The Paper Presentaion Conquest

This has been a long awaited post. It narrates the story of how two people Hasan Poonawala and Harshvardhan Pande, participated and won 3 paper presentation contests, on a relatively unknown topic called Swarm Intelligence. What will be told here are bare facts, no exaggeration whatsoever!

A bit of a background on this one. Hasan Poonawala and Harshvardhan Pande are ex-Vincentians. And currently COEPians. Once in 2nd year, Harsh just randomly asked Hasan to write a paper with him. They dropped the idea due to lack of time and a topic.

Then suddenly in 3rd year somewhere in January, a senior told them about a Paper Contest being held at PVG. Suddenly these two guys got a 'keeda' to do a paper.
They had not much with them, just an old collection of notes on Ant Systems, they expanded the idea to include Swarm intelligence the 'baap' of Ant Systems.

Now, 3 days before the deadline for submitting the paper, Hasan and Harsh suddenly realized that they had to write the paper in IEEE format. Something that they hadn't ever done or seen in their lives. Then a very nice gesture by a senior helped. She gave them, her own paper, to see the format. [The 2 HP's thank her for that]

Now came the turning point, both of them were Vincentians, brainy but very lazy. For the next 2 and a half days they did nothing. Then Hasan came over to Harsh's place to start and finish the paper. At about 4pm Hasan reached Harsh's house. Instead of work on the paper, they were busy watching funny videos like this one Sarah Silverman - I'm f***ing Matt Damon

It was about 8pm when they finally started to do some work. By 10 pm they had finished just the 1 page Abstract. Then Hasan went home.
While on the Internet they searched for more info, more videos, more pictures. Eventually changing the paper content by at least 25%.
By about 1 am, the paper was done. But the PPT, wasn't yet born. It took them about an hour and still only 4 slides were done. Then Hasan fell asleep.
The event timing was actually 11 am, but apparently the two HP's were under the impression that their timing was 2 pm.

When Hasan woke up, miraculously the PPT had 32 slides ;)

Then at about 1 pm Harsh went to Hasan's house, they spoke to the organizers and somehow got the time "shifted" to 2pm. Apparently they had a class test :D

It was 1:30 when they realized that 32 slides would never fit inside 10 minutes of stipulated time. So they canceled some slides and reduced it to 27. They then left at about 1:45 and reached PVG at 2:10.

At PVG they realized that they hadn't decided who would speak for how long. It was decided that Harsh would talk for 4 minutes and Hasan would use the rest including the change-over time.

The following events then took place:

Harsh started off, explaining each slide with a lot of 'impromptu' talk added. Things were going well when Hasan suddenly checked the clock, 7 minutes were already over of the 10 minutes they had. A panick stricken Hasan changed slides at the rate of knots. He had just about 2 and a half minutes to finish 14 slides. Eventually he did it in just under 4 minutes. When the PPT finished Harsh thought they were doomed. But then started the questionnaire round. Hasan and Harshvardhan then "kicked ass". Answering each and every question.

Important incident -
Some other competitor was sitting in the audience and was purposely asking questions that he thought the two HP's wouldn't know. One of them was "You have explained the theoretical parts of Swarm Intelligence... but it s not been applied anywhere..." he said it with a tone that said - " this technology is not useful"

A furious Harsh then cut short the question and said "In Belgium a network called Ant Net uses Swarm Intelligence. You may not have heard of it since we only hear of most thing in US, and not much about technological breakthroughs in Europe. If you go to Belgium you can actually use Ant Net. OK!" with a tone that said "fuck off loser"

Now obviously the guy had never heard of Ant Net, neither was he going to Belgium in the near future, but what it did was give the judges a confirmation of the fact that the 2 HP's knew their stuff well. Lesson learnt, dont try to fuck with the 2 HP's!

A judge then asked us about algo's based on swarms other than ants and bees [the 2 they had focussed on] Hasan then came up with algos based on Bats, actually used in the movie Batman. Lesson learnt watching Hollywood flicks helps in various unexpected places like a Paper Contest.
I remember Hasan saying "Dude, thank god we were from Vincent's." Because good communication skills were an asset at that contest, the first ever of our lives. We had never ever seen a Paper Presentation... never ever!
After that round was over Hasan and Harsh were confident that they'd get something good from this. Turned out that they had won 1st prize.

A prize distribution followed where the Chief Guest was Chandu Borde, the guy cracked some funny jokes in his speech. Hasan and Harsh made a cool Rs. 4,000 from that event. They split the money. Harsh gave a treat to his friends with that money.

Then they had a Paper contest later at SIT where they came 3rd. The previous day during the elimination round the 2 HP's reached SIT 1 hour late and registered for the elims minutes before the last PPT was done! They gave their most hurried and under prepared performance and yet qualified for the finals.
The next day they gave the PPT, with Harsh sitting on top of the table meant to keep the laptop on. The questionaire session was also good. The judges took a really long time to give the results. Apparently the 2 HP's were tied for 2nd place with two females from Cummins. But they were declared 3rd in place, because a tie was not allowed. The only reason they came 3rd was because they didn't make any working application on Swarm. The one's who stood 1st and 2nd were final year students who had made PPT's on their B.E. Projects! Harsh that day swore he'd win another 1st prize and not rest until then and Hasan agreed.

Then after a really long time just before the End Sem exams, they decided to give it one more shot. Now Harsh that week had been very ill. Miraculously the day of the contest, his fever dipped below 102 and came to 100 degrees. the lure of a 1st prize was too much. He forced some medicines down his throat and left for MIT.
The previous night, the 2 HP's decided to make a Java application to add to their PPT. Bhushan Jain was told the entire logic at 11:30 pm and in an hour using NetBeans he made the application for DTSP and mailed it to Harsh. [Harsh is yet to give a treat for the MIT Paper Contest]

The next day again at around 1:00 pm they met at Hasan's place and revamped the slides. Hasan added stuff on Web Graphs and also slides from his Text Classifier. Harsh said, "If we don't win after this, I'll kill someone" Luckily Harsh didn't kill anyone that day!

They went to MIT, once again just on time. They gave a good performance, and then the questionnaire round started. What followed was a slew of question by a very intelligent and knowledgeable judge, he was literally screwing the 2 HP's, but they stuck through and gave a few great answers and 'fekofied' the rest! Once the round was over they were literally convinced that they had no chance. They waited an hour for the results nevertheless. Hasan walked to Harsh after seeing the results and said 'Dude, 1st'
Harsh said 'Don't joke man'
Hasan: 'No dude, seriously we won'
Harsh: 'Check again'
Hasan: 'I swear'
Harsh: 'What the fuck! Awesome'

They won another 2,000. But most importantly they won their 3rd paper contest, something that's not very common. Each time they had different slides, different concepts, different approaches. the last was by far the most professional. The contests helped them to such an extent that making a PPT later for class seminars and such stuff was seriously easy. Public speaking was never a problem for them but the victories made it all the more easier. Harsh and Hasan have ever since, never practiced before a PPT.

The Paper Presentation contests and their conquests were a brilliant experience, something they will never forget. The amount of time pass they did and yet managed to win, proved that they had some skill in them. Let's see if the 2 HP's sweep the Paper Contests next year, it'll certainly be a new topic, it'll certainly be last minute, and it'll certainly be prize winning!



Epilogue ... Harsh - Harsh had his Computer Networks Viva in May. All day the students ahead of him in roll number order were getting screwed. There were horror stories after each batch of 3 students came out of the viva. Harsh was waiting in the adjacent lab since 12 pm for his viva. He finally walked into the viva lab at 7:30 pm. The external taking the viva was the same man who took the case of the 2 HP's at MIT. Harsh felt a shiver run through his spine.

Harsh sat down on the chair, hoping the man wouldn't recognize him. The external said - "If I am not mistaken, you were at MIT for a Paper Contest?"
Harsh: Yes, sir.
External: Did you win?
Harsh: Yes sir, first prize.
External: You should thank me.
Harsh: Thank You sir!

The external the gave hell to Harsh and the other 2 batch mates. After a barrage of question, all of which he attempted, the following occurred...

External: Last question for you [looking straight at Harsh]
[Harsh made a silent prayer to God]
External: If I have to connect 802.1 and 802.3, what should I use.
Harsh: Bridge
External: Sure? [With an evil grin]
Harsh: Yes.
External: Ok, I will tell you, I am giving you a router or a bridge which will you use?
Harsh: Bridge
External: You can go! [No expression on his face]

Harsh left, showing no signs of tension, but internally he was thinking "I'm fucked!"
Turns out Harsh got the highest marks in the class for CN viva. So the Paper Contests, turned out to be the best thing that happened to him in 3rd Year!


Epilogue... Hasan -
Hasan gave an interview for an IBM Internship after clearing the aptitude test in which he spent 20 minutes explaining 'Swarm Intelligence', he got the Internship easily! ;)