Tuesday, August 21, 2007

The Goa – Autodesk H1 review

I don’t want to make this journal a very formal one. My main objective behind jotting down my experience at Goa and with Autodesk is to enlighten all those who have missed this chance. Yeah on the way I also had a pleasure of sharing 2 days with CPT J indeed a big time fun party.

There is hardly anyone in my train compartment on my journey back and I’ve got nothing much to do J !! So I thought opening my notebook and scribble something.

Important Notice
The whole experience is just from my perception which need not be the precise one, its more like the way I see things, If it makes you feel bored, angry, sad, jealous or hatred. Please move your mouse to the right hand top corner cross on your screen and press the right button this journal will be disappearing. I know it’s a bad joke and you’ll find more like this when u read on!! …………..So happy readingJ.

Goa

Yeap no conventions were broken here It was indeed a tourist destination but definitely not in monsoon J , I was trying hard to convince my self that I reached Goa ( guys its hard to tell out the difference unless you are in a beach or in a party) I don’t know whether Its because i haven’t had a sight seeing , but the climate , narrow roads , tea shops , greenery everything reminded me about our good old gods own country .

Hyatt Experience
Well I’m still busy figuring out whether it was a 5star or 7strar .We had a pleasure enjoying the hospitality of both park Hyatt and Taj Exotica and I would be giving my vote to Hyatt ( lady staff where much prettier there J !! and ofcourse the ambience and services to back up. It was my first experience to stay in a international level star hotel and I guess I made the most out of it , CPT had a tough time explaining which all where free of cost and which weren’t because my hands where every where starting from the mini bar in our room to the Spa services of the hotel . If he wasn’t there I was sure that my days at hyatt had to end up asking my mom at home to send the will of the house to settle the bill J Thank god it didn’t get that worse !! oh the smile on my face is still lingering when thinking about the waterless toilet experiences and my shower in the Jacuzzi. That’s the maximum I can share as of now, if I go on starting from the menu …the list and experience will be endless. I still have the sandals which they provided in the room J ! and for the first time I wore a bath gown(robe) and played Mr Parerra and muthala kollam looking at the mirror J , only thing which I missed is the smoke pipe which jose prakash used to have J J.

ESP- Deepak Rao

Deepak Rao a guy hired by Auotdek for an ESP(extra sensory perception) show“ he believes people give away things very easily and we can get them out with ultimate observation and concentration”. In order to prove that he made people come on stage and asked them to remember some numbers in their mind and he was successful in telling the same. I was skeptical throughout “ I don’t know why I didn’t like that guy and I wasn’t sure about his ability. Well only thing which grabbed my attention was when he was successful in speaking out a girl’s mobile number just by looking into her eyes. Oh man that is a necessary thing to know rite!! But still he wasn’t my favorite.CPT seeing my reluctance in accepting him asked me to just enjoy the things leave it alone J J !!


Autodesk
I really want to share about our premier parent company here. Although I was working with InterCAD for the past three years I’ve never seen Autodesk this close. I could really see those names in the bottom of our regular mails from Auotdesk taking its shape, some matching to the picture in our mind and some diagonally opposite to it. Anyway bringing all the people who were in business under a single roof was fun and at the same time a great learning experience, each talk and presentation threw some light to our business and strategies. Two important things which I would like to mention about Autodesk is that they are very concern about the “number” be it percentage growth, market share , targets whatever … they are really damn serious about the figures. Giving least importance to the efforts, the approach, the market potential etc etc..if you got the numbers you rule there otherwise even if u scream nobody gona notice. The other thing is they need everyone for their business and they value each and every people associated with them !
Each division of Autodesk presented their review and strategy. Guys believe me its more like the same reviews we have at the end of each quarter. But here again the numbers stand out. I could easily see how BSD head Sunil and Edu head Deepak Battacharya was having their energy up and cracking jokes and at the same time MSD and ISD were trying to keep the moral up Since their numbers where not that exciting.Edu was on a roll with 80% growth over last years and BSD where around 60%. We also saw lot of appreciation for resellers and for each division who all have done well.
Another important leaf which I took out of Autodesk is that “they are damn professional and they mean business from a word Hi to a word Bye “ Which we have to adapt very fast and effectively on to our business.
A talk by jay really had something to notice ‘Autodesk had training by Stephen covey 7 habits institute on the day before our visit” and we could see some interesting effects already in them. So jay mentioned – the time lag between the effort and result is the important thing ( just repeating the words of CPT in a couple of meeting before that we need a result oriented company than the effort oriented”)


Points to ponder
*Best people in the best place
*Face the customer (ie is the important of direct calls )
*Focus on plans
*Subscription
*Service revenue (high time to implement on our side too)
*Branding
And at the end Expect to win and prepare to win.

Idiscoverie and the team building gamezzzz !
That was an interesting half day spend with a team building professionals from Delhi. It was full of fun, team games , points and enthu !! We whole has a team had to achieve a target and there were around 14 games going on simultaneously and each game had some points associated with it and the objective was of course chasing the target by winning those games. For that the whole group was split into many teams and asked to play those and earn the points. I had fun teaming with Ajay Bagepalli and group and we were really like a team, my favorite game was finding the spy ( I was quick to do that ) J and got a compliment from Ajay himself.
You all can expect something like this in near future!! It’s all about sharing and we had done the necessary things to organize something for us all tooJ !!

Gala nite –Rocked till hell freezed over !!

From the day I saw the gala dinner in the agenda, I invested a lot of time finding out the meaning of the word “Gala”- It meant an extravagant socialized dinner! Ofcourse it made me excited too!! To be frank that night was unique and special- I’ve never ever tasted or experienced something like that before- I was so excited that I even missed the infinite course dinner; yeah I was busy getting the feel of all other stuff happening around.

It all started with a theme- I guess the theme was “ Heaven” four girls dressed like angel welcomed us to the venue , mean while the mocktail had started yeah guys only mock tail since bar wasn’t opend yet L ! the crowd was flowing in and spending there time in many stalls around the venue !! for the entertainment there were a magician and couple of music groups entertaining us. The seating arrangement was like our old darbar with diwan and pillows! Oh man the start was with a bang with two Russian beauties on the floor dancing to some unique tunes Sorry guys I don’t remember the name of the dance as I was struggling to find a piece of cloth on their body J J ! then there where magic show, solo music performance, then the quality live band performing all the favorite numbers , that indeed rocked. At last in midst of all this fun the cocktail had started from one end—the cocktail was full with the names which I haven’t heard off and the taste that was pretty much new to my taste buds its worth experiencing once in a life time.. of course in expense of some others bank balance J. Mean while I had a chance to participate in a fire dance with a professional performer on the stage and I did a limbo dancing with him on the stage, later couple of people from the crowd really appreciated that effort ( really guys even I wondered that where they serous??? :-))
Then an amazing dance floor opened to a great effect of music’s and lights with lot of high voltage energetic people shaking their hip, I guess it’s the first time I’m dancing to the beats of a live band ( I repeat the band was amazing with good sensible stuff under their sleeves , the guy on the lead strings rocked ! I still remember the way his strings responded to summer of 69!! ) The dance floor and music continued till 2:30 am !! we had a special taxi arranged to drop at hyatt since our bus had already left. I would have walked back rather to miss that nite!! It was amazingo , fabuloso and magnificeanooo… J