IRIS 2005

2006-04-25T12:19:00.001+05:30

It’s online again

2006-02-03T03:13:00.001+05:30

Sorry folks...

For a while the IRIS website (and klueless too) was down. We are happy to say that it’s up and running now.

Thanks,

Broad hints for KlueLess and some other issues

2005-12-15T20:36:00.000+05:30

:-)

For some players spending a sizeable amount of their precious time on KlueLess, first of all thanks, and next some broad hints:

This game is not crackable by ONLY intelligence, or GK. Heck, it's not a test for either :-) It's just a good way to pass time - for me before Iris, and for you all now :-)
So there, use the following hints to full capacity...
Google (or any other web search engine for that matter) is very very helpful here... answers to some levels may appear on the first page of results itself if the right keywords are used.
View Source means seeing the HTML code of the page you're seeing. Now don't be scared by the four-letter acronym: it's simply the code that tells the browser how to show the page. In case of KlueLess, it at times also tells the player where to look, what to look for, or at times simply the answer :-) To see the source, do a Control+U in Firefox or right click outside the level's graphic (image) and click on View Source in Internet Explorer. Simple.
Read through all hints on the discussion post's comments page before asking for a clue for a level that a clue has already been given for. If I (or another player playing in a more advanced level for that matter) am not giving out clues for any level despite having been asked a number of times, chances are a. I'm a bit busy... couldn't check the blog, or b. we thought giving out any clue for the level would tantamount to giving out the answer. In that case, think, google, ask for help from someone who hasn't seen the game yet - maybe they can help you.

Now on to the whole of junta out there... spoilers and all can create controversy and publicity for the game, but I personally dislike them because they take away the fun of playing the game... and this is testified by the player who crossed a level using a spoiler, but can't figure out the connection between the level and the answer. Too bad.

So my general request to all out there, if you know the answer to a level, please refrain from posting the exact answer... a subtle hint would be fine (I loved the hint '-1' for one of the levels... too cool).

Thirdly, the final level page is a little old... so if you have recently completed the puzzle, and have seen the message that some goodies will be given out, I'm terribly sorry... the goodies have run out... it's been a month since Iris ended and KlueLess was an Irising game (which by the way is held as a pre-runner to Iris). Pretty soon we'll be posting a consolidated list of all people who have sent in their entries out there for all to see as far as possible for us to collect your names (this specifically to those who managed to send SMS's without names, and failed to send the email ;-) ). You guys deserve public appreciation I feel.

Finally, the team has been thinking of continuing KlueLess beyond the present final level. But we can't promise you anything... it's our final term at IIM Indore, and we've got to get over with a lot of things before we finally say bye bye to this heavenly home of ours. There's another possibility of KlueLess being part of next year's Irising, in which case I look forward to being on the other side of the fence... as a player :-)

So much for now,
Enjoy :-)
Amit

PS: Do I use too many smileys? I've been accused of that before :-)

KlueLess winner

2005-12-14T11:57:00.000+05:30

Sorry for the delay once again... we've been quite busy and couldn't post the results for KlueLess.

So here it is: Paromita Deb Areng of IIM Kozhikode was the first player to reach the last level. Congratulations. You should get your prize money very soon.

Amit

On TV!!!

2005-11-16T00:07:00.000+05:30

Yes, that's right... Iris was covered on NDTV Profit tonight!!!

Cheers to Team Iris, and special pat on the back for the media team... great job guys!!!

Round up: 3 days

2005-11-12T23:08:00.000+05:30

Day 3 of Iris is coming to an end, and Team Entrepid & Team Marksman are slogging away with giving final touches to the code, while the participants are enjoying a game of Iris-style badminton outside. Ashwamedha has come to an end... and Mansoor of IIM-A has proved himself to be the champ.

Yesterday was full of activity... Ashwamedha rounds, Entrepreneurs Talk (graced by Alok Kejriwal, Contests2Win, Rashmi Bansal, JAMMag and Alwyn Agnel, PagalGuy), Antakshari and Ronin (BTW, Gaurav Sabnis came down to participate in Ronin) were some of the highlights.

Informals are rocking, as always... we are one party down, and another is about to start in some time.

Did I tell you we got our first international entry of KlueLess yesterday? :)

Tomorrow we shall see two of the most ambitious simulation games in Iris... Marksman and Entrepid.

And in all this, there are some refreshers like the Sphinx puzzles, Treasure Hunt and iBalls (our in-house underground Iris-time publication) which are a welcome break from the break-neck pace of activity around here...

Signing off,
Hypnos

1 more...

2005-11-08T19:20:00.000+05:30

As the sun sets on the 8th of November, we realise there is only 1 day left for Iris to begin. But relax, this is not a senti post about time before Iris. The big event is still to come :)

Thanks to all the people who've shown enthu for KlueLess and have made the 'KlueLess Discussion' post the most commented post on this blog :) Glad to know you all are enjoying the game.

Now the biggest responsibility we're facing is the games... Entrepid for me. Nightouts are on... dry tests are on... coders are on... music and refreshments in the lab are on :)

Fingers crossed...
Amit

Klue # 20

2005-11-07T17:55:00.000+05:30

Too many people in campus have already told me about certain levels in KlueLess being too hard... so here are some hints to make these levels a wee-bit easier...

Level 10: when you've found what's wrong and set it right, think 'motion' to find the next step.

Level 20: Think of an Emperor, though the answer is not related to him... he'll just help you find it.

Enjoy :)
Amit, KL

KlueLess discussion

2005-11-02T22:27:00.000+05:30

Ok, so KlueLess is up and running. We understand you may be having problem cracking some of the levels. Post your queries regarding these levels as comments to this post. We'll see what we can help you with :-)

Team KlueLess

Got a klue?

2005-11-01T05:06:00.000+05:30

Remember I had promised something in iRising when I had posted a few days ago here? It's here...

KlueLess has been launched as part of iRising. Just login on the iRising page to start playing this puzzle.

Amit

IRISING ...

2005-10-24T01:44:00.000+05:30

IRISING has started. What is it?
It is online gaming event with quizzes, crosswords, blogging contest, photography contest etc.

Can I participate in it?
Of course you can. There are no restrictions on any one. IRISING is open for everyone.

What can I get by taking part in IRISING?
Prizes worth Rs.50,000 are up for grabs. Daily prizes for events like quiz.

How do I go about it?
Click on http://iimi-iris.com/iris/irising/register.asp. Register yourself and start playing.

From Books to Execution...

2005-10-24T01:39:00.000+05:30

Whenever I read about an interesting execution of marketing fundaas or innovative approaches to reaching out to consumers I get a feeling that most of them don't follow the set theories in the books. Well, IRIS 2005 another right opportunity for our team to test our marketing skills. When it came to promotion of the event we have taken extra pains to make sure that the event stands out from the crowd and gets recognized.

We wanted a unique look and feel for the whole event. The regulars like brochures, website etc have become commonplace promotional material these days. We wanted to have something extra. Something to spread the event rampantly and encourage the people to know more about it. Several brainstorming sessions and "ek cup chai" we launched the following publicity tools.

IRIS Blog

Avatar Maker – Generate an avatar for your messenger/forum etc.

Introduction – made an attractive flash introduction

Ringtone – IRIS flash intro’s music to be converted to ringtone

Blogging Contest – To get publicity/support for the event

Blog buttons

Wallpapers / Screensaver – To be developed based on IRIS theme

Podcasting – Some of the events during IRIS 2005 are going to be podcasted if everything goes well.

Posters – Interesting and innovative to say the least. Will post them on the website in a days time.

Well, that's not all. More things will be revealed with time. Till then Enjoy

- Chandoo

Check it out guys...

2005-10-22T05:38:00.000+05:30

Check out the new flash intro for the IRIS website @ www.iimi-iris.com.

Comment on this post to give feedback on the intro...

+4

2005-10-20T20:03:00.000+05:30

Till a week ago there is one thing that worried all of us in IRIS team. Its not the execution of games or participation issues. Its much more basic and necessary thing that bothered us. The money. At the end of the day IRIS is also a student festival managed by half-baked managers. So when our sponsorship counter stopped after the initial surge we were all worrying about what to do to get the additional funds. For one, the funds are needed to fulfill the expectations of everyone associated with IRIS.

Everyday Goyal (coord), Diwan & Mehra (spons folks) would come to my room to sit with Sanchit (creative) and Dejo (events) and me to discuss the doors left unknocked. And then we would all think of ways to prune the budgets or tinker the prize monies.

Then out of blue the relentless pitches by the spons team paid off. Today we added 4 more new names to the corporate partners including biggies like ONGC and L&T. This I must say has taken a huge load off our heads. Now all of us are worried about making the event even bigger than what we thought of initially.

Chandoo (media)

What's up...

2005-10-20T19:34:00.000+05:30

Finally I don't have any more classes for a stretch of days... that would mean more fruitful time working on anything but studies :-)

Right now something new is coming up for the website itself... insiders who've seen it are awestruck. But I can't tell you more over here, except that it's been the most ambitious project of its kind that I've taken up... maybe anyone who's working on it has taken up.

And I expect to display it to the world by tomorrow :-)

Oh, and when iRising comes up, I'll have something for all you guys over there too, albeit as part of a slightly different team :-)

Enjoy,
Amit

Its Number Game ...

2005-10-19T10:29:00.000+05:30

700+ is the individuals participated in Ashwamedha Round 1 and
ONLY ONE will get the prize

270+ is the number of teams who sent their entries to Papyrus paperwriting competition

260+ is the number of teams participated in Insuris Prelims

300+ is the number of teams took part in online prelims of Storwars

100+ is the number of teams who submitted their case analysis for Entrepid Prelims

Looks like IRIS is chased by all the aspiring managers of the country.

Rock on

Entrepid milestone!

2005-10-17T03:21:00.000+05:30

Team Entrepid is a lot relaxed tonight. Reason? http://www.iimi-iris.com/iris/events/entrepidResults.asp

After working days and nights of skimming through more than a hundred entries, correcting them, normalizing and collating scores and finally publishing the results, the Entrepid prelims results are up. Congratulations to the teams who've made it. The efforts of the rest of the 90+ teams is also very commendable. Once again, Team Entrepid is overwhelmed at receiving such an enthused response from the participants.

Now back to full time development of the game.

Thanks to all,
Amit, TE.

Insuris!

2005-10-12T21:00:00.000+05:30

Insuris time it is. The only insurance game across the festivals (at least last year it was the only insurance game) will be launched this year on October 13 @ 22:00 hrs. Visit Insuris page.

Tada!!!

2005-10-12T20:25:00.000+05:30

Have you noticed the new look and feel? :-)

Amit

Excel + Maths = Entrepid + Marketing

2005-10-10T04:34:00.000+05:30

Whew! Had one of the longest days today :-) ... and one of the most fruitful as well. A lecture after 12 days of no classes whatsoever!! Hey, but who is complaining. Acadcom and PGP Office rocks! This way at least I get to focus on more *ahem* creative aspects of my stay here at the mole-hill.

Utilized most of the day's session over Excel modelling the marketing equations done by Angshu and Supriya. Boy, on paper this seems to be an easy task ... try putting down these babies on Excel and you start working up a sweat. Several hours later, my excel scenario modeller is in place and I can see an entire market getting simulated. Ohhh, how I wish I had studied the demand and supply basics more! No matter, silence and some focused thinking (followed by the patient explanations of Supriya) helped the fundamentals bore into the thick chip o'mine.

With me missing the lunch and tea sessions, I called upon one of my better coders on the Entrepid team to finish the task of converting this .xls to a VB scriplet. Tada!! Shivam can code, but has just started coding in VB, so I end up making the skeleton of the main marketing function of the game. I'll be honest ... I like coding ... fortunately so does Shivam, so the coding of the entire module went side by side, whereupon both of us were working on the same function on two different machines. A new way of XP!! (eXtreme Programming)

5 hours and one dinner break later, my skeleton code has turned into a lively model which replicates the behavior of our excel sheet. (Whew!! a sigh of relief there). Mr. Dejo Pope George
had just told me about our deadline for completing the coding of Entrepid ... imagine just 6 days to finish the entire game off. When I first heard this deadline ... I thought "Bloody hell!!@#@*#&@#@(". Now in retrospection, I guess 6 days seems decent. We will reach this deadline ... come quizzes come end-terms!

Tomorrow ... Team Entrepid steers towards clearing the Finance domain!!

PS - Would post some snippets of the preliminary entries from the caselet.

Till then, Cheers!!
Kida

I begins!

2005-10-09T11:53:00.000+05:30

Festival: MDI Gurgoan’s Imperium’05

Event: MarkeThink

First Prize: Dejo, Purna’s Team from IIM I
Second Prize: Shadab, Prashant’s Tem from IIM I

We started just now...

Papyrus & Cerebrate

2005-10-09T11:05:00.000+05:30

With the preliminaries of Ashwamedha and Entrepid coming to a close, IRIS 2005 has just taken off with a bang!! Now something along more academic lines ... case studies and paper presentations.

Both the teams Papyrus and Cerebrate have taken great pains to ensure that the topics offered to the contestants are

Unique
Ungoogleable
Interesting
Non-globe

Ignite ... Immerse ... Ingrain ... Instill ... Inspire new ideas

The deadline has just been extended to 13th Oct for Papyrus and 17th Oct for Cerebrate.

Regards,
Kida

Entrepid Entries Close

2005-10-07T01:35:00.000+05:30

After sitting in front of a laptop for 3 consecutive hours, Amit Sharma takes a breather, a cup of tea (courtesy Prashant Goyal... the Iris coordinator :-)) and time off to write this blog, and in the meanwhile Prasad Ajinkya is briefing the coders.

Thank you all for the overwhelming response to the qualifying round of Entrepid. We're moved :-)

And will Mr. Dangra (our senior, who had conceptualized Entrepid and conducted it during Iris 2004) take note that we have broken his record of entries for the qualifying round?

Rock on Team Entrepid.

Amit

Dial M for ........

2005-10-06T18:55:00.000+05:30

Last 2 days I have slogged more than I have done in my first year. Why???? Ok Let me tell you a tale.

My whole world revolves around M

* M for Marksman
* M for Marketing module of Entrepid
* M for Markstrat
* M for MADNESS
* M for Murder

In what is an example of divine intervention, our own Pope George told me to develop our in-house marketing game. Being the "quintessential" manager in the making, i agreed. Didnt know what i was getting into. Think about converting subjective marketing gyaan into equations. As of know I know more about equations then Einstein himself!!! And JAM yes, I am trying to make the game reflect the Star wars theme.

Same enthusiasm, got me into the marketing module of Entrepid. With a Sahai screaming at 100 decibels, navigating demand supply curves are next to impossible. Ended up with a formula to determine price whose main component is that price itself!!! Write Rewrite, thats the mantra.

Now the father of All Ms. Yes the Hindi M word comes to mind when I think about it. MARKSTRAT. Developing a marketing plan for a MNC to enter India. From package to price to MR to channels to FGDs to in-depth interviews all were part of the deal. Name a marketing funda and we were doing it here. Target segment: Women! (Dont be envious.... The going rate is one KitKat per interview. A bit heavy on your small pocket) Outcome: 2 days and 2 night outs later, the final report is taking shape. When we dispatch the report tomorrow, there will be a collective sigh of relief. Two free riders of repute, Kida and me, staying up and doing work. Actual work!!! :) Perks: Photo shoot with "Chicken".

Therefore, the feeling at 5am in the morning is the last 2 Ms. And my room....... well thats a different story altogether. Subject for next post.

But to tell the truth these Ms have been a pleasure. I have been working with some of the best people in 1st and 2nd year. The enthu of PGPI people is really contagious. Bodes well for the future of IIMI.

I know what all these will add upto...... M for gr8 MEMORIES !!!

Angshuman

The Good Old Days of Coding!

2005-10-05T06:18:00.000+05:30

If there is one hobby that I cannot leave even when I become a CEO, it will be coding. Yes, I like coding very much. Not that I am hotshot programmer or something like that, but I would like to spend a couple of hours every month doing some silly coding. It feels good when I sit with Madhu trying to get something done by it using programs.

So, when I had the challenge of running an online examination for more than 700 people I was more than excited. The challenge came in the form of Ashwamedha, our flagship event in IRIS 2005. We had enormous number of registrations and the first round of elimination involved running an online quiz. It’s a challenge not just because the number of users is intimidating, but the stakes involved are pretty high given the fact that other important schools have failed to do it even at half of the numbers. Everyone is actually looking up to IRIS and it’s a matter of pride for us to run the thing with out a flaw.

The oldest trick in the codebook for dummies came to our (sanchit, rahul, shameelo and myself are in the website team) rescue. Divide and Conquer. We created mirror databases to reduce concurrent load on each of the dbs. Then we created multiple slots with geographically separated junta. We randomized the questions to eliminate the chance of intelligent use of Microsoft technologies and Google assistance. Finally we limited the login time to a small window to ensure that everyone sees the question paper at the same time. The result… Well you need not ask me. The test was a grand success.

Chalo, Me off to catch some sleep now.

- Chandoo

Excitement, Enthusiasm, Entrepid

2005-10-05T01:46:00.000+05:30

As the countdown to Iris goes on to reach 36 days, enthusiasm in the Iris game coding room (unofficial, officially it's called B-116) is high. Now this room belongs to muscle-man Angshu aka Goswami aka Die-Hard, who's the coordinator for Marksman AND is modelling the marketing equations for Entrepid.

And as the deadline for submission of the Entrepid case analysis has been extended for 2 days today, we're still at a very primitive stage as far as coding for the game goes... I still haven't started with my coders on the interface (last year the interface work had started the first).

But what is all the more enthusing is the number of queries and responses we (Team Entrepid) have been receiving from B-school participants across the country, and the compliments on having 'something different' as an elimination round.

Anyway, despite conceding that we haven't made a lot of progress on the coding front yet, I would like to promise all that read this that Entrepid this year will be the most intuitive and engrossing game any B-school has produced. Amen.

Amit Sharma, on behalf of
Team Entrepid
I reside here

IRIS Blog Button

2005-09-27T15:30:00.000+05:30

Here is the blog button for IRIS 2005. Paste the following code in your blog/website to support our festival.

Tada!

IRIS 2005 Blog

2005-09-27T14:54:00.000+05:30

Why: To show the world a lighterside view of what IRIS is all about and how the event is shaping up.
Who: Everyone in IIM Indore PGP updates this blog
When: Whenever something interesting/funny/readable is happening

So, Welcome to IRIS 2005 Blog. You are here probably because you are either blog hopping or from IRIS website. Use the comments to tell us what would you like to read about the event. Please support the blog by linking it up in your rolls, linked lists.

Wait for more goodies like blogbuttons, photos etc...