Event

Time to quiz!

The MAIA Intelligence BI Quiz 2008, held during Express Group’s Technology Senate 6.0, was much appreciated by the CIO community. By Nivedan Prakash and Aditya Kelekar

The Business Intelligence (BI) vendor landscape has seen some frenzied activity in the last couple of years, with the large enterprise vendors, such as Oracle, IBM and SAP acquiring smaller BI players—all this highlighting the important role that BI is playing in the strategic planning for enterprises. In the backdrop of such developments, when it was announced at Express Group’s Technology Senate 6.0 (Dubai, August 21-24, 2008) that the sessions would include a series of quizzes on BI, it was not surprising that many CIOs expressed a lot of enthusiasm about the event.

And what an interesting event it turned out to be! The quiz, titled “Business Intelligence Quotient 2008–Quiz Your BI Intellect” and compered by Valentine D’Souza, founding editor of Express Computer, had five CIOs (finalists chosen from preliminary rounds) thinking on their toes to get the right answers, even as the audience comprising CIOs and vendors waited with baited breath to see who among their CIO friends would finally emerge as the winner. The quiz was held every day at the end of the conference sessions during the three-day Summit meet.

The aim of the quiz was to bring together the sharpest CIO minds. It was seen as a battleground for the cleverest, fastest and most knowledgeable CIO minds. Besides, the quiz was also a test of knowledge (in the BI space) and speed of response, in a highly competitive and entertaining format, and had attractive prizes. The quiz also aimed to highlight the importance of BI in enterprises among the CIO community.

Speaking about the quiz format, Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence, said, “Regarding the format of the quiz, we had planned to have a written elimination round of 10 questions at the start for all CIOs. From the contestants, five CIOs were invited for three rounds of live quiz questions, from whom the winners were to be selected. This written elimination round consisted of questions from business intelligence, data warehousing and related subjects such as corporate, personalities, brands, markets, etc. We had also planned to include few questions related to MAIA Intelligence, which were asked from the reading material shared to all CIOs at the start of the day. CIOs were then judged on accuracy and speed of their response.”

Day One winners of BIQ 2008 with MAIA team From left: Devendra Dosi, GM-IT, H & R Johnson (second runner-up), Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence, Sanjay Mittal, Head IT, Navin Fluorine (first runner-up), Shirish Gariba, CIO, Elbee Express (first prize), Ashwin Dedhia, Director, MAIA Intelligence, and Sanjeev Kumar, Head-IT, Philips Electronics

Day Two winners of BIQ 2008 with MAIA team From left: Vikram Kole, Head Marketing, MAIA Intelligence, Manish Gupta, CIO, Fortis Healthcare (first runner-up),  Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence, Zoeb Adenwala, CIO, Essel Propack (first prize), U C Dubey, VP-IT, Iffco-Tokio (second runner-up), Upal Chakraborty, CIO, DLF Limited., J Seshadri, Director IT, Emerson Network, and Ashwin Dedhia, Director, MAIA Intelligence

Day Three winners of BIQ 2008 with MAIA team From left: Ashwin Dedhia, Director, MAIA Intelligence, Sachin Goel, AVP-IT, ICICI Prudential, Prakash Pawar, CTO, Intrex India (first prize), Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence, Satish Pendse, CIO, HCC (second runner-up), Pratap Gharge, CIO, Bajaj Electricals (first runner-up), Vinay Bhatt, DGM-Technology, VVF Limited

“It was clear that exciting, knowledgeable, inspiring and most important, well-created questions would enthrall CIO participants,” added Mehta.

Every day, three prizes were declared. Apart from these prizes, there were several other prizes for the audience every day.

The winners of three days were as follows:

Prize Winners (Day One)
First Prize: Shirish Gariba, CIO, Elbee Express
First Runner-up: Sanjay Mittal, Head IT, Navin Fluorine
Second Runner-up: Devendra Dosi, GM-IT, H & R Johnson

Prize Winners (Day Two)
First Prize: Zoeb Adenwala, CIO, Essel Propack
First Runner-up: Manish Gupta, CIO, Fortis HealthCare
Second Runner-up: U C Dubey, VP-IT, Iffco-Tokio

Prize Winners (Day Three)
First Prize: Prakash Pawar, CTO, Intrex India
First Runner-up: Pratap Gharge, CIO, Bajaj Electricals
Second Runner-up: Satish Pendse, CIO, HCC

The winners were given ItzCash gift vouchers worth Rs 10,000 each. The first runners-up won ItzCash gift vouchers of Rs 5,000 each, while the second runners-up won ItzCash gift vouchers worth Rs 2,000 each.

nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com
aditya.kelekar@expressindia.com