One of the most important things that a professional education gives a person is the network of alumni. Surprisingly this is one of the least utilized aspects of most professional courses in India. I am an alumni of the College of Engineering Trivandrum or more fondly known as CET (Cee Eee Tee). As with other alumni associations of other professional colleges, except perhaps the IITs and the elite management schools, CET Alumni Association too has not really fulfilled its true potential.

I did not really think about these aspects until I did my masters from Penn State. In the US people have realized the potential of alumni networks and have been successfully tapping into it for there own individual benefits as well as for general social benefits. Having realized this aspect I have been putting lot of effort into building CET Alumni Networks and promoting networking among CET Alumni. One of the result of my efforts while in the US was a CET Alumni Networking Portal. The project has not been entirely successful but I have learned a lot of valuable lessons from my efforts towards it. I have not given up on the project for that matter.

Currently I am trying to promote CET Alumni Networking among the already established social networking frameworks of Orkut, LinkedIn and Facebook. There were already groups in these and where it did not exist I created them. These are the links corresponding to the CET Alumni groups in these networks. Do join them and promote them if you are a CET Alumni or a current student.

Do join and promote.

Group on Linked in for CETAA
Group on Orkut for CETAA
Group on Facebook for CETAA

There is also a very popular mailing list of cet-alumni
CET-India mailing List

and a public database of CET Alumni
CET India