Wednesday, January 17, 2007

SASCON2007 - The Annual Sierra Atlantic Sales Conference

Today, we formally kicked off SASCON2007 (Sierra Atlantic Sales Conference 2007) at HICC (Hyderabad International Convention Center). The tag line for the event this time was Opportunity. The last time the tag line had been "Achieve the next".

The venue is really fabulous. The HICC is part of the Accor group, and the whole setup is not even a year old in Hyderabad. Everything is squeaky clean, spic & span.

As part of the kickoff, we had an inspiration sales video running, which i put together over the last few days. Nothing special, just mixed a bunch of photographs and text together.

We also had a traditional Hyderabadi Chowki dinner on the evening of the 18th. The Chowki dinner is symbolic of the Nizam rule, and was the royal formal dinner of that era. It involved sitting down on the cushions and eating out of silver plates and drinking from silver / golden goblets. While we definitely didn't have the golden goblets, we did have highly polished plates, and silver serving bowls. Each Chowki could accommodate six people, and all in all people had a whale of a time. The dinner was very well received and kudos definitely go out to the entire arranging committee, including us (as usual - no modesty!!!).

Will try and upload the video too that I had created, space permitting. For now, you can feast your eyes on some of the arrangements and decorations for the dinner.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Nothing special", he says, "just mixed a bunch of photographs and text together."
Don't you believe it! It was a superb set of snaps, painstakingly culled, and capped very appropriately - every single one of them! And the music was GOOD!!
Hey, you didn't give us the menu of the chowki dinner! Mahi, fill us in, girl!

Ramesh Ramakrishnan said...

Aww shucks, and here I was trying to keep a low profile.

Anyhow, will ask Mahi to fill in on the menu details. Hopefully, I'll have sorted out the upload issues revolving around the multimedia file by then!!!

Anonymous said...

Hello Aunty, am sure you'll find the entire menu mouth watering ...

But the kahlua and chocolate mousse
and the sticky date pudding were really sinful...
We also had this mango flavoured yogurt which was yummy.

The rest of the food was very light but amazing. Like the creamy scrambled eggs, lasagnes of grilled vegetables with mozzarella cheese melt, stir fried Asian greens, pasta tetrazini with corn & spinach, dal makhani, kothmiri roti, pudina paratha, mutter roti, veg pulao, bread rolls with butter, broccoli and cherry tomatoes with sour cream, mixed greens with mustard vinaigrette, dhokla with date chutney, etc, etc, etc...

There was a lot of meat too...murgh tikka lababdar, pan seared minced lamb medallions with shallots & mushroom jus, kheema mutter adraki, hunters style chicken with plum tomatoes and fresh mushrooms, etc, etc, etc...

And the list goes on...

Anonymous said...

Aunty, did you have an upset stomach yet?? after all that food??? ***

Anonymous said...

aaaaaargh! i can't take all this food talk! quite obviously, i'm in the wrong city :0(

Ramesh Ramakrishnan said...

Hey Orangejammies,

you may be in the wrong city, but we would look forward to having you come over. Will guarantee a great time!!!