This time it was Goa

 

Now that Amit has set the ball rolling with an account of the ghostly experiences at the Higher Ed NSM in Goa, let me also contribute my bit. Alas! All the spirits I saw, heard and experienced were the firmly earthbound ones. The trip started (for most of us) early on a Sunday morning at the Nizamuddin station. Amazing that all of us made it on time.  Even more amazing that we made it in one piece to the resort Cidade-de-Goa, considering that the journey took 26 hours and we had a hectic week of preparations and winding-up before we started. Most amazing that Ashish (Alexander) went with us instead of missing the train as expected! There were the usual energetic antaaksharis and card games to keep us occupied (our co-passengers looked really happy to see us getting off at Madgaon). Some of us had brought along books which did not leave our bags. There was a down side though. Our windows were blocked by the Airtel advertisements and we could barely see anything of the lovely countryside we passed through. To add to my misery we ended up watching a bleak and disturbing movie on the Kurdish people, set just before the war on Iraq, called Turtles Can Fly. Others were wiser and stuck to Bollywood blockbusters. Well, we reached the resort, tired, hungry and on the verge of collapse when we spied the beach and magically our spirits revived. A private beach leading up to the beautiful sea—here was luxury indeed! The general presentations took up half of the next morning—Pearson India had achieved its targets for 2008 and was all geared up for 2009. There was a sense of achievement and pride among all present in the conference hall. After lunch, we got divided into several teams for the rest of the presentations, B&E, HSS, PTG and ESM. The highlight was of course ‘Kaun Banega Salespati’, a game show conducted by the ESM team (No Amitabh Bachchan or Shah Rukh Khan here, but I am told a hit nevertheless!). Then, after two days of staying at the beach till wee hours into the morning and getting up at 6 a.m. the same day, the presentations were finally over and it was time to hit the dance floor. Oh! Before I forget, the awards for special achievements were presented to the truly deserving candidates. Everyone got up from their seats to applaud Tapan Saha for receiving the President’s award. Also, the editorial for the first time got its share of awards. To put a proper end to our trip, we went on a beach-hopping spree on the last day which ended with a lovely cruise on the Mandovi River. There were many brave and intrepid souls who went para-sailing and rode water scooters. I will leave them to tell their own tales. The staff at the resort was wonderful and gets kudos for putting up with our exuberant lot. That’s about all for now.

Someone suggested a photo-blog with appropriate captions. Seems a good idea. Interested, anyone?

 

 

Anindita

 

Experience at the Goa NSM

The day when it was announced our NSM destination will be Goa, there was flurry of ghost stories started doing rounds within the office. Most of them have already heard the ghostly experiences of the school team who toured Goa for their sales meet. The stories were very usual, one of them found suspicious object in the room, hearing of footsteps in the corridor during the night and only the most weird of all was when one found there doors and window all open when they woke up in the morning. Isn’t this enough to jolt any body to shivers? The historical Dona Paula suicide episode and her spirits still being seen on the full moon nights added thump to everyone’s imagination on how it’s going to be there in ghostly abode. Knowing all this and getting there again was anything but a sequel of horror film like I know what you did last summer – which is supposedly called I still know what you did last summer.

 

It was our Chennai Super King (I use this title because I am writing this while watching the IPL) first chance who got the honor of Ghost visiting his room and playing with his hand kerchief and finally ripping it badly using the roommate’s blades. It was the joy on the face of the guy who instead of panicking showed the coveted piece of torn kerchief to everyone who though scared but still liked to have a glimpse at it anyways. As this was not enough to leave the poor ones who were already shaken Phew! News came in that one of the new inmates of the hotel read names written on the mirror. Guys, there was a point to note the spirits were not only pranksters but knew writing.

 

On the same night I saw one of them reciting Hanuman Chalisa and shouting Jai Hanuman slogan through out the night. I and my roommate got calls from these guys to come in and stay in their rooms as they were scared of ghost who might visit them. Anyways we did not respond thinking they are doing this just for fun which wasn’t, the next day we learnt that they asked Binit to be their saviour….bravo Binit. I knew even few of the ladies followed the same trick with 06-07 of them staying together to escape the fear of ghost when they are alone. They were happy as their plan did work in favour of them and ghosts lurking inside empty rooms enjoying the benefit of night stays without being charged by the hotel.

 

Like any climax which has to be spine chilling or nerve jerking we heard the story from one of the inmates saying here packed luggage was opened by the ghost and one the dresses flew outside the room and found in the parking area and this time around it was again our Chennai folks who were the victim of the silly ghosts prank. It doesn’t end there blood stains were visible but only through camera lens, thanks to Amit K  who was there to give expert reason behind why the marks are seen only through the camera.

 

Personally, it was indeed haunting to me at times but I followed the advice of my friend I got intoxicated every night and had heavenly sleep. Overall this years the NSM was surrounded by spirits and horror stories being the topic of discussion with most of them and likely to be treated only as a gossip otherwise we would not have seen the people enjoying on beach and dancing in the party. This was my fourth NSM and the experience has always got better why not? I got my first award and also won a bottle of wine for participating in NSM theme contest. I thank for having me at the NSM and hope the fun continues….

 

Amit

 

 

Learning Online

I wanted to post this yesterday as a response to Vivek’s earlier post.

 

Closer home the Centre For Distance Engineering Education Programme (http://www.cdeep.iitb.ac.in/) , IIT Bombay offers live webcast courses for free. CDEEP also offers a value-added mode that offers additional features like video on demand, learning management system etc. Each value-added course is priced at Rs 1000.

 

What opportunities does it raise for an educational company like ours? It is probably an indicator that digital learning is in, and there are takers. The immediate results may not be too grand, but we need to keep working at it.

 

Since this concept is still in its nascent stage, it is important that we keep ourselves updated. For this purpose, I would like to introduce the Digital Learning Blog (http://pearsoned-digitallearning.blogspot.com/). If you stumble across anything that you think that we ought to know in the field of digital learning and if you have any ideas, please do drop in a few lines to gbanerjee.b.digilearning@blogspot.com. Let’s see where this takes us.

 

The next contest

It seems that it needs a prize to get you to write! Does anyone have anything to say about the few days the Higher Ed team spent in Goa?

I am running low on my stocks of wine, so maybe for this one, I will make it a dinner for two at a nice restaurant, let’s not get carried away with 5 star.

Articles which carry pictures of Vivek Govil dancing are immediately disqualified.

 

Folks from the school team, or others who were not at Goa will have to think of a topic of their own in order to participate. Maybe how nice the office is with half the people missing.

 

Oh, and I got my prize for contributing to the NSM theme, thank you very much. It felt good.

 

Vivek Govil

You Tube EDU

Take a look at www.youtube.com/edu

It's YouTube's education initiative, and has lectures from many great universities available online. I spent 40 minutes trying to follow the General Theory of Relativity before I gave up, but it was cool to think of myself as a physics major at Stanford for a little while. (the lecture is 1 hour and 38 minutes long, so I didn't last that long!)

It's a great opportunity to learn. It's also worth thinking about what kinds of opportunities this raises for an education company like ours. Any thoughts? Let me know.


Vivek Govil


Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

Goa Redux

I'm back home from our Higher Education NSM in Goa, and I think we all had a great time. Well done to everyone who was involved in the planning and execution of the event.

The format was tighter this year, and we managed to cover the agenda in two days, rather than the three we did before, and I think this works well.

The team seems confident of beating our budgets, but the next 4 months are going to test us all, the editors and manufacturing to get the books out on schedule, the sales force to drive sales, and the Operations team to execute the orders.

The hotel was beautiful, good service, and I was able to sneak out time for swimming and volleyball. I am dreading seeing some of the pictures from the dance on the last night!

Vivek Govil
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

It’s 1st April. This day, twenty seven years ago I was born. I look back and imagine myself in the cradle, crying; people looking at me, smiling and saying- You're going to be the butt of all jokes, all your life!! I wonder if they had to actually touch me to believe I was a baby, and not a hoax or prank.

Since that day, I have made people smile at the very onset of the chat about birthdates.

"so u were born on fools day!!"

"its a nice day to have one's birthday"

"don’t tell me"

"are u kidding"

"don’t fool me"..etc etc etc....

But I have not met one person who was normal after hearing my birthdate...

In my toddler days, I used to celebrate my birthday on 5^th April. Just to escape the ridiculous notion that everyone born on 1st april are fools, I made sure that no one ever came to know of my real birth-date.....I followed a sequence before disclosing my real birthday.....I made every one believe that since Isaac Newton was born on 1st April and is a genius, so am I. (Cooking up Newton's birth-date at that age was a sure sign of genius, wasn't it?) Talking of Newton, my analytical mind tries to look at the brighter side of it all (Everything happens for a reason, after all). I can invite people for my birthday bash, without dreading of a hefty bill. Knowing very well half the people won't show up thinking it's a prank.

Thank God for that!!

 

Anita Yadav

A video dedicated to NSM

Dear All

 

As we all know that NSM is just around the corner and most of us will be going to Goa to be a part of it. I have a suggestion that why not we utilize the video footage and the photographs that we capture in Goa, to create a small video film (Or a music video with effects and background score). The video can serve as a memoir for the annual event. I have shot and edited some short films during my college days and will be happy to provide my assistance on this.

 

Do provide your valuable suggestions and feedback for this.

 

 

Regards

Navneet Khurana

Promotion Executive

Marketing PTG and HE

Pearson Education,

482, F.I.E., Patparganj,

New Delhi -110092

Ph: 011 – 43030217, +919891565754

E-Mail: navneet.khurana@pearsoned.co.in

 

A Year at Pearson

Yesterday was my first anniversary at Pearson, and I am not sure how my report card should read.

 

2008 was the most fun I have had in my working life, and believe me, I have enjoyed most of my career up to here. It has also been the most intense work I have done so far, and it’s a company where I can see myself building a career. I read somewhere that the average lifespan of a CEO today is about 18 months, so that may be presumptuous but I hope that’s what happens.

 

On the performance front, it’s been a pretty good year, as all of you know. I do think that we have removed some of the kinks in the organisation structure, and that we now have a team that is more cohesive than before. I think we are also shedding some of the petty beauracracy that bogged us down, and I hope this will allow us to be more nimble and market focused. I also hope we are moving to a more open culture, but one which is still performance based. So, there are some good things achieved, or partly achieved.

 

But when I look at my notes from the early weeks in the company, there are so many areas where I feel we have not made as much progress as we could have, so I think maybe it’s a reasonable start, but there’s still so much to do!

 

If you have ideas that you think should be on my agenda, or comments on what I may have done well or badly, please email me. Or just write and say, Happy Anniversary!

 

Vivek Govil

 

 

Some pictures of the new office

These are artist impressions, but they should give you some idea of what the new office might look like.
Here is the reception :

Here are the workstations :

Here is a view of the manager's cabin :

Here is the board room :
And finally here is the breakaway room, where you can have coffee or lunch: