Random Grumblings- How not to conduct a quiz

Ok so this one's a quiz review for a quiz that wasn't conducted by me but by somebody else. And I couldn't resist writing about it so yes here I am.

A quick preview of what follows and the kind of quiz it was: One word, shady.

Now to talk about it at length-

What: Delhi Leg of Exchange4media's, 3rd edition of Media Quotient.

Where: The Park, Parliament Street

When: 6th May

Who: Sponsors(as far as I can remember) Star News, Reebok, Timex, Sandisk.

So it was pretty evident that a lot of money was splurged on the event, as is the case generally with other for the media-of the media-by the media events. And in a media event of this magnitude one did not expect that the preparation level could reach such depths. To a certain extent I can understand that since these media guys wanted to focus on the media fraternity the QMs were from various media houses. Namely, Sudha Natarajan (Deputy CEO, Lintas) and Senjam Raj Sekhar (Head, CorpComm, Bharti). Well on the verge of being labelled sexist [yet again] I'd say the latter was by far the better of the two. But that does not mean he was good. If on a scale of Rebecca Black to Beatles, Ms. ji was Rebecca Black then Mr. ji was Justin Beiber. Their preparation was conspicuous by its absence. It seemed that the organisers told them in the morning to stop by at Park to conduct a quiz while on their way back home from work. That's not it, even the organisers [or the event management team so-to-say] wasn't too sure of how to conduct a successful quiz successfully the third time. I don't know how it was last year but what I do know is if the CMO of Star News calls this event successful then he really needs to see a couple of Tata Crucible episodes. This quiz was at par with the worst of Daulat Ram and Gargi college quizzes.

I'll just now move on to pointing out a few mistakes that the organisers (QMs included) made-

1. The most important thing in a quiz is a good quizmaster to keep the show alive and not murder it like Ms. Sudha and Mr. Quizzer-14-years-ago did. By that I mean, a good speaker is not sufficient enough to be considered as a good quizmaster. Also, from personal experiences I've seen certain bad speakers who turned out to be decent QMs.
2. If you still want to persist with these set of QMs, fine. The least you can do is give them a couple of days notice. It looks easy to be a QM but trust me its not. Just because you have a paper with Q and As in your hand does not mean that you will read through it without stammering/stuttering and people will love it.
3. I have lost count of the number of Quizmasters that I have seen who keep repeating the basic mistake of giving hints after a couple of teams have passed the question. These two were no different. Here comes the icing on the cake from last evening- teams raise your hands or clap or press the office boy buzzer instead of a proper electronic buzzer in a buzzer round, we have highly educated;) third umpires to spot the fastest hand raiser/clapper et al. I mean come on how ridiculous can you get.
4. The event management team- You can't have the spotlight right from the front at a height of 6ft. in an event where the performer has to interact with the audience. The spotlights need to be at least 12 ft to 15ft high. 6ft. makes sense when there is a fourth wall, say for example in theatre, but it's good to avoid it in any case {of course if the play demands it a manual spotlight can be lower} This made life difficult for the QMs as well as the participants. The QMs couldn't interact with the audience without having their palms outstretched to block the halogens harsh light falling straight on their face, while the participants couldn't see the LCD screens placed in front of them properly.
5. Again for the event managers- A quiz does not need 20 pretty girls in skirts to be conducted peacefully. It needs one good quizmaster. You can do without these girls. Unlike the IPL girls showing legs does not add to the Glamour Quotient of the Media Quotient. Plus if you're anyway spending so much money then why not get the best mathematicians to do the scoring. A certain Ms Shakuntala Devi will surely help. Jokes apart, how difficult is it to do scoring in multiples of 10 for six teams. Remember(strictly for a quiz)- the lesser the organisers the better the quiz turns out to be.
6. QMs- It does not help your humour in anyway to tell everyone if you are a neighbour of a participant or your doodhwala is the same. Just do your job. I've conducted a good number of quizzes and as a result share a healthy relationship with a few of these regulars. And as a rule when on stage I don't tell the others that I know some participant beforehand[however popular that participant be], just to avoid any sort of controversies that may arise due to allegations of favouritism[yes, been there faced that;)].

If an aspiring professional quizmaster is reading this or even somebody who's reading this wants to conduct a quiz(zes) in his/her club/school/college keep these points in mind.

Well that gives me a topic for my next post.

But I can't forget- do the coke brrrrrr instead of raising hands in the buzzer round. That was hil-wait-for-it-larious.

Till then,

Happy Quizzing!

Richie Rich: O$ama

We all know that OBL was a rich man, thanks to his inherited wealth, but how rich? And did he actually live like one. Let’s find out.

Born in 1957, OBL was 10 when he inherited $300 million, when his father Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden died in a helicopter crash, thus countering the myth that poverty breeds terrorists. Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was an illiterate dock worker in Yemen who saved enough money to start a construction company. Born in 1908, he emigrated to Saudi Arabia at a young age. In 1930, he began a construction company, and after coming to the attention of first monarch of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, he eventually achieved such success that his family became known as “the wealthiest non-royal family in the kingdom.” The company, now the Saudi Binladin Group, is worth in excess of $5 billion.

Well saying that Papa Laden was worth a ton of money, shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that he had to feed a huge number of mouths. Papa Laden had 22 wives who, combined, bore him at least 54 children. Osama himself was believed to be the 17th child overall, the only child of Mohammed bin Laden and his tenth wife, Hamida al-Attas.

Coming back to Li’l Osama, his exposure to radical Islam began after he shunned Western universities and studied at a university in Saudi Arabia, where he learned from Muslim preachers that following strict Islam was a defense against corruption and Western decadence. And with 1993 and 2001already under his belt the more he succeeded in killing, the more radical he became. He also started issuing fatwas, with the most infamous beingMuslims should kill Americans – including civilians – anywhere in the world.

And as the world absorbs the news of Osama bin Laden’s death, government warnings of counter strikes show that the death of one man won’t kill Al-Qaeda. One reason: the terrorist group doesn’t need bin Laden for money.

Contrary to popular opinion, the death of bin Laden does not strike a blow to the organization’s financial health. OBL did not support Al-Qaeda through a personal fortune or a network of businesses. He did not utilise his business resources for Al-Qaeda’s operations, they essentially lived hand to mouth.

How Al-Qaeda survives has kept the world’s top intelligence agencies in a pretty pickle. This game of swat-a-fly has changed the way global institutions function. Banks must now take responsibility for knowing who their customers are and also keep a strict eye on any unusual behaviour.

Though Bin Laden’s death is an important moral blow to Al-Qaeda, but is it an irrecoverable blow is yet to be seen.