#ibmcsc India
Hi all,
Last Tuesday, my team mates Quynh, Dilminder and I had our first appointment with the client. We were picked up by a taxi and went to the campus of Kalakshetra. We received a very warm welcome and we had a fantastic tour on the campus: it is a little paradise. Kalakshetra is an institution for classical music, dance and fine arts typical for the South Indian region and especially the state Tamil Nadu. In 1936 it was founded by Rukmini Devi. In 1993 Kalakshetra was recognized of being of national importance and taken over by the Indian government. It consists of a college, 2 schools, multiple libraries, a research and documentation department, and more. Complete information can be found on Kalakshetra´s website. Walking on the campus is the campus is a very inspiring activity: people are dancing in groups, receive music lessons (singing or instruments), painting, or simply talking to their teacher (guru) alone or in small groups, without using any technology during the lessons, as it always has been.
The goal of our assignment at Kalakshetra is not to provide help on dancing, music or arts (in they will keep doing this in the old traditional ways), but to help with their IT infrastructure of the supporting departments. The institute has internet, a network, servers, and various applications for all kinds of administrative tasks, that has grown organically the past few years. We will provide advice on the IT architecture and strategy of Kalakshetra´s management.
Therefore everyday we travel about 30-40 minutes to the campus in the south of Chennai. On campus, we interview people from all departments, and make our analysis. Last Friday we spent the day in a local IBM office in Chennai, to process our information. By the way: Bangalore and Hyderabad are IBM´s biggest sites, but even in Chennai alone there are more than 5000 IBM employees and growing (almost as many IBM employees in this city alone compared to the Netherlands)!
I will tell more on our work at Kalakshetra in other blog postings the coming 3 weeks.
In the weekend the entire group decided to visit Pondicherry (former French colony), Auroville (an international city/village: "dedicated to human unity") and Mamallapuram (ancient temple complex), about a 3 hours drive south from Chennai. We had a great time and saw many interesting things. Living, eating and traveling in Chennai / India is an amazing experience. And all of this with a temperature above 35 degrees, humid, with some occasional rain, but almost all the time bright sun shine. To conclude, again a few photo´s:
More new photo´s on: picasa
Thanks for reading!
Bas
Hi all,
Last Tuesday, my team mates Quynh, Dilminder and I had our first appointment with the client. We were picked up by a taxi and went to the campus of Kalakshetra. We received a very warm welcome and we had a fantastic tour on the campus: it is a little paradise. Kalakshetra is an institution for classical music, dance and fine arts typical for the South Indian region and especially the state Tamil Nadu. In 1936 it was founded by Rukmini Devi. In 1993 Kalakshetra was recognized of being of national importance and taken over by the Indian government. It consists of a college, 2 schools, multiple libraries, a research and documentation department, and more. Complete information can be found on Kalakshetra´s website. Walking on the campus is the campus is a very inspiring activity: people are dancing in groups, receive music lessons (singing or instruments), painting, or simply talking to their teacher (guru) alone or in small groups, without using any technology during the lessons, as it always has been.
The goal of our assignment at Kalakshetra is not to provide help on dancing, music or arts (in they will keep doing this in the old traditional ways), but to help with their IT infrastructure of the supporting departments. The institute has internet, a network, servers, and various applications for all kinds of administrative tasks, that has grown organically the past few years. We will provide advice on the IT architecture and strategy of Kalakshetra´s management.
Therefore everyday we travel about 30-40 minutes to the campus in the south of Chennai. On campus, we interview people from all departments, and make our analysis. Last Friday we spent the day in a local IBM office in Chennai, to process our information. By the way: Bangalore and Hyderabad are IBM´s biggest sites, but even in Chennai alone there are more than 5000 IBM employees and growing (almost as many IBM employees in this city alone compared to the Netherlands)!
I will tell more on our work at Kalakshetra in other blog postings the coming 3 weeks.
In the weekend the entire group decided to visit Pondicherry (former French colony), Auroville (an international city/village: "dedicated to human unity") and Mamallapuram (ancient temple complex), about a 3 hours drive south from Chennai. We had a great time and saw many interesting things. Living, eating and traveling in Chennai / India is an amazing experience. And all of this with a temperature above 35 degrees, humid, with some occasional rain, but almost all the time bright sun shine. To conclude, again a few photo´s:
More new photo´s on: picasa
Thanks for reading!
Bas
