Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Way back

This day, ten years back, came up with the first post of this blog. Our alumnus, Vinayak who founded http://parivaar.org/ was visiting IIT Kharagpur campus on September 05, 2007. Chiranjeev Maharaj was accompanying him. And we had an interesting session with the visiting team. I don't remember today what exactly was the trigger to start the blog and write a short post on that visit.  There was a follow up visit on March 08, 2008 for which there was an elaborate post.

1, 26, 51, 56, 27, 22, 28, 20, 4, 3 are the number of blog posts from 2007 to 2016 in consecutive years. This year, it is 4 so far. If twenties are considered baseline, there were heightened activities in 2009 and 2010 and, major fall since 2015. In 2011, started NSS blog and there were 21 posts. Together, it comes near to 50 mark of earlier 2 years. Started NSO H&F blog in 2013 which had 53 posts that year. There were other purpose driven blogs started after that but with less number of postings. Of course, one opens up differently in different spaces as per what defines that space. All those blogs except few, have been handed over to successors.

The all time maximum page view crown goes to 2013 Teacher's Day post of this blog. It gave a glimpse of the day in words and pictures. The emphasis was on 'Shraddhaban labhate Jnanam' one who respects, learns. A learner finds something to learn from everybody, even non-living things like sky, wind, mountain, ocean ...

I was enrolled into facebook in 2008. However, there was not much activity there. Avoided accepting friend request from people not directly known and also from students. For students, the thought had been, till I was in a position to give grade to a student, it is to be postponed. Then something serious happened and it appeared that there needed a better, direct channel of communication - the designated portfolios failing. Facebook became the preferred mode.

May be some anniversary post in facebook will figure out someday that there is a big fall in facebook posts, too in recent times. By default, the reason may be ascribed to poor SNR (signal to noise ratio) or too-much-ness there which in some sense may be correct!!

This special day had its share of emails, phone calls, SMS, visit to office by students, small function at lab. etc. The TIFAC interns working on 'Legal and Ethical Issues related to Artificial Intelligence' came with a small flower-stand and flowers made by them . They themselves placed it in front of the Vivekananda portrait (drawn by an ex-student) that they noticed in earlier visit to my office. Bow to all teachers and teacher of teachers!