@ Austin City Limits (ACL) 2006

If there's one thing for which I would say 'Been there, Done that' about Austin, that is ACL most definitely. I've never had the opportunity in my life so far to see 130 bands play at 7 different stages for 3 consecutive days! I've seen a lot of live music in the likes of Bryan Adams, etc. back in India, but those were all one band-one stage-one evening type of concerts. My experience at ACL last year went far beyond description.
Click to enlarge any of these photos for a closer view...

Some of my favorites at ACL 2006 (not in order of preference)

Haan..here's rest of the gang too...

DAY-1

Cloudy huh? Not a soul moved even when it rained....

1. John Mayer (man, he was so amazing)

2. Van Morrison (although he was performing in parallel with John Mayer at a different stage, I must admit both the stages were filled with its own followers)

3. Los Lonely Boys (Always wish I could hear more of them)






DAY-2

That's Amy and me...guess that's the start of the second day...

1. Nada Surf
2. The Secret Machines (these were the ones that started my day there)
3. String Cheese Incident
4. The Raconteurs
5. Massive Attack (and what a way to end the day! Phew!)


DAY-3 (favorite day for me, and for most I would guess)

1. Matt Costa (I thought he was pleasant)
2. The New Pornographers (How many rock bands have a female lead? I don't know the answer but this one does, and they were awesome together! Metal mania!)
3. Damian Marley (missed some reggae?)
4. Matisyahu (This guy has his own charm when it comes to live performances)
5. Jack Ingram
6. Ween (I missed these guys, as they were in parallel with Matisyahu, but Charles said they were pretty cool that day)


Yeah, Dustin and I are kind of getting tired, but Charles looks all excited still, as we wait for the last two bands of the festival!! And they are.....




7. The Flaming Lips (The BEST on-stage performance I've ever seen, at ACL 2006 and ever - They know live performance, and got the crowd involved so much. Everyone just loved 'em.)



Click to enlarge - when you see a colorful stage as this, you don't have to go too far to guess who that is, it has to be the Flaming Lips!









8. Tom Petty (you bet! - What a conclusion he gave to the whole festival on a rainy Sunday! - He played all my favorites including Mary Jane, Refugee and Life is a Highway ofcourse... And he goes down as my favorite at ACL 2006. He didn't have to try too many things as the Flaming Lips, it's just his vocal chord and guitar, that's enuf!) - Here's the big guy himself -


Exciting, right? Don't miss it if you're here at Austin during September, 2007.

Photos from our Republic Day celebrations

We had our Jan 26th Repubic Day celebrations, as part of the Indian Graduate Business Association (IGBA) here at McCombs, UT. I have a few photos to share.

That's Jaison, Ravin, Wes and me, from your R to L.
Don't miss the flag behind! That was the purpose...Miss the plates in front, that wasn't...





Olamide (alias Lamy) discusses camera defects, ...little aware that Jaison knows only banking.

Btw, Jaison's our representative IB guy. And watch, Vivek contributes from the kitchen.











What's a Republic Day without a cake! Well, actually, don't know the significance of a cake here, but I'd go anywhere for one!

That's Priyanka, our incoming IGBA President (batch of '08) doing the honors, and Vivek our outgoing President (batch of '07 as I am) acknowledging. Damn, the Presidents ate it all too..! Sheila tries to get a pic, oh, and she's not smiling eeeeeeeeee for once...Colgate's goin' to sue her...wonder what went wrong with her camera now...just kidding...take it easy...

There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those who know they're in the photo, those who don't....hard to differentiate though...:)







And finally, everybody realizes it's Republic Day and we got to be together - with Mukund negotiating the center stage...as usual...






Change in tone. Here are a few more pictures from Republic Day celebrations from India, Hyderabad, at a school for the under-privileged children. 'SAVE India', as you might already know, is fighting for the rights of poor children in the weaker sections of the society, and educating them to take them to the next mile in their life.









Deepak, who co-founded SAVE along with me and my friends Mukesh and Partha, and who is among the best people I've ever met until today, did the honors as the chief guest at the school. I got the privilege once a couple of years back and trust me, it was once in a lifetime experience... Click here to know more about SAVE.

UT, truly International....

Late November last year, we had our International Cultural Night at UT that happens every year. Japan, China, Nigeria, India, Peru, Mexico and Brazil were not the only countries that participated. Overall, it was a grand success, not becuase India championed the trophy out at the end of the day, but because of the energy, excitement and commitment that people carried in preparation for the day.

Here are a few photos to show what it looked like that day. Sadly I had to miss most of it due to other prior commitments.

This is the Indian stage- well decorated, tasty food, colorful wear and a Nigerian visitor.


Pretty Brazilian girls in action...( I think this was Brazil performing, hmm...)












The traditional Indian Barathanatiyam in its complete excellence...reminds me of my sis...







Oh yeah! Here's Kevin Mastriano enjoying some food. I'm sure even he doesn't know which country's he's tasting...there was so much food all over the place, I heard...!









We took the shield home, nevertheless, each and everyone there was a winner. It was a great day!

Texas beat OU, yet again!

No Vince Young this time, freshman QB, Colt McCoy did the trick. UT beat arch-rivals OU yet again!


Thanks to Lee, for this pic.

Upcoming - Ready to Commercialize conference at UT

Ready to Commercialize 2006, the fourth annual UT Austin conference on technology commercialization is all set to take stage on Oct 12th. It will feature inventor presentations, up-to-the-minute discussions on industry trends and expert advice on how to deliver university based technology to the world. Presentations and panel discussions will feature executives and experts from Google, IBM, Microsoft, Corning, Chevron Technology Ventures and the like, along with other University of Texas representatives.

For more information on the conference, click here

Why did I come to UT? The secret revealed...

I've been asked this question at almost all the interviews I've attended so far after getting to this school. No matter what I've answered them, no matter what there was on my SOP or B-school essays, here's the ultimate truth....the first and most important thing that attracted me towards UT...a striking coincidence! .... or is it?

Check out the longhorn cheer symbol...















There's Bush too, when he visited Texas...


















So, what's it got to do with me? even before I got here? Here you go!


If you don't get it, visit one of my previous posts, here

NOTE: This is serious stuff, no kiddin' !

Study looks at 9/11 student response

A landmark study by a UT Austin College of Education professor aims to find evidence of a “Generation 9/11,” the result of significant shifts in college students’ attitudes since the attack by terrorists on America on Sept. 11, 2001, and the effect this might have on future politics, economics, and social policy.


In the wake of 9/11, students at The University of Texas at Austin, and around the nation, sought comfort in candlelight vigils, memorial ceremonies and forums where the tragedy was discussed.

Dr. Patricia Somers in intrigued by the question - "if you were in high school or college when radical Islamic terrorists attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, are you Generation 9/11?" and decided to go to the source for some answers - To read more about the survey's findings, click here

The Buckeyes spoil our party

So, it became obvious that our longhorn freshman quarterback Colt McKoy was no match for hero Vince Young. Unfortunately, I got to see OSU show us who the No.1 was ("this year"!), when the Buckeyes beat the Longhorns last Saturday. Trust me, it was not a pretty sight at Austin after that. Like many others, I didn't even want to head downtown after the game, as we expected the place to be crowded with OSU fans.

However, the tailgates happened in their usual craze. The pre-game crowd was stupefying, as you can see in some of the photos we took there. For those lesser mortals non-Longhorns, this is how Austin looks prior to every single game at UT.







Yes, we bleed orange!!








The Business school has its own tailgate too, usually the biggest one to party! For this game in particular, I believe there were people standing in line for 2-3 days continuously for reserving tailgate locations. And here's the B-school's...


Rohit, I, Charles and Abhishek - Yes, this was still much before we lost the game, that's why the cheers!



Rohit caught a few nice snaps of the pre-game, enjoy!










Ball in action Drunken horns! Hahaha!


If this was how our 'spoilt' party looked like, juz imagine how it would have been had we stepped over the #1s. Nevertheless, it's not over. You'll see us roar back for the OU weekend!

2nd Sem MBA - Highlights

Just managed to find some time to update you on my academic experience during my 2nd semester. Just like the first one, this was a great learning process too.

(1) Strategic Management: This (probably along with the Financial Accounting course that I did during 1st semester) is the best business course I've taken so far. This was an entirely case-based course where we discussed a case study from almost an entirely different industry every class. Some of these cases were pretty old, from 90's and 80's but they were chosen with a reason. The class was divided into three phases:
(a) You know the business you are in, how do you manage the corporate strategy?
(b) How do you manage your corporate portfolio of products? Which businesses you should be in, and which you should get rid of and when?
(c) Given the business you are going to be in, and the strategy you've decided to follow, how do you implement this strategy across the organization?

We learnt how a CEO should act and lead with the example of Lou Gerstner, the CEO of American Express a few years back, who brough about a sea-change in the organization by turning and motivating every employee to become an entrepreneur and innovator. At the same time, we also learnt about the common mistakes CEO make in crunch situations and how one should not act to turn the company around, with the example of Jim Bartlett, a newly hired CEO of Cleveland Twist Drill who failed to please his shareholders and also his employees, and was thrown away after a few years of further failures. What made this class a success and so interesting was the approach taken by our highly experienced Prof. James Fredrickson and how he directed the class discussions. It was really exciting to see people with vast experiences in highly diversified industries and multifarious backgrounds second and contradict each other in a professional manner all through this course - what a learning experience!

(2) Advanced Corporate Finance: This was an extension to the Finance 101 class in the 1st semester, and is one of the pre-requisites for the upcoming Finance courses. With visiting professor, Prof. Matthew Clayton, we learnt about option-pricing theories and how financial options (like Microsoft's call and put options) are priced and how they create value for the holder. We also dealt with real strategic options that arise from the ability to alter a project midcourse or enter into new projects as a result of some investments. We then moved to review capital budgeting and valuation methods that we learnt in the 101 course, and delved further into how taxes play an important role in the decisions on an organization's capital structure. Perhaps the most interesting part of this course was bankruptcy financing, which includes the direct (legal fees, etc) and indirect costs (loss of customers and suppliers) that a company may incur if it runs into Chapters 7 or 11 bankruptcy. This most often results in debtholder-equityholder conflicts and we saw how, in such situations, equityholders choose to pass-up even +NPV projects because the debtholders take most of the benefits, which is the classical debt-overhang or under-investment problem. Further, asset subsitution scenarios where equityholders takeup lower NPV projects, sometimes leads to credit raitoning where a firm falls into a position where it is unable to borrow at "any" rate. We closed the course by touching a little on how convertibles and warrants are different from normal bonds and options respectively and studied about how M&A deals are made, and what are the financial advantages and disadvantages of mergers and acquisitions.

(3) Marketing management: This is the core marketing course, probably the only marketing course that I will be electing to take. It was a good introductory course, but just that my interests vary. Prof. Kapil Jain did a good job in walking us through the marketing fudamentals, the commonly used 4P's and 5C's that constitute most marketing frameworks. He used a lot of his own frameworks too about pricing and effective marketing communication strategies. This was a case-based class too, though not completely. We analyzed around 6 cases through the course, very interesting ones like how SkiSailer should position its new product their R&D architect and come up with and what were the strengths and weaknesses of their marketing strategy. Another interesting case was what market and customer segments should KONE target its new Monospace elevator at. The second half of the course was mostly spent on a Marketplace simulation. We worked in teams and competed against other teams on a complete simulation in taking a product to market in 8 quarters, which involved pricing, positioning, supply chain operations and production capacity handling, advertising and launching sales promotions and authoring the optimal number of sales offices and sales personnel. This simulation also required us to work on developing business plans to show how the product and the company sees itself in the quarters to come.

(4) Strategy for High-Technology Industries: This was a case based course too, but all the cases were very recent and well chosen from high-tech companies and industries. We explored different industries like nanotech, bio-energy, semiconductors and some of the companies we discussed were Matsushita, Dell, Xerox PARC, and Apple of course. The course was also complemented by a well-organized and stimulating speaker series. Prof. Tim Ruefli and Dr. Steve Finnerty (VP - Dell, who co-authored this course) used their industry expertise and contacts to bring in executive speakers from a high-tech firm like National Instruments, I2 or Motion Computing or local Austin technology startups like Axalto and Austin Energy (believe me, there are tons of them mostly started by UT graduates). In teams, we also got the opportunity to work as live consultants with Austin startups. I consulted with Evolutionary Technology International (ETI), a data integration startup at Austin, to develop a startegy for them to allocate and use the $6M VC funding they received and devise a plan to double their revenues to $20M in 2 years.

(5) Consulting Practicum: I dropped a course to gain some practical work experience, so underwent a consulting practicum organized by Capgemini Consulting. We had Mr. Chris Rediker and Mr. Tim Teuscher from Capgemini come to UT and train us on the best consulting practices and how to work with clients. During the course, I worked with SBC Knowledge Ventures, which later became AT&T Knowledge Ventures (after SBC acquired AT&T and decided to rebrand globally as AT&T) at Austin. Our team analyzed their processes and identified key metrics that helped determine their performance based on their annual revenues and profits or number of deals that they cut based on their intellectual properties (IP), including AT&T's patents, softwares, trademarks and copyrights and other know-how. We developed two models for AT&T KV to track and improve their performance, and presented the same to their top level management including their CEO at the end of the practicum. Some of the other practicum projects were from HP, Shell Oil, GE Medical, TempleInland and a few others.


In addition to the coursework, I had the opportunity to dine with Frank Torgus, the CIO of Shell Oil, and on another occasion, with Pramodh Singh, the Director of Technology Innovation at P&G, and with the CTO from one of famous casinos in Vegas, and many others of the like. These are in addition to the 'official' "Think and Drink" activities that happen every week for the B-school students at Downtown Austin. Also, as part of the UT Speaker Series, we had the like of Jeff Immelt (CEO, GE) , Rick Wagoner (CEO, GM) and Michael Dell address us with their inspiring thoughts on globalization and business strategies. Another important activity that kept us occupied this semster was the internship search. More on that later...

HOOK 'EM: At Charlie's party - Austin, TX

Charles, Alex, Amy and I

HOOK 'EM: Houston, we have a problem...

These are the famous words of Jim Lovell, the astronaut who spearheaded the Apollo-13 spacecraft mission to an exciting adventure to the moon. We know that it eventually ended in a 'successfull failure'. But Jim Lovell and Gene Kranz (who was controlling the re-entry of the Apollo 13 back to earth from the Houston Mission Control Center) are best known for their leadership qualities.



At the NASA entrance


-Mementos from the space missions
-Plaques erected by the astronauts after successful return from their missions
- Rohit and I, in front of the real mission control system!!
- A NASA representative, demonstrating a few launches



- people standing in line for the Tram Tour around the NASA center.

HOOK' EM: Its all in Texas - GM vs Toyota

Toyota's new plant at San Antonio plans to stab GM

HOOK' EM: At Sanjay's party

At Sanjay's party (he's not there in the photo though) that happened sometime in early November last year, with my other B-school friends -
Read from left - Vivek, Shiv, Subodh, Anupam and Yours Truly.

HOOK' EM: My favorite Texan T-shirts

And there's another one I saw, but couldn't find an image - It reads:
"You all can go to hell, I'm going to Texas"