East Coast (USA) - Alumni Meet 2005

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4th East Coast USA Alumni Meet
Saturday, 1st Oct 2005
Akbar Restaurant
Edison, New Jersey

Agenda

1. Introduction
2. Distribution of Welcome Kit and ‘Synergy To Conquer’ T-Shirts
3. Lunch Break
4. Secretary’s Briefing about various alumni activities
5. Alumni Fund Raising
6. Vote Of Thanks

Participants

1. Abhijit Patnaik
2. Bratati Mohanty
3. Debashis Pradhan
4. Debasmit Mohanty
5. Debi Rath and his wife Sonali
6. Lalatendu Das
7. Manas Chaudhury and his wife Poornima and his daughter Gudul
8. Prakash Mahapatra
9. Pranay Mishra, his wife Anuradha and his daughter Anwesha
10. Prasanta Panda
11. Pruthibiraj Pandab
12. Ranjit Panda and his wife Sonakhi
13. Subrat Nayak and his wife Anita
14. Susant Mallick and his wife Archana
15. Shashanka Panda, his wife Aparna and his daughter Kalpana

The East Coast-USA Chapter of the International Alumni Association of USA is pleased to announce that all of us had a superb and memorable Alumni meet at Akbar Restaurant, Edison, NJ on 1st October 2005.

As far as my memory goes, we had an unpleasant weather during our 2004 Alumni Meet. It was pouring through out the day and night, (which is normally unusual in this area). Still it could not stop 13 CETBytes who went out against all odds and held the meet as planned. May be as a reward, this time in 2005 we got a beautiful late summer / early winter weather on Saturday. It was a bright sunny day coupled with slightly cool breeze and less humid.

Edison, NJ is known to be little India inside US because of its huge Indian population and most importantly presence of variety of Indian Restaurants/shopping complexes. This year it was more or less like a public demand to have our Alumni meet somewhere around Edison. After a lot of discussion, we finalized Akbar Restaurant @ Edison as our Venue for 4th Alumni Meet. 15 Cetvbytes had responded positively to attend the meet and some of them attended with their better halves, which raised the total head count to 22. Prasant Panda (1997,Mech) was first to arrive at the venue then followed by other attendees. By 1:00 PM almost all attendees had arrived at the venue except couple of Cetbytes who were stuck in weekend traffic.

The ambience inside the restaurant was so gorgeous and the dishes on dining table were so mouth watering, we had to postpone our formal introduction by one hour in order to finish our Lunch. Lunch was a golden opportunity for most of us to raise some trivial issues and hot topics just to talk and talk and talk (of course topics are censored in this decent public forum).

After finishing lunch, everybody got back to his/her chair to have some serious discussion about our Alumni meet. Ranjit Panda (Secretary, USA East-Coast) distributed welcome Kit and then initiated a formal introduction of attendees. This was a brief Introduction-Q&A Session.

Once Introduction session was over, Ranjit Panda briefed all the attendees about following alumni activities done across the globe in past years.

1. Successfully held election for alumni association office bearers.
2. Successful set up of a Library at college premises. This would not have been possible with out the help of Chennai, UK and Bhubaneswar Chapter. Special thanks to Dr. S.P.Mohanty who helped a lot in this process.
3. Computer Science department held a technical seminar at Hotel Swosti. Alumni Association provided Rs. 7000/ for this cause.
4. Successfully held Alumni meet across the globe. This year so far we have already had our meet in Chennai, Banglore, Mumbai-Pune, New Jersey

Ranjit panda also explained about our plans for coming years and our Vision. He also discussed the important of raising fund for our alumni association through membership. He requested all the attendees to spread this message to our fellow Cetbytes.

After Secretary’s briefing, a short brain storming session was conducted. Many valuable suggestions came up during this discussion. (Please see the MOM for details) As a last activity of the meet, Alumni membership registration forms and Synergy 2 Conquer T-shirts were distributed to all Attendees. The most encouraging point is that all the members pledged to be a member of Alumni Association and some of them even upgraded their membership to a higher level. Total pledged amount was $875.00.

Though it was close to 4.30 well past Restaurant close time (3.00 PM), nobody was in a mood to leave the room…. Finally we had to leave the room reluctantly because it was getting late for the restaurant boys to clean the room.

It was not over yet as I thought earlier, Group Photo session was still due…we took few group photos in front of this gorgeous looking Restaurant which

Being the secretary of the East Coast Chapter, I would like to extend my thanks to Debasmit Mohanty (1994) for motivating and guiding us to have a memorable alumni meet. Finally a Big THANK YOU to all the attendees for attending this Meet.

Minutes of Meeting

1. Shushant Mallick (1999) was appointed as the new treasurer of USA East Coast Chapter of CET Alumni. Welcome aboard Shushant. Thanks for volunteering.

2. Debasmit Mohanty suggested allowing online payment option for membership dues will ease the process of collecting checks and boost membership significantly. Steps to be taken to implement 'Pay Pal'/Credit Card option on the upcoming alumni portal cetbytes.org.

3. Anuradha Mishra (Mrs. Pranaya Mishra) suggested starting an independent association for spouses (wives) of CET alumni. She was encouraged to set up a mailing list as a first step to increase interaction.

4. Debi Rath suggested that spouses should be provided an email id on the upcoming alumni portal.

Cheers
Ranjit Panda, 1999 Electrical Click here for the Pictures