What are enterprising, budding managers-to-be doing at XL when they are not busy with their assignments, reports, quizzes and innumerable other activities? Firing salvo on weird status messages on Yahoo messenger coupled with wit and satire. SMAXI (Status Message Association of XLRI) - that’s what the founding members christened it when this informal XLRI committee stuck roots on Monday, Nov 17, 2003.
SMAXI hopes to recognize the “lame” status messages put on yahoo messenger by some individuals. "To help them gain recognition in XLRI is our guiding principle” as Mr. Sudhir Singhal, the Self-appointed General Secretary of this committee puts it. The person with the most number of SMAXI “Lame” Awards in any given month gets the most-coveted SMAXI- Award. All prize-winning entries become property of the city of Jamshedpur and will be displayed in high visibility areas like teashops, paan shops, dhobhi ghat etc.
The Members to this association are encouraged to bring to the notice of the office bearers any status messages that they encounter and consider worth targeting. The person doing this also gets the ‘Good Samaritan Award’ for “extraordinary” service to Life@XL.
Since the launch of SMAXI, it has seen status messages ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous to the plainly desperate. SMAXI had to be on constant vigil to thwart any attempt at generating a deliberately lame status message. It reacted by opening up an espionage wing. Says a member of this wing on conditions of anonymity, “we are here to ascertain the authenticity of the ‘lameness’ before giving away any awards, lest a ‘deserving candidate’ go unrewarded”.
SMAXI subsequently introduced the concept of theme-based status messages wherein a theme would be announced a day earlier and the entries had to have something to do with the theme. “SMAXI is a revolutionary concept, one that we believe will be tremendously successful in eradicating lame messages on Yahoo Messenger” pips in Mr. Praveen Prakash, “Creative Head”, SMAXI. SMAXI’s punch line “You mind your status message. We'll mind yours” sums it all.
Meanwhile, the campus was abuzz with SMAXI related news and snippets. Suddenly students were getting more SMAXI-conscious. Corridor whispers, closed rooms, logged out Yahoo Messengers became the norm of the day. SMAXI was here to stay!
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For the bold and the adventurous only:
A sample some nominations to SMAXI and the committee’s comments (to be taken with a pinch of salt):
“CD is on share, access when lift is out of order”
SMAXI: How does this guy do it? More importantly WHY DOES HE DO IT? He will probably enter the SMAXI Hall of Shame if he keeps going on at this rate.
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