal’s idea)

6) Bogus Prem ki Bakwaas Kahani (The name says it all! I guess the actual movie name should have been this)

7) Ram Gopal Verma ki Raakh (After RGV ki Aag only Raakh was left of the distributors )

8 ) Bekaar Raaj (from Sarkaar Raaj)

Each team was given one movie and they had to make a “Trailer” of the movie. The minimum time was 2 minutes and maximum time was 4 minutes.

After almost one hour of preparation everyone was ready and most of them came with brilliant ideas and some of the best performances by individuals.

Event started in the evening and it was about to get dark to videos have not come proper but I guess if you listen to them with full volume you should be able to enjoy them.

Tera Pati Sirf Mera Hai (The Runners Up team)

My Name is Thakrey

Bogus Prem Ki Bakwaas Kahani

Arjun The Cheetah

Bekaar Raaj

Chaa

3 Junglees (The Winners!!)

Finally the day arrived when we had to show our talents with the colors!

Rangoli competition 2009 was by far one of the most happening event Digicorp has done so far!

Definition of Rangoli From Wikipedia:

Rangoli is one of the most popular art forms in India. It is a form of sandpainting decoration that uses finely ground white powder and colours, and is used commonly outside homes in India.

The term rangoli is derived from words rang (colour) and aavalli (‘coloured creepers’ or ‘row of colours’).

We wanted to have some fun before the Diwali holidays and we did just that in this competition. There were 16 teams consisting of 4-5 persons and almost all teams having one female participant who leads the team.

The theme given for Rangoli was “Shades of Life” and few teams came up with some brilliant stuff. They were given choice of six colors which they were supposed to use in Rangoli.

The tempo started building up from the morning and people started looking at Google for the solution (as expected!). Many came up with the original design also and congratulations to all of them.

To cut the long story short check out some of the Rangolis people came up with.

Here is the slideshow of all the photographs with description in some of them. Don’t forget to check them out.

Do let us know your comments about this wonderful event. Can’t wait to have it next year.

Navratri is the longest dance festival in the world which is celebrated every year in India.

From wikipedia:

“The word Navaratri literally means nine nights in Sanskrit; Nava meaning Nine and Ratri meaning nights. During these nine nights and ten days, nine forms of Shakti/Devi are worshipped.”

We are proud of all the Digicorpians who participated with great enthusiasm in this event and made it a success. I was thrilled to see the energy levels amongst the dancers. On this day they proved that they can not only code, design or test but they can dance also.

This Saturday we saw “The Pink Panther II” and believe me it was hilarious. (Especially when you see it for the second time )

Movie of the month at Digicorp - The Pink Panther II

Steve Martin is one gem of an actor and Aishwarya Rai is one beautiful actress.

My favorite scene of the movie:

Andy Garica: Vicenzo Roccara Squarcialupi Brancaleone (introducing himself by saying his full name in Italian)
Steve Martin (at the next second): and your name?

ha ha ha….

It was a pleasant end of the month because of the movie and I am already thinking about the next month’s movie. This is becoming addiction for me it seems!

I hope all the Digicorpians are loving it too!

Please share your experience by leaving comments! Sharing is fun

After the comedy of “The Pink Panther” show and thrilling experience of “The Ghosts and The Darkness” this time we had “Cheaper by the Dozen“  – a super comedy starring Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt.

cheaper-by-the-dozen-(2003)

We have 2 Steve Martin movies out of 3 now! Yes I am big fan of him. (We have to see Cheaper by the Dozen – II and The Pink Panther – II now)

Everybody enjoyed the movie to the fullest and I am already looking forward to the next movie of the month. I am sure everyone agrees!

In fact we have already started getting suggestion for the next movie. One is “CRASH” and other is “Resident Evil – III”. Thanks for the suggestions Aditya and Nachiket. Keep them coming.

Movie of the month: The Ghost and The Darkness

Excellent excellent movie based on the true story of “Man-eaters of Tsavo“. Thrilling and sometimes scary also.

I hope all enjoyed this thriller after comedy of  The Pink Panther show

The site is “i.was.there” and it is an excellent site for music lovers. Check out the site and vote for it below if you think it is worth it. You can rate live music and do many more things here.

After you click on the badge above, click on “Vote Now” button to see the list of the sites in contention. Find “i.was.there” from the list (it has black logo with white text) and click on “Vote Now”.

Looking forward to your vote

The Pink Panther

As the title suggests movie was “The Pink Panther” and it was my choice by the way. Those of you who have seen the movie know how “Fuunny” it is! and those of you who have not, you should just go and watch that movie first after reading this post

Well the start of the event was equally wonderful when Nachiket took the stage and introduced “Digicorp Manifesto 2009-10″ to everyone. It provides brief idea about our vision for Digicorp for the year 2009-10. I have attached the presentation here.

After that the movie started and everyone enjoyed it from the first scene of the movie.

But the icing on the cake was “Dry Paneer Manchurian”, “Cutlet” and “Pepsi” which were sponsored by Kuntal. Basically the smart guy merged his birthday party (which was due) here. Anyways it was good to have it while watching the movie and not on the terrace.

Those of you who are jealous can choose to become even more by watching the photographs below

We are planning to make this a regular affair and have one movie show at least once a month. What say? any other ideas to make work more fun?

Rushabh Mehta is a familiar name in SQL Server community and his expertise in the domain of Business Intelligence is commendable. He is a Mentor for Solid Quality Mentors’ global Business Intelligence division, based in USA. He also holds the position of the Managing Director for Solid Quality India Pvt. Ltd. Rushabh has been vigorously working with Microsoft SQL Server platform since 1998. He has been designing and developing large-scale BI systems since 2001, including predictive-analysis systems, healthcare solutions and a multi-terabyte financial decision support system.

We had expected a huge number of people to show up at the event; however, we had made limited arrangements. We had requested the participants to register in advance to get a guaranteed seat. The session commenced with Introduction to SQL Server Energy Event. I gave introduction in my characteristic humorous style and enlivened the event atmosphere. Everybody rolled into laughter when I started introducing Rushabh using images. The introduction ended on a funny note with some of the most hilarious photographs of Rushabh. If you had attended the session you would know what I am talking about. I believe that attending a session physically is far more helpful! It’s actually the whole experience that makes an event special and memorable!

After a short introduction, Rushabh Mehta started his presentation on Navigating through a turbulent economy with Microsoft Business Intelligence, which is a very useful topic in the current economic scenario. Rushabh in his unique interactive style sprinkled with humor kept  the audience engaged throughout his presentation. In the initial minutes of his talk, he brought everybody’s attention to the global problem of recession. Then he directed his talk to the key concepts of Business Intelligence. There were so many things Rushabh covered; however, one thing that was highly appreciated was “Demo of Gemini.” After the demo was over, questions and answers started to flow and it lasted for another hour. Everybody was so curious and wanted to learn from Rushabh as much as possible within the limited timeframe. Jacob Sebastian gave the final thank you note. We distributed nearly 30 gifts (T-Shirts, Pen, Books, Hats, to name a few.) during presentation. This time all the participants received something. The very much in demand SQL Server Cheet Sheet was the most popular item at this event. You can now download it from here.

This event was not recorded and is not available online. Please keep on reading this blog and user goup website for similar events like this. We hope Rushabh visits us again very soon and gives us another outstanding session. Please read my previous article for complete profile of Rushabh and the abstract of  his session.

I had requested Rushabh to do session in my user group when we met last time in USA. Last but not the least, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Rushabh: “Thanks Rushabh for keeping your promise!”

Abhishek (Digicorp), Rushabh (SolidQ), Pinal (SQLAuthority)

Introduction by Pinal Dave

Rushabh Mehta in Action

Part Audience

MVPs discussing BI

MVP – Pinal, Rushabh, Jacob

Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)

Virat who is a project manager and Dhruval who is a very bright and enthusiastic developer of our .NET team grabbed the opportunity thrown at them.

They had to prepare a presentation in very short time but I must say they did wonderful job.

I was also part of the audience and I was enlightened to learn few details about the .NET Framework 3.5 and Silverlight. 

We thank PDPU for this opportunity and look forward to have such interactions in future. The audience was wonderful and we had fun!

Presentation is embedded here:

Photographs are as below: