PanIIT 2008
It’s coming up to that time of the year again when a very large group of completely self-absorbed people with very inflated egos gather to congratulate themselves on how astonishingly amazing they are and how they are the almighty’s gift to humanity, if not the entire creation.

The PanIIT 2008 site declares: “IIT Alumni 2008 Global Conference is being held at IIT Madras, from 19th to 21st December. With 3000 alumni participants from around the globe, a galaxy of eminent speakers, and selected sponsors who are leaders in their industry, …

Humans are the ultimate general purpose machines. What we are potentially capable of is virtually unlimited. Who we become and what we become capable of doing depends on the environment we grow up in and the programming that we are subjected to. To some degree at least, our educational system programs us. In some cases, the programming causes plastic deformation of our brains: the firmware is permanently and unalterably implanted.

Made Up Stuff
Naturally, I was not part of the organizing committee and so I can’t know how they chose the keynote speakers of Dec 23rd at the Pan IIT 2006 meet. Therefore, I give in to wild conjecture. Consider this a sort of “reverse process engineering.”
“We need to choose a keynote speaker.”
“Yes, but to attract a wide range of audience, we must have more than one. Let’s set the parameters first. How about someone who appeals to technologists, as we are all techies. At the other end …

Hoopla at the Bandra Kurla
The PanIIT 2006 conference was a marvel to behold. I was among the over 5,000 (so the organizers claimed) who attended the event at the Bandra-Kurla Complex in Mumbai, Dec 23rd to the 25th. I had had my misgivings about being part of the hoopla but my curiosity trumped discretion eventually. I don’t regret being there, mind you, as it was a supreme learning experience. Besides, I got to meet some interesting people, and see some people who I had heard and read about a lot …

Over the last weekend I spent a little time at the IIT Bombay, the alma mater of many a successful and celebrated Indian, resident as well as non-resident. IIT — the Indian Institutes of Technology. Sometimes called the Institutes of Indian Technology.
I had gone there to sit on a panel which was deliberating such weighty matters as policy for encouraging open source in education. I had little to add to it but still I was given a nice desk weather station (has a hygrometer and …