Recently I came across an article, Future of Reading by Jim Pinto in InTech, a control society magazine. Jim, popularly known as the poet laureate of the instrumentation industry, says, “…..Perhaps the best “invention” of the past several hundred years is the “book.” It is a more reliable storage device than a hard disk drive, and has a slick user interface, with no instruction manual needed, is instant-on, and requires no batteries. Many people think it is so perfect an invention that it cannot be improved upon.

Amazon is trying to reinvent the book with the Kindle, which has comfortably readable ePaper, changeable font size, page-turning with a click, easy word-search and a host of other features including online shopping with free samples ………….Change is possible if we stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead about the future of reading…..”

Very much in sync with this inspiring idea is the main purpose of publishing our own Surbhi online….not to forget the dollars we save on printing!

As Surbhi goes online for the first time, I, on behalf of our ISA team, would like to share the journey of our treasured organization ISA@OSU since April 2009 to date.

The election for the current ISA committee was held in April’ 09 but not all of the committee positions in ISA got filled up at one go. Why? Well, most of the students chose not to participate in the election.

When the committee was first formed with the few elected members, the initial task was to get the vacant posts filled up. All of us, i.e., those already elected, decided to go ahead with online elections for the remaining posts, since we assumed many students may not turn up to cast their votes. On the other hand, thankfully, a few students came up to contest for those positions and we, on our part, were determined to make it happen. Well, questions, doubts regarding this electronic voting system did surface...it was then that we decided to seek professional help from a German company, PollDaddy.com, which specializes in online voting for companies including Yahoo and AOL. The outcome was a successful election! We were glad to welcome Vijay as the VP, Nilesh as the Sports Secretary and Kunal as the Treasurer. Around 150 students voted and the best part was that students who had gone home for their summer holidays could also vote since it was hosted online. The only post that remained unfilled was that of the Cultural Secretary. Despite constant appeals by the ISA officers to the student community, nobody happened to volunteer for this post; consequently, the position had to be scrapped. This raised eyebrows among some students since most of ISA acivities are believed to be cultural in nature. But perhaps this was meant to happen.

Next we had the cricket league to focus on. Nilesh Naik, our sports secretary, and Vishvesh Khisty, the Executive Aide to VP for Sports, pulled off the league flawlessly. Sundry problems did pop up but aren’t they a part of any event of this magnitude?! We are grateful to Venu Lolla for helping us out with almost everything in preparing for the league. You can read more on this in our okstate blog: http://okstatedesi.blogspot.com/2009_08_02_archive.html

Pick-up and accommodation have been more of a passion for the ISA officers; this is despite knowing how difficult these two tasks can occasionally become. While I say this, I need to particularly mention Dev, our PRO! Dev from the MIS Department of OSU is on a sabbatical from Wipro, and he is probably one of the best individuals I have happened to work with. Team ISA provided pick-up facilities to 75 students (that’s the count we have on paper…there were also pick-ups for a few students who are not registered with us). In doing this, ISA sought help from Ozgur Aslan. Aslan, from Turkey, is currently a master’s student from the MAE Department of OSU. He did an excellent job; if it were not for him, it would have been practically impossible for ISA to manage such numbers. Worth mentioning is a particular occasion when he helped 13 students: offered them pick-up facilities from OKC airport and also arranged for a U-Haul trailer to keep their luggage. Gradually, when the pick-up schedule started getting grueling enough, ISA turned to Dipesh (Master’s student, MAE Dept.) and Mihir (Master’s Student, MIS Dept.) for assistance. This has also been the first time that ISA officially provided accommodations to students. We have had requests for last minute accommodations even at 2am and even these were complied with!

Independence Day celebration was the next big event for Team ISA since this was the first time our team would be performing before the general public. The cultural activities saw the birth of the ISA Band whose performance was quite appreciated by the audience. The turnout was awesome, and not to go unmentioned, the samosas and kheer served were mouth-watering.

Movies have always been something quite close to my heart and I was determined to make it happen at OSU. We frantically started to search for the appropriate screening procedures and also the way to avail licensing rights for the same. I worked with Kunal to send requests to a couple of film production companies and Yash Raj Films was the first to respond .Chak De India was our choice for the Independence Day celebrations. We were partly sponsored by SUAB for the movie. The turnout was good with 65 students attending the movie.

The Zakir Hussain Lecture Demo was something that ISA probably received as a gift from the SAPAF, Tulsa. The demo lecture was arranged in OU and a total of 8 students including me got to meet Zakirji in person and listen to his lecture on the tabla. It is by far one of the most memorable experiences I have ever had!

The AAFSA Asian and American Faculty and Staff Association had its first meet in September’09 and it asked student organizations to join as well. Neha (Master’s student, ECE Dept.) and Prerana (Master’s student, CS Dept.) represented ISA in the meet at Boomer Lake. You can read more of it on our blog. okstatedesi.blogspot.com

UTSAV @ Tulsa was an event wherein the Indian Association of Greater Tulsa (IAGT) asked us to do a guest performance. It was an excellent opportunity to reach out to the people in Tulsa and showcase the talent ISA takes great pride in. They had advertised the different fashion shows (including ours) for the event on various electronic banners in Tulsa. The fashion show and the musical performances of ISA were appreciated a lot by IAGT. ISA is grateful to the ISS office of OSU which helped our team of 18 students with transport to Tulsa. We also thank Nishant Mathure (Masters student, MAE Dept.) for assisting the ISS office with the same.

International Expo was another event wherein ISA gets a chance to showcase its culture. We had Gayatri Valia (MBA student, Spears School of Business) drawing beautiful henna tattoos, and several volunteers serving delicious Indian cuisine. The ISA booth attracted quite a number of guests, with the food getting sold out in the first couple of hours. You can see the snaps on okstatedesi.blogspot.com.

Talent Night was next on our agenda. The statistics of Talent Night’08 were not quite encouraging and we were therefore, hesitant to host this night. But officers Harpreet (social chair), Vijay (VP) and Dev (PRO) decided to send out requests to student community. It was also decided that if we could get atleast eight students who wished to showcase their talent we could probably have an event for them. The results are known to all….a huge success! The performances were excellent. The winners, Bharathwaj (Master’s student, CHEM Dept.) and Neetha (Master’s student, MIS Dept.) would be representing ISA at the Mr. & Miss. International contest organized by ISS(International Students and Scholars Office).

Dandiya night was scheduled for the next week; all the officers had to be on their toes with only one week to work out on the details of Dandiya night. Quite a lot of ground activities: arranging the refreshments in the ballroom, reserving the sound system, printing the flyers and distributing them, and applying for sponsorship. Viraj, Karan, Siddharth, Sagar and Rajesh volunteered for the Dandiya songs collection. Their sincere efforts paid off very well in the end. We are grateful to Gayatri Valia and Virat Agrawal for providing training to the students.

Boom! Diwali night needs a separate article altogether! The lovely performances and the event overall, have made the performers, the comperes and the volunteers legendary…..all of these woven together will make another beautiful article for Surbhi. The energy of the teams in charge of refreshment is commendable. Kudos to Harpreet Singh who coordinated the various teams so well! The ushering committee lead by Navin Shenoy too did an amazing job in guiding the audience to the exhibit rooms and the band room. Diwali Night’09 has been a phenomenal success for Team ISA.

The journey so far has been exciting, power-driven and memorable…..probably the best thing that might have happened to us at Oklahoma State University!

Rohit Kadam

President

Indian Student Association, OSU