My initial thoughts on Alumni initiative at IIIT-H

This ought to be blogged on February-March timeframe. But the I had no singly standard blog then. Better late, than never...
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A few days back, Diwakar and myself discussed a few things regarding the direction of alumni activities. Here is the jist of what we felt was a useful discussion.

The moot point 'Alumni Intiative'
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Yeah! it's expected that we contribute whichever way we can to our almamatar.


Before we even can talk something about 'Alumni Initiative' we have to be clear on what constitutes an Alumni. Certainly this is not going to be named 'GDIT2K initiative'
Most fundamentally a well-informed alumni group is needed. Not just a GDIT2k group.
Things should be gradual in the sense start with smaller things to test the waters than dream about materializing something substantial.

Currently three BTech batches are out and one is on its way. A centralized *active* group of all or majority alumni members is lacking. Creating one and pooling people into it is far far from feasibility. However, individually each batch has some kind of group/mailinglist which is quite active and has most of the batchmates as members.
As a first step towards building this sense of cross-batch interaction, we can leverage the activity that goes in individual batch wsie mailing lists. The idea is simple, at the end of every fort-night interested members inside each individual mailing list, would consolidate and make a brief overview report of useful discussions, happened in that 15 days span, that are generic enough to be broadcasted to the whole alumni. And this digest report will be sent across to other mailing-lists with appropriate subject. Slowly people of other batches get to know what a particular batch is thinking and if interested they too will provide their inputs.

Next issue is start from the first step.
Foundations of Alumni presence should be strong in the institute. This can happen if alumni activities evolve maintaining continuity rather than being poured down once in a while.
I see any initiative that has something to do with money as a major alumni initiative and as one which is deemed to get procrastinated indefinitely. No one is to be blamed for that. Anyone who would want to disagree pose a question to your ownself giving the state of alumni at present, can such an initiative be a success. If so, detail it. Nevertheless I don't discourage efforts in that direction, it's just that one should allow all the time such an initiative takes to materialize without worrying too much about it. Discussion and thoughts are always helpful.
So I see financial intiative certainly as something that is not step 1. Then what can be called as first step? My answer to that question is, any activity on which whole sovereignity lies with a single individual and which would not cost him more than the time he/she can spare for it. Example, a guest lecture on what you learnt in your workplace/life. I would like to hear more thoughts from you guys n gals as to what can constitute immediately deployable alumni initiatives.