Record breaking Skill City '09 Prelims

Our first pillar was rightly called 'Tick Tick Boom' as it was literally a bomb in the face of our smug faced critics. The evidence; 124 team registrations from 35 B-schools from the likes of IIM A, B, C, K, L, I, S, XLRI, IIT-B, D, K, KGP, NITIE, MICA, IIFT, MDI, IFMR, NMIMS and more!

Our effort and toil has paid off and things will only go uphill from here. As promised, we have developed something totally different from previous years and the qualifying teams will surely have a time of their lives in weaving their way through the modules to follow.

We thank the teams that participated in our prelims tonight and provided Skill City '09 a roaring start! Rest assured your enthusiasm will be reciprocated by us in the next stage during Xpressions '09, this November at XIMB.

Watch this space for updates..

For more Skill City related info, visit our Xpressions website

http://www.ximbxpressions.com/

Deadline Extended till 0045

Participating teams

The deadline for submission of the .xls files has been extended till 0045

Skill City Prelims - Starts at 2330 hrs

Finally the moment that we all had been waiting for, The Skill City Prelims.

The Duration of the prelims is 60 minutes starting at 2330 hrs.

1. Format for naming the attachment:

Institutename_TeamName.XLS

2. Format for the subject of the mail:

Skill City Prelims Application - institutename_teamname

3. In the mail give the details of team name, team members, institute name

4. Also mention your team name in the Excel template provided

To download the Prelims questions and the Answer templates please use the following links.

Both Files (Mediafire Links)

Answer Sheet (link1) (link2)

Questions prelims (Link1) (Link2)

Alternate Link (ftp)

Remember you have to mail the answers back to the Skill City email id : skill@ximb.ac.in before 0030 hrs.

Thanks & Reagrds

Team Skill

Disclaimer

Warning: Geeks are not advised to read this!!!!

At the very onset, let me make one thing very clear to you, if you are a business megalomaniac, who knows ‘only’ terms like shares, stocks, price, market value, market share, branding (and God knows what else!!!!), then am afraid Skill city is definitely not the right place for you. Because we, at Skill City, do not respect nerds!!!! We respect people who can make a difference being in a team. We admire people who know how to work as a team. If you want to test your soft skills, we welcome you at Skill City; otherwise, you are free to take a walk…. But hang on a minute! If that makes you think Skill City is a pushover, then you are grossly mistaken. We value people who have fire in their belly to succeed. With a tagline of ‘Hardest test of your soft skills’, Skill City offers you a jackpot of 80K (yeah, you read that right!!!!), where the winner takes it all. After a series of mind boggling tests of your analytical and communication skills, the last-team-standing will walk away with the last laugh.

-Ozone

Skill City Prelims on 26th October @ 2330 hrs

The D Day is approaching.

Today, on the twenty sixth of October aspiring skillers are supposed to cross the first hurdle to get to the coveted crown of Skill City Champions. The Skill City prelims will take place tonight. We invite you to come play the game that is our pride and glory. Qualifying teams will move to the final rounds to be held during Xpressions '09. (13th-15th November)

Registrations for Skill City are still open. To register for Skill City follow the procedure given below:

Skill City Registrations

Step 1: Go to www.ximbxpressions.com Click on the login tab. Register. Here your login id is the email id given.

Step 2: Once the main registration is done, login with your credentials

Step 3 (Event Registration): Click on the login tab again. Click on event registration. Select an event (Skill City in this case). Enter all details. Please note the team id (XIM/XPRE/09/##). This id should be used to login for a team for an event.

Step 4 (Team login): Login with your team id (Format: XIM/XPRE/09/##) and password. You can view updates, downloads (prelims). Please note that the prelims are to be downloaded from here at the time specified.

Details of the events are also available on http://ximbxpressions.com.

For regular event updates visit our online events partner www.dare2compete.com.

To subscribe to SMS alerts for Xpressions09, please SMS "On Xpressions09" on 9870807070 . Powered by Dare2Compete.com

The Maze has been lit. All you need is to find your way to the other side.

The Making of a game!!!!

What time do we have the meet???

12:30AM....

Great!! and what’s the time right now???

12:15..

AM or PM...?

Oh!! Cut the crap man... do you think we have time for your silly jokes.... #@$%#

okkkk.. so what do we have in hand???

Nothing for the time being...

Amazing..... What are we suppose to tell them in the meet!!!

Oh!! For heaven's sake will you stop your question and answer session and think for an idea to save our poor lives!!!!! #$%@#$

Yes, Ladies n Gentlemen.. This is exactly the way we, as a team, started up with our game or we'd better say a no game...

So.. any takers on as to who was our saviour??? Who do u think finally came up with an idea to save the lives of these 4 innocent, vulnerable, peace loving and lazy yet intelligent management students???

You guessed it Right!!!!

No one!!!!

So, finally we were ready to put up a show....

bole to .. Beg for mercy.. Beg for forgiveness.. Beg for our lives.. In short Beg for some more TIME....

And then a twist in the whole story .... 12:29:10...

The phone rings...

“Hello...”

Oh hi.. whats up..

Arre kuch nai yaar.. need a game for my team and no ideas clicking...

oh.. bas itni si baat hai.. if a small game would work then i have an idea..and here it goes..

This is how we got the base for our game!!!!

Keep watching on for more on this space....

Journey of a Skiller - Part II

Now, the core committee called all of us for the first ever skill meeting, and we were asked to prepare a list of all the soft skills that could be tested. Pooh! Such an easy task! Any layman could do it, right? Thinking thus, I never prepared the list. I mean, come on.. Who does? So, confidently my team and I barged into CR-7. And then, when we had to list down the skills, and had to explain how exactly is it quantifiable, we were left thinking. Man, this is not as easy as it looks. Finding out various skills to test, and the ways of testing them was a bit tough. (OK, ok, I will be honest.. It was a little more difficult than I made it sound here).

And now, with all the different skills listed out on the board in front of us, we thought we could go. But no! The seniors had another torture (if I may say so), lined up for us!!! We had to share our most embarrassing moments to one another! I was wondering.. Should I say my moment #1, or moment #2? I finally settled in for moment #10.. I felt that it was wayyyyyyy safer for me.. My God, when I heard the moments of some other skillers, I was splitting with laughter!! I had developed stitches on my stomach just by Vikas's story!! Someday, when I find the time, I will tell it to you.. Till then, ciao! :)

Some more musings

Journey of another

When I was selected as a shadow member of skill, the only thing I knew was that I am going to do some work which I might be able to understand. Trust me, I never had this feeling about any subject/ work. So we started with skill work. Teams were formed. We were given the task to build some games. It so happened that on the day of presenting the games my team members (including me) were not present and we got a good rough from the senior committee. So what to do!!! With confidence like the one that India will win the next hockey world cup we presented our games and Whoa!!! Our games brought us a lot of appreciation. But as they say with big games there are big responsibilities. So we started building on our games. When we were halfway through our first game we realised that the framework on which our game was based will not help us for a long time. The moment was to revamp the framework and we did it again. We came with a new framework and got the approval from the senior team. Then for some time we couldn’t work on our games due to academics and then came the D- Day. We were told in a skill meeting to have a dry run of the game next day. Damn!! What with past week of sleepless nights, nothing done on the game and a busy day ahead we worked on the game that whole night and next day for even the half hour we got from our busy schedule. But despite all our efforts the dry run was a complete fiasco. We ourselves were confused about many rules let alone the participating teams. The only good thing about the dry run was that still our game was liked by the skill teams. Moving forward...

Building skills for you Scene 2: We collated the feedback given to us and made a lot of changes in the game and this time delegated the duties (with a lot of fight which involved a broken teeth and swollen eye... Just kidding...) and expected the dry run to go well this time. And it happened again: everyone anxious and there was me shouting on the top of my voice and gaining anger and frustration as each moment passed. But this dry run gave me a fair idea what I need to do and where we need to make the real changes. So now we are working on it and make things worse right now we are only two members of our team present for work (watch out for the side effects of RM by Ankit for more details...). So let’s hope that all goes well with this game as we have one more game in the pipeline. Bye then...Keep reading for more updates on our next dry run and our second game.

-Ekta

Journey of a Skiller

The launch of Skill City (SC) is something that I cannot forget. It was spectacular!! There are no other words to describe it. Any game that started off with Bhangra was something that I HAD to be a part of. So, when the mail from SC arrived, asking us to submit our SOPs, I was one of the first people I guess to complete my SOP. But still, it took me a long, long time before I could send it across! Why? Because I was re-reading it for maybe the ‘n’th time. I wanted it to be the perfect SOP ever. Did I make a good job out of it? I don’t think so. I was not (and still am not) personally satisfied with the kind of shoddy work that I churned out. (Euch! How can anyone even read that??)

So, when I finally received a mail from SC, providing me a schedule of the interviews, I was relieved beyond words. I was the 6th person to be interviewed on the first day (yeah, the interviews went on for 2 days!! The number of applicants were more than 70!!). When my number came up, I was pretty nervous. I wanted this interview to be very good. I wanted to get into Skill. And then, the stress interview began. I messed it up (as usual, I am no good at stress interviews, I guess). By the time I came out of CR-1, I was dejected. Heart-broken, actually. Only a person as stupid as me could screw an interview. I had lost hopes of being selected by SC at all, and was thinking of applying to some other game, but then Lady Luck smiled on me.But then, to my surprise, I was selected! J Ahh.. Life couldn't have been better!!

Chapter 01 - Reprise

From the diary of a Skiller

"They say it’s the toughest test of your soft skills. Catchy phrase which lived up to its expectations completely the moment our seniors unveiled their games .We realized that the bar was high and it wouldn’t be easy performing here. So it was imperative to give in our best. But it’s always easier said than done. The best doesn’t come out by merely wishing for it. One and half month into the process and we were still struggling to get along. The game we had designed wasn’t one which could have had an undisputed execution. Finally it was scrapped. It was disappointing to the hilt since almost everyone else had come out with something substantial.

Now these are moments which drive you, push you to perform, to prove yourself. The script was laid, we just obliged. We slogged, brainstormed, proposed ideas and denied them and finally one day there was a game. A game which brought for us recognition and applause."

- Shailendra

Chapter 01

An Extract from the diary of a skiller

"When I attended the skill city launch ’09, I was enthralled seeing the aura of skill city. I knew that if it’s any game committee I wanted to be part of that had to be SKILL CITY. Well, that’s how I became a part of skill city. Every day in skill city was fun. It just added to the memories we will surely cherish in the future. It was not all about fun though, we also pitched in a lot of hard work and creativity into our games .The participants will surely come to know about it. Many games have been scrapped to get the right set of amazing games we finally zeroed in. My team had also come up with many game ideas – some weird (well I still remember the hot wheels game we had suggested), some not feasible (like the tricycle game – The participants were supposed to assemble a tri-cycle using scrap items and then attempt to race with them) and some turned out to be gold. Our game, cross amaze that was finalized is one of them. Well we are sure; the people playing the game will be truly amazed."

- Priyanka