 Okay, what I am here on this course for is to learn about communication skills. And all of us know that the best way to learn anything is to teach it. So this is the first time that computer science department is taking part in this kind of an experiment if you like, where previously communication skills used to be taught to about 700 people in the convocation hall and it was taught for about half a semester. And as you can imagine, it did not work out very well. It was not interactive. Communication is about communicating and unless you communicate, how do you know whether you have learnt anything and how do you learn anything? Like those of you I have seen a good number here who have taken the embedded systems course. Unless you actually programmed the machines, you have not really learnt anything. So in the communication skills course unless you tried to communicate and been criticized by friends and colleagues and stuff like that, you do not really know where you are. So the way the faculty here have managed to sort this problem out is by having one hour where they give you the gyan in the HSS 699, the faculty, evidence seti, Parthasarthi and everybody. And the other remaining two hours with your department is meant for us to do a tutorial. Means more interactivity because the class size is smaller. I do not see how much smaller it is. But more interactivity and assignments and access sizes and all that we can do here. For the P P N P requirement of the course, I think we will go ahead with the same thing for now which is 80 percent attendance. If you are here, that means kind of you are on the job. So we will take attendance every week. Now what I wanted to ask is that would you prefer to come as it is at the moment for 2 1 hour slots in the morning or would you prefer to come for 1 2 hour slots say on a Thursday between 5 and 7. So how many people here will not be able to come to that 2 hour slot on a Thursday, will not be able to come. Hands up. How many? How many? A good number right. Any more? How many for whom that 5 to 7 slot on a Thursday is not convenient? 15 percent of the class right. What do you have that time? Out of interest? Okay. Anybody else? Yeah. Seminar meeting. Seminar meeting. Any others? Okay. Embedded systems. Embedded systems. What time? 5 to 6.30 is it? Okay. Anybody else? Seminar meeting. So then it makes sense to continue with this slot but what we might do is we might choose to divide the class up or whatever we will decide at the end of this week as to how best to do it. Yeah. How about Wednesday evening actually? 5 to 7 on a Wednesday evening. Okay. How many cannot do Wednesday evening? How many cannot do Tuesday evening? Okay. So you are stuck with this slot we will continue here for now and the only reason is that if we plan to have outside speakers this morning slot is a bit inconvenient. So on occasion we might shift it especially if we have outsiders speaking to us on say the Thursday evening slot 5 to 7 if we have outside speakers because this morning slot might not be very practical for some people. Anyway we will take it from there. So the way we are given certain amount of flexibility in how we want to play this part of the course. We have the choice of having a totally different parallel program to what HSS guys are doing or we can actually we are advised to just keep about 80% of the course the same and have 20% variations and all that. So what I am planning to do today and in the next session on Thursday is to individually ask each of you to tell us what you expect from this course individually right. That is if you like our requirements specification. So anyway so we have almost resolved these issues here okay and this is a tutorial as I said we have a certain amount of flexibility what do we plan to do with this flexibility that we have right. There are some very important skills which are not being covered which we feel are very important and especially for computer science people things like visual communication right graphical and visual communication. Because a lot of what we are doing is manifesting itself through a computer screen through various means like that to know how to use visual communication, how to use graphics, how to use fonts, how to use color for instance, how not to use right. People do not realize that there is a very very strong grammar and semantics of how to use color. Using the wrong color for a particular application can be a fatal thing right and we also want to talk about things like social networks right social networking and things like that the etiquette and how to use the social networking like Facebook, Twitter and all these kind of things. We want to talk a bit more about unconventional communication skills we will come down to that. We want to cover things that you might not have thought of right like body language and stuff like that. I will come to that there is a very interesting TED talk on body language by one lady called Amy I cannot remember her last name but it is very interesting what she says. She says that when you are in a position of dominance what do you do typically how do you manifest dominance in say a relationship or in an interaction and stuff like that. Can you give me some ideas what is a body language? He seen the TED talk you seen it right very effective. So he says that dominance is normally expressed by spreading yourself out in the animal kingdom right animals when they want to threaten you or ward you off what do they do they expand themselves either they expand the body or they expand the space which they cover right a snake will spread its hood tiger already the lion already has its mane right or some animals come out like that birds also put up the wings and put a weak show of size right and what happens when someone is showing submission not you when you want to show bicharanas I submit what do you do you contract you do this you do this you do this right you cross your legs fold your arms that is a very defensive kind of right do not attack me kind of thing what do the dog do it goes on its back and exposes its vulnerable parts right and the interesting thesis there is that if you adopt a dominant kind of posture you start thinking in a dominant way also right. So these are small small things which are very relevant to us in fact communication is about so what we are going to cover on much of the course especially the HSS part is quite rightly technical communication right report writing note taking English how to manage your language and stuff like that we shall all we shall also have that on this course right but we will try and inspire it from real life examples outside and stuff that you are doing like for instance we hope for instance to have you go away. So I will be giving you homework right we do not want to use the class in a lecture mode I do not want to stand up here and lecture to you guys because that has no sense right you have to learn communication by actually exercising it so this will be interactive and what we will be doing is giving you some work to do offline as homework you come prepared to class and what we will do is that in the class we will reserve it for discussions right. So what we might do is we might split the class up into two parts and take them as a smaller batch depending on the requirements of the topic that we are teaching they are roughly about 100 and one people in this class 105 I do not know we will split you up into two groups and according to that we will proceed right. So before we start so what we are going to do incidentally today I will come to that can anybody site here incidentally some instances that they have experienced of really good communication in any kind of context some really impressive instances of communication in any context any volunteers just some stories some instances and stuff like that really effective it can be a teacher it can be a manager it can be an employee it can be a parent a relative where you have seen a very effective instance of communication it can be a paper that you have read it can be an article it can be a book any volunteers. So that was communication skills where he is saying that actually the communication skill there was a listening skill how to listen right actually a lot of communication is about how to listen people do not realize that people say that communication means I should talk and impose and effect and you know communication is often a situation requires that you just listen intelligently and listening is also very difficult art right how to listen often you will also find that if you have a problem right just explaining that problem to somebody else helps you solve that problem. So what has happened in the process you are communicating not only with yourself in this process but with somebody else in trying to articulate your problem you have actually solved the problem this is very important insight in trying to articulate a problem you have solved it I was going through a maths problem with my daughter yesterday right she had a very simple problem but which made you think there is a little cistern there is a there are two pipes and one pipe will fill the cistern in 24 minutes and the other pipe will fill it in 32 minutes you have done this problem before right and the question is in how much time should I turn the first yeah I want to turn the first pipe off in 16 minutes how much time will you take to fill the cistern right. So actually it made me think a little bit not done these things for a long time and I realized that most of the problem here right most of the problem in this was actually articulating the problem as a formula in communicating to yourself what the problem is in identifying the problem once you identified it then you number crunch you do some manipulation and you got the answer. So a lot of our lives as engineers and people out there is spent in communication communicating with ourselves firstly communicating with other people communicating with groups trying to sort of understand interpersonal dynamics and making things happen right. Typically professor Fatak when we used to be the school of IT used to exot each student in our department that look your job is to go out there and become leaders either technology leaders or business leaders or what have you you guys should be leaders when you get out and at the end of your m tech you should have at least a patent or a paper in a good quality publication that is the least that we demand of you right and we are hoping that you guys will go out there and become leaders and ideally start companies not go and work for anybody if possible right. So we are expecting most of you see all of you are technically bright and you go out and be technical but we do not want you to go out and become technicians you know glorified technicians you sit in a corner and number crunch or write a program and stuff like that you guys have the capability if you come so far to do much much more and that much much more that you will do is prefaced by the quality of communication skills that you acquire or that you identify or that you cultivate right. Often an entire deal can be made or broken just on the way you have communicated many years ago right I will give my own example I went to Cambridge for an interview I was quite young that time and bit brash and there is one one aircraft which had flown at that time called the Gossamer Condor it was a pedal powered aircraft this is many many thirty years ago or more and in the interview I was asked I told the interviewer very crusty old English gentleman you know must be having his biases and all that that you must have heard about the Gossamer you might have heard about this aircraft which has just flown right and that is it I failed at that point I did not get through in that in that interview I said you might have known now this was a nervous student you know just trying to sort of share an idea by saying you might have known it is indicating that perhaps he did not know right perhaps he did not know and he got very irritated and then I could see that he just clamped up I could see it in his face that he clamped up and I have lost it right you are trying to convince somebody in an interview to take you on in this job right what is the body language that you should have there will be other guys hundred guys equally bright as you how will you ensure that you get the job you are trying to convince a guy to close on a deal on a business deal or an intellectual property agreement some kind of agreement right what are the kind of skills that you need to bring to bear in your body language in your the language that you use to interact with them or in your emails to them before you have the meeting right. So, I am hoping that we will be able to touch upon the importance of communication in many many different contexts and I want to also be driven by you guys right you should tell us also as to what you want out of this course. So, the way we plan to do it I will tell you right now ok. So, amongst the guest speakers we have a friend called Sudarshan Dheer who is a very very distinguished graphic designer right if we have time we will bring him on and have you seen the Hindustan Petroleum logo have you seen the UTI logo the unit trust India many many important logos like that are designed by him and for him designing a logo is a major major task he says logo is like a mantra right when you see a logo it elicits emotion inside you. So, whatever that company stands for is captured inside that logo and that is a very powerful form of communication it is like the mantra it is like a beach mantra he said you know. So, he gives a lot of importance to corporate image the visual language of the logo the colors that you use the way you kind of design it and stuff like that. So, it will be useful for you to speak to people like this to see how differently people think to sensitize you to visual communication. Sameer Sasaraput the colleague here will also take a module here on visual communication using graphics and videos we want you to make a small video which we look at at the end of the course right. He will teach you the language of how to make a video and how to use graphics like fonts colors things like that in your your presentations. Like for instance they are people who make a power point presentation which is full of so much noise visual noise colors designs this that and the other that the message that you want to put there gets lost in the process right you guys need to be told about this how to present how not to present what kind of language to use how to even dress many people do not realize you cannot go to an interview in Chappal and Bushert you know right you can if you want to create a certain impression in some places that might work right, but not in all places and plus trying to overdo yourself by having boot, tie you know suit and look you know artificially over smart and all that that might also not be right if you go to an interview with say Google or something like that right because what is the company looking for it is looking for guys who are mavericks who are very bright good programmers this that and the other is not looking for a totally conventional guy you know who will just do what he is told right that is also communication the way you dress the way you carry yourself ok. So what are the skills so few of the skills right are there in your HSS 699 course program the note taking report writing English and so on later writing how to write a scientific paper how to prepare a presentation and so on we will also go into things like visual communication graphics how to use color fonts and all that kind of things we will also try and address some scenarios right how to prepare for an interview how to sell an idea whether it is to your guide to your colleagues or to a venture capitalist and things like that how to talk to a stranger right how to negotiate there is a very interesting course I went to when I was in industry on just selling how to sell and then I realized that that applies to everything in life because you are constantly trying to sell something either whether it is a course whether it is an idea to a seminar student or a m tech student or whatever it is trying to convince them that this is the right way to go how do you convince you do not say that do this there will be a resistance right a good way to be to find out what the person wants to do and see if they can be a marriage between what the person wants to do and what you want them to do right that is also an instance of communication ok. So, we will go into bits of that other skills how to complain right this seems like a very superficial or silly thing but it is not how to complain see always remember that you have this attitude you can see only what you want right how can you not understand he is so unreasonable but do not you realize that everybody is reasonable right he feels he is absolutely reasonable right but he sees things totally in a different way from his perspective and you think you are absolutely reasonable and you refuse to see each other's point of view and there is a conflict there right. So, why do not you presume that everybody has a reasonable point of view and then come to some agreement right things like this how to request something you know if you request something in the wrong way you do not get it one master of this is my daughter from the very very young age right I have learned this very very formidable negotiation skill I have still to win with her like for instance papa yeh chah yeh nahi milega acha yeh nahi milega to kya milega yeh milega right nahi milega yeh milega right acha nahi kyu nahi aaj nahi milega acha to kab milega right. So, she pins you down that at this point you are not going to give it but at some future point weaker assertion you kind of get manipulated into giving that kind of thing manipulated or negotiated. So, now I have realized that you cannot win at negotiation you go to say this is it and not argue about it otherwise you get. So, negotiation is a very important skill like for instance if you are trying to sell somebody an idea right one way to do it is hey this is the idea take it or leave it. Now, if it is very important to you and he says I leave it then you lost what do I do now where do I go there is nobody else I can go to and so on right. So, how do you convince? So, you will say you do not want to do this why get behind the persons reasons because they might have a very reasonable point of view as to why they do not want to do it and then bring them to your point of view as to and then come to some kind of a compromise right that is what selling is about negotiation is about and all these kind of things verbal and non-verbal communication diction and delivery sensitivity to language all these things will come out poison body language speech and drama right often I get a student who wants to do something and they come with some ideas are very bright and I know that and he has got the answers and I know that, but the way he talks to me kind of is totally confused. In fact, one of the most important skills that you guys learn in your seminar and your report writing and so on is how to articulate your ideas how to be a bit more confident and I often wonder hey if this guy was just a bit more loud and confident and believed in himself a bit more he would go so much more far, but this has to come from within and it has to be pointed out to you and public speaking. So, that will also happen as we go along and the lost manual of communication skills this is a former student of ours who is left us now Akshar his name is and we are discussing the communication skills course and he came up with all sorts of ideas and so we discussed that should we put this into the course and stuff like that how to say no you come up with this situation many times you have done some homework and your friend wants to copy now it is a very nice idea and you do not want to share it how do you say no or someone wants to make you do something that you really do not want to do how do you say no it is very difficult how to understand people and how to understand yourself. So, we have a few guest lecturers in this thing one is they coincidentally have the name Prakash. So, we have a Prakash Vedya here who is with Professor Fadak and we will cover with him skills that I want to learn how to proofread. Proofread has its own language understanding language understanding English and how to proofread a document. So, we will go through that like for instance you will go away and see a TED talk as homework you will make a summary of what you saw in the TED talk and then you start correcting your script and show you the language with which you can indicate the corrections in your script. At my age still I have not learnt it is a very important skill like I have never learnt to type and I have never learnt this, but I also recognize it is a very important skill to have you should learn it like if someone gives you a document tomorrow you guys are going to be managers lots of documents are going to come to you. So, you will want to correct them and give them back there is actually a language for correction how many of the how many of you know this the proofreading language 1 or 2. So, it will be a good exercise how to manage people it will come out in this thing how to exercise authority and how not to exercise authority. So, if you read Confucius and all these guys the good king leads from behind what is that mean you do not lead people you do not manage them by saying do this and do that. You lead them by understanding who they are what they want out of life and guiding them towards that direction basically which also suits the group how to deal with the plagiarism. So, there is a big dose of ethics on this typically unfortunately our educational system is such the pressures are so high cut pastes has become like a kind of standard mantra everywhere. Anytime I see a students report where the language is very good my heart sinks right it is come to that because I know that there is some good word here. If I see something it does not mean that you go and put errors in your thing to kind of disorient your guide, but just remember this is a good opportunity where without fear of failure you can try an alternative way to being. Honesty and earnestness is something whose value is absolutely you know underestimated in this country right because most of the time we are actually users of other people's IP. Most of the time we are users of other people's intellectual property we do not have a culture here of creating intellectual property ourselves unfortunately because there is not enough new products being developed in this country there not enough new software that is changing very fast right, but what one thing that you find abroad where a lot of new products and services are being created is a very very strong emphasis on intellectual property and the protection of it. That is why at IIT we have a very very strong movement on open source software open source everything basically. Do not use MATLAB use Sylab use LibreOffice wherever you can use Linux wherever you can because once you go out into industry these softwares cost a hell of a lot of money right. We can save a lot of money in this country in foreign exchange by having open source software so that is a big big mantra here. How to deal with request for unfair help like say you are on a course and your friend is a TA and kind of you know you want to make things easier life is so difficult right cannot I just ask him for some help and this and that, but in the process what happens you know you do not learn and you are here to learn and copying and kind of you know getting help kind of robs you of the opportunity of struggle and the struggle is where the learning actually happens right. Any time you have taken a shortcut you actually lose out you are the loser. So, this is a great gymnasium here to build up your strength and it is like going to a gym and getting some other guy to do your exercise you know right. This is the place to make your mistakes to you know flex your intellectual muscles and get things done and struggle right that is where everything comes from. How do you insure a freeloader you are in a group of five people and you are doing all the work and these guys are not doing anything he goes off he does not even come come towards the end of the class signs and goes off or whatever it is right. How do you insure that they get that you? How to maintain trust in a group? How to build long lasting relationships? This is what Akshar had come up with last time. Other issues how to deal with failures right. So, these will be side effects hopefully of the things that we do here. How to get rid of guilt or regret about things that went wrong and cannot be fixed now right. These are all elements why am I going into this? This is communication skills course. The reason is because this is the only place perhaps in your curriculum where we can tackle out of the box thinking or things that other things might not deal with and these are very relevant right and we bog down ourselves a lot by these kind of things right. How to get rid of guilt and regret about things which went wrong like things that you should have learnt and exam maya nai kia or something else personal relationship or something like that is bugging you all the time and it is affecting your work right and at your age there all those kind of things right which are bugging you a lot relationships and things like that. How do you not let it screw you up basically? How to get rid of things that keep on eating you right. Once you got experience and you been through this mill then you can manage your emotions and all that much better but I hope that we will go into little bit of this also. Detecting suicidal tendencies and overcoming this we all go through this right it is quite natural you think oh my god what a pain right. Let us finish it right but it is I mean these things are absolutely pointless if you see and once you go beyond it you see what a pointless thing it is. How will I know if I need help right and this is what your the faculty advisor ought to be doing with you guys. Anger management and building the compassion and empathy. So, I will share a few of these slides with them and kind of who is the faculty advisor by the way? Uday Khedkar. How often do you get to meet him? Never twice. I think we need to meet you guys more often because I am also guilty of that whenever the faculty advisor the few meetings that we had made a big big difference and I feel that we need to engage you on a regular basis. So, now what I am going to do is this is the part where I will introduce you to few of the people there is the Prakash Bediya you met here. The TAs on the course are Piyush Ankith right at the back is Avishak here okay. Lohit. Lohit is a lead TA I think you all grown to love him know and love him on the embedded systems course if you have not been there then I am sure you kind of know him from the other options that you have. But what we are going to do now pardon? Yeah. So, what we are going to do we have only till 9.30 now and I wanted to video every single one of you right and what we wanted you to share with us is your name your role number where you come from the faculty who you will be working with in your seminar or whatever and what you come to IIT for or what you and what you want out of this course this is most important. What do you want out of this course? This is if you like my requirement specification this class and the next class I just want to video you guys. So, I will have some interaction at the beginning of the class then I want each of you to speak for 30 seconds about this name role number where you come from right what brings you your faculty advisor I mean in your MTP or seminar right why you came to IIT and what you want from this course and we are going to respond to that in the sense that I want to take all this input into account when we actually roll out this course. So, most important thing is what you want from this course and try and make it interesting or try and make it a bit more just say I want to learn communication skills right make it a bit more specific and individual right you must be each of you must be having something that you want to crack right something that you want to resolve I want to know what that is and let us see if you can address those things on this course and make it meaningful to everybody. So, we do not want to blindly ape what the HSS department is going to do we have the option here of really personalizing this programming and making it meaningful for everybody right. So, I would like to do that and we will do whatever is required to achieve that right. So, here is a request shall we go by roll number 0 0 1 first who is 0 0 1 fine. So, I think the most fair thing is that we go by roll number we are videoing you and you all been invited to write your name and roll number right on a thing this is not like a convict that you just keep on holding it here and right this is just to at the beginning keep it there. So, I know who is video clip that is. So, when Sachin he edits the videos and breaks the into bits we know who you are it makes a job easier you do not have to hold it there all the time hold it at the beginning then you can right. So, we want to know who you are faculty advisor where you come from what you came to IIT for we know that kind of but what you want out of this course is more important to us and then we will try and give you that. So, much of this class the remaining part and the next class will be in this board there will be a bit of introductory lecture at the at the beginning of the next class based on the input we have got and then we will do this and then in the next week we will go into the actual the course itself. So, what time do you have to leave 30 seconds is all that you have. So, we will take the first three may be right and this is your rehearsal for next time on Thursday morning. Hi my name is Mandar Joshi I was born brought up in Nagpur I am here at IIT to learn more about machine learning and hopefully to publish at a top conference in this semester I am working with Professor Samayen Chakraborty on a query intent and interpretation. About this course since I hope to publish at a top conference I hope to learn more about writing a good paper and also about oral presentation skills. Hi my name is Naman Mishra I am from Muradabad UP I am currently working under Professor Prasottam Gulgarani for my seminar and I came to IIT for getting some more specialization computer science and also for getting good placement. What I want from this course is good presentation skills mainly and how to face a large crowd and present yourself. Myself Vinit Kumar Gupta I am from Jaipur Rajasthan I came to IIT for machine learning and DIP. I want to learn I want to learn I want to improve my presentation skill and communication skill from this course. I am doing my seminar under Sarachandran. Hello everyone my name is Vivek and I am from Hyderabad Andhra Pradesh and I am doing my seminar under Sunitha Ma'am I came here mainly because I was interested in machine learning and I want to learn better presentation skills to reach a wide audience from this course. We will record this over the next few classes maybe not just the next class because I mean just to do this in the entire class would be a bit misplaced. So this gives you a flavor I can be reached at my computer science department well email address and Loit will inform you about any changes or adaptations that take place. So now we next meet at 9.30 in this place on Thursday slot 4A 4C that is okay fine yeah please retain those sheets that you have you'll need them next time thanks.