Full Photo Album - http://picasaweb.google.com/ajay.iiitmk/IMSECOsumMeetup
On 21st April, IMSEC Osum Group organized its first Osum Meetup. The Osum Leader, Prakhar Bansal, invited me for the introductory talk. Due to the approaching exams, the turnout was very low (only 27 students). Still it was nice, as those students were lively.They were interacting with me & asked all the doubts that they could think of. We started with an introduction to FOSS, how it is changing world and how students can be benefitted by it in their careers. Even before the session could begin, lot of questions were raised. IMSEC is having a FOSS Group in which students are helping each other by teaching whatever each of them knows. Satyamitra is the leader for that group. So I explained how OSUM is of use to the students and provide the infrastructure to the FOSS group of the college. Explained the various features of Osum via a live-demo.
After explaining the various features of Osum, I told about Sun Academic Initiative. IMSEC registered for SAI in March 08, but due to lack of communication nobody among the present students knew about it (which I expected). I gave a live-demo of how to register on SAI Skillport website, how to register for online web courses and how to avail the SAI-Discount vouchers. Meanwhile various students asked some really good questions for which they were awarded with Osum Goodies(Osum Aero Bag + Sun Pen + OpenSolaris CD + Sun Studio CD + Netbeans CD).
Finally
I started with a Quiz session on FOSS. I asked 15 questions and 11 were
correctly answered by the students, which was really good. The winners
were awarded Osum Goodies (Osum Aero Bag + Sun Pen + OpenSolari
Then Satyamitra (the IMSEC FOSS group leader) and Prakhar Bansal (IMSEC Osum Leader) introduced the core-team members of the IMSEC Osum Group and assigned each one of them duties. Satyamitra explained what difficulties he faced as there was no infrastructure to support the FOSS Group activities and that OSUM gives the perfect infrastructure and resources to help/encourage the students.
After
the session, I had a discussion with Head of Depts (CS & IT), Mr.
Chitale & Mr. Khan regarding Osum & SAI. They pledged to
encourage students to participate in IMSEC Osum Group. The director gave approval to install OpenSolaris & Netbeans in the IT-Lab having 60 computers. Currently the
IMSEC Osum Group has 35 members and I feel it will catch up pretty fast
as the college reopen after the university examinations. All in all, a
nice experience at my Alma mater 