The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : A merry Christmas for techies

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 25, 2007
ePaper

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

A merry Christmas for techies

Deepa Kurup

From office parties to virtual bashes, the city’s IT and BPO staff are having a ball

BANGALORE: Remember all that elaborate planning and the last-minute procrastination in front of the mirror to brace yourself for that Christmas party at the office? Now replace that with a keyboard touch up and a connectivity check, as you get ready to paint the virtual town red at that virtual office party.

IBM, in a bid to orient its newcomers to Second Life — a concept where every user is an avatar of himself/ herself logs on to the 3D intranet and helps themselves to surprise gifts and virtual cake — will host an online Christmas party where employees from all over India will log onto their internal servers and have the wildest time ever.

“We believe that Second Life is a thing of the future and are taking this as an opportunity to familiarise our employees with this mode of communication,” says Sunethra Banerjee, head of Corporate Communications.

So you don’t need to be rotund to be Santa Claus or melodious to sing a carol… it is a merry virtual Christmas after all!

“Besides all this, we have bay decorations and Christmas cakes and internal competitions anyway,” says Prakash P., an employee.

Just like all other festivals, Christmas is a tad merrier at BPOs when compared with the festivities at their more serious software counterparts.

Though most companies cautiously maintain that they are secular and do not believe in religious festivals, almost all of them have decorations and play secret Santa.

“It is a lot of fun to find out who your secret Santa is. We buy our own cakes, and stop counting calories for a couple of days,” says Savitha S. of TCS.

Software giant, Yahoo! India, went out of their way to make their employees go “Yahoo!”

The Yahoo! year-end party for employees and their families involved everything from a live band to adventure sports.

While most companies are making sure that their employees have a darn good time during the holiday season, others like Hewlett Packard (HP) are letting them free for a holiday.

“We close down internationally from December 24 to January 2 so that our employees can actually spend time with their family,” says Bina, Corporate Communications, HP.

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