Conquest ended today. Yes, well it doesn’t sound that melodramatic considering it started yesterday.
It was also my first Conquest as the member of CEL. I had missed last years Conquest for I was away in Singapore taking part in IMS Quotient, a inter-college quiz competition. This years Conquest was interesting with a variety of speakers to cater to everyones interests.
The talks were good. Meeting the speakers in person was even better. I personally enjoyed interacting with Mahesh Murthy (the interaction was limited to me asking him a couple of questions), Prajakt Raut (who surprisingly has read this blog), Sharad Kamra, a consultant for NEN who has been really helpful and sees great potential in CEL, Gaurav Mishra (half of the linkbacks from this blog are directed to his) as well as Mary Joyce, a big digital activist (who I later found out was one of the think tanks behind the Obama campaign).
Listening to these guys speak at Conquest was interesting because everyone got something new to the table.
Mahesh Murthy’s speech was easily the largest crowd puller with some of the audience oozing out of the hall due to lack of seating (as well as standing) arrangement. But I think what impressed me the most was his “don’t throw this crap at my face” attitude. And when we did, he gave us a piece of his mind (and from what I heard from folks who had seen him at Eureka last year, he was being way too kind).
Start-up showcase was also a huge hit. Right after Murthy’s talk, undreds flocked to the stalls of Incredible India, Rang De, One Billion Minds and Greenobin. Rang De interested me quite a lot, specifically for the really low interest rate at which they gave loans wrt to some of the other players out there. I had also recently learnt of their new addition, Rang De education. I would have loved to have a chat with them about their future plans, but then the time didn’t permit me that. Oh well, I am sure to run into them sometime in the near future. One billion minds also seems like an exciting crowdsoucing project targetting a niche segment, the students. Greenobin would’ve made a killing had Satyam approached them before things got out of hand 
Lots of hard work went behind this Conquest especially becase it was so early into the semester, so there was really not much time to take it easy. The hospitality team according to me did a fabulous job with my pals Karteek and Shruti leading the way and a very able team of juniors backing them up.
Kudos to everyone who was associated with Conquest 2009 and helped make it a success.
Do follow the conversation and tweets that revolved around Conquest at #conquest2009
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