3rd East Coast USA Alumni Meet
Saturday, 18th Sep 2004 
Manhattan, New York

The East Coast-USA Chapter of the International Alumni Association 
of USA, is pleased to announce that all of us had a wonderful and
memorable Alumni meet in New York, USA on 18th September, 2004. 

On 18th September, New York woke up to a heavy rain and tropical 
storm, which really threatened to play spoilsport but just managed 
to push back the event by an hour. The meet started with nostalgic 
moments of meeting 13 cetians after so many years at Bay Leaf 
Restaurant at Manhattan, New York. The excitement of meet was due
to the participation of Cetians from Chicago, Florida and Atlanta. 
All of them dared to fly to New York in spite of nasty weather 
forecast. This truly shows the spirit of CETians and their unity 
even after graduating from CET for so many years.

At 12:00 PM to start the meet, Ranjit Panda(Secretary) distributed
the Welcome Kit and a CetB Alumni Association T-shirt (Synergy 2 Conquer) 
to all the participants. Immediately after the distribution, he put 
the agenda for the Meet. There was a brief introduction session where 
all of us spoke something about our personal as well as professional
lives.... An open forum was on the top of agenda, where we discussed
about possibilities to help our alma mater. The discussion was quite 
helpful as a lot of suggestions came up during the session. 

At 1:00 PM, the brain storming session was over. Everybody 
headed for a delicious lunch, though some of our alumni
missed the taste of Tandoori chicken and Fish Masala (Thanks to 
Ganesh Puja). However, most of us had Non-Veg with lame excuse 
like Indian time is 9.5 hours ahead of US Eastern time, thus 
making the argument that Ganesh Puja is over…

At 2:00 PM, we had another brain storming session. But this time 
it was about raising fund for alumni association and its proper 
utilization. Debasmit Mohanty and Bhabani Sahu discussed the 
necessity of raising fund for our alumni association. They 
expected the alumni to play a key role in this herculean task. 
At the end of this session, the commitment by our alumni for
our institution was known by record collection of funds ($1775). 
It was a grand success…. All of the 13 cetians pledged to 
become a paid member of our Alumni Association. Notably, 
three of them pledged lifetime membership of the association. 
Thanks for those checks!

At 3:30 PM, we decided to go on with a tour of New York City. 
Some of our outstation alumni along with their family preferred 
to visit some other must-see places around New York as they 
had planned before. Rest of us went to Central Park to have 
some fun in rain. At a famous spot inside Central Park, 
one of our alumni (Chittamohan Panigrahi,1999 Mech) recalled 
how Sharukh Khan and Preity Zinta posed there for the Bollywood 
blockbuster Kal Ho Na Ho..The group then asked the married 
couples to take snap along with their better halves by imitating 
Sharukh and Preity. If you thought that was over, oops… 
I am sorry! The singles amongst us jumped into the bandwagon 
and took solo snaps with beautiful Manhattan skyline in the 
background. One of the members proudly announced that the snap 
is going to find its place in an on-line matrimonial site.

At 5:00 PM, we wrapped up the activites at Central Park 
and headed for another must see place in New York City, 
yes you got it ! Time Square, where you can't differentiate 
between day and night because of its spectacular colorful
lighting environment. Even after walking for hours Cetians 
didn't show their tiredness...

At 6:00 PM, we decided to go for Bowling.... Because of time 
constraint, we could play only a one-hour game. Few of us 
had never touched the Bowling ball before. Still,surprisingly 
we had a nail biting finish...It was anybody's game till 
the last set.... but in the end Debasmit Mohanty emerged as 
winner with a strike in last round....

All of us had a gala time there at New York and we dispersed 
to our destinations with big hopes and plans to bring 
glory to CetB. 

Being the secretary of the East Coast Chapter, I would like 
to extend my thanks to Chittamohan Panigrahi (1999) for 
his effort in organizing this great event. I also 
thank Debasmit Mohanty (1994) and Bhabani Sahu (1995) 
for motivating and guiding us to have a memorable alumni meet.  

Long live the spirit of CetB. 

May God bless us. May He grace our ever-fond institution! 

Minutes of Meeting

1. Responsibility of Maintaining the Official Website of CetB

Point was raised by Debi Rath and suggestions were sought 
for sharing the responsibility of maintaining the website. 
After much discussion, it was agreed to help the current 
students form a volunteer group. 

Action Plan : Debasmit Mohanty will contact Mr Rajbans 
Joshi (Currently in Final yr),and initiate the procedure 
for organizing volunteers (From 3rd Yr and Final Year mainly)

Lalatendu Das suggested the option of passing this 
responsibility to the students union in the long run. 
Decision was taken to approach the faculty and the DEAN, 
for creating separate role in the students association 
for managing the official website of CetB.

2. Briefing by the Secretary - East Coast Chapter 
  (Ranjit Sekhar Panda)
 
a) Awards and Scholarships to meriteous students have 
   to be started as soon as possible.
b) Issue of outdated alumni profiles on our website was 
   raised. The webmaster updated on the enhancement to 
   the alumni site, where an automated script will 
   send reminders to those alumni, whose profile has not 
   been updated in last 3 months.
c) Mr Secretary requested all alumni members to take 
   this task seriously, and to remind personally other 
   alumni too to keep their profile current.

3. Debasmit Mohanty briefed on the alumni association 
   activities

   He shared the vision and goal for our alumni association. 
   He also briefed about fund raising process, which will 
   bring accountability and transparency to all our programs.

   Alumni Association is now formally launching a paid 
   membership program. All the benefits and various 
   membership options such as Basic, Silver, Gold, Platinum 
   and Life Member were discussed along with their benefits. 

   A campaign will be started very soon to inform everyone 
   about the paid-membership program and encourage CetB alumni
   to become paid member of the association.  This is absoultely 
   essential for raising funds and later on use them 
   to support scholarship,seminars, reasearch programs at CetB.

4. BBSR Chapter connection: 
   The Bhubaneswar chapter of CetB alumni association plays
   a critical role in implementing various action items set 
   by the global Alumni chapters. We decided to 

  a) Designate one person as the contact person to enable 
     him/her to facilitate the communication with the 
     authorities and students. Ultimately, this will be 
     crucial for the successful execution of our plans 
     in co-ordination with all alumni chapters.

  b) Take help from student union members such as General
     Secretary, Magazine secretary and the President to 
     implement the action plan of our alumni association.

  c) Create a feedback process to measure the progress on action items.

5. Fund-raising: International Alumni Association,CetB(IAACetB),
   in its consistent effort in supporting alumni activities 
   has urged CetBytes to register for paid membership. 

   Membership kit is available at 
   http://www.cetindia.org/docs/welcomekit_usa_2004.doc

   You will be asked to enter password. If you don't have the 
   password, please email webmaster@cetindia.org)

6. CetB.edu launch: The IAACetB plans to roll out the
   redesigned cetb.edu website through collaborative effort 
   with current students, alumni association volunteers.

Cheers

Ranjit Panda, 1999 Electrical
Secretary, East Coast USA Chapter