Follow the SUN ... Ajay - The Main Event, The Headliner, The Showstopper (^_^)

Here in India Sun CAs under Road Show Program are going to colleges and giving presentations about openSolaris, SAI, openSPARC etc thereby encouraging students & teachers to use Sun's open source technologies. Recently I visited my home in Ghaziabad (National Capital Region, India) and during the 10 days I stayed there I covered four engineering colleges. I could have covered more but I've to return kerala ASAP to complete my internship project. I was in ghaziabad for almost 5 years & know lot of things about the colleges & students in that region. The colleges were :

1. Krishna Engineering College

2. Institute of Technology and Science

3. Raj Kumar Goyal Institute of Technology

4. IMS Engineering College (My B.Tech College)

I went to two more colleges (Indraprastha Engineerging College and Institute of Management Education), but they were having Mid-Term examinations, so no donuts there.

1. Krishna Engineering College

Date : 28-03-2008 (Friday)

Time : 3 PM - 5 PM

Venue : Seminar Hall

Strength : 140 (Including 5 Faculty members + HOD)

2. Institute of Technology and Science

Date : 29-03-2008 (Saturday)

Time : 11 AM - 12 PM

Venue : Lab

Strength : 10 Faculty members including HOD

3. Raj Kumar Goyal Institute of Technology

Date : 29-03-2008 (Saturday)

Time : 2 PM - 3 PM

Venue : HOD Office

Strength : 5 Faculty members including HOD

4. IMS Engineering College

All students were not free at the same time as they were having classes after one week of vacation, so had to do the presentations according to their schedule in two free slots.

First Slot Date : 31-03-2008 (Monday)

Time : 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Venue : Seminar Hall

Strength : 75

Second Slot

Date : 31-03-2008 (Monday)

Time : 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM

Venue : Seminar Hall

Strength : 80

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Results :

1) All four of them applied for SAI

2) Will install openSolaris in Labs

3) Will blend the SAI web-courses with the university curriculum

I would like to share my presentation experience & the approach. (almost same in all the four colleges). The HODs (CS/IT/MCA) of all the four colleges were very enthusiastic about the event & arranged the needed resources. In first 30 min I presented Sun Academic Initiative. Discussed about the web courses, certifications, e-practice exams, open source softwares, SDKs etc. You might be knowing that other companies are also bringing forth their online web-courses (Ex : IBM, Microsoft, iCarnegie etc). Its just bombardment of web-courses & students get bored very easily by just reading online text (they are already plunged in university syllabus). I told them that in SAI, the web-courses are not just like another web-course. They are high quality material & kind-of audio tutorials with Flash presentations. Emphasized on the fact that they'll receive online Sun Certificate after sucessfully completing every course. And then stressed on certifications & heavy discount by Sun on its certification examinations. Quoted few true incidences regarding problems if one is not certified and why one needs to be certified in a technology. I knew that students will listen to me until I'm talking about good job prospects. Then showed them the salary comparision graph of a Sun Certified professional as compared to other certified professionals. Now a short Quiz, gave sun goodies to students. After 10 min I started the next presentation i.e. OpenSolaris. Told a brief history of solaris & how it became open. Then all the cool stuff that no other OS offers other than openSolaris for FREE. Discussed the tremendous technologies (DTrace, ZFS, Zones etc) & SDKs that are preinstalled in openSolaris and the relevence to their curriculum & job prospects. The presentations were attended by the network team also and they were really keen to learn solaris. At the end summarised the benefits. After that again Quiz and gifted sun goodies to students. Unfortunately I had very little number of DVDs so only few of them got the DVDs during presentation. But I told them clearly that they all can get FREE openSolaris DVDs couriered to them for ZERO charge via sun website. Lastly I asked for more doubts & questions from students and got blasted by the questions & doubts. I'm happy that I could answer more than 90 % questions. Gave few Solaris Startup Kit DVDs for good questions also. After the presentations were over the students were really enthusiastic about trying out solaris on their machines. And that was very satisfying to me --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Problems faced :

1) The only obstacle that can come in way of SAI web courses is that most colleges don't supply/allow headsets to the students for use in labs. The students have to buy a headphone or headset themselves.

2) The teachers were asking whether these online web-courses can be downloaded or not. I didn't knew about it so I said currently its available only online & as the courses are being updated frequently its better to use the material online. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suggestions for Road Shows :

1) Its strongly suggested to fellow CAs that they should give a brief half hour presentation to the institute faculty so that they should know that its very serious & not just like any other presentation. Also its the faculty who will help the students in using the Sun resources.

2) Students & faculty should be told clearly that apart from downloading the softwares, openSolaris etc can be ordered absolutely for FREE because in most colleges students can't download more than 5 MB & also don't forget the low internet bandwidth. So there is no point in telling them that they can download the openSolaris, SDKs etc from sun website.

3) I have seen that in all the four colleges students are not using linux (maybe because of some myths). And it is 90 % possible that this is same case with students of other colleges in that region and most UP engineering colleges. So it is great opportunity for sun to capitalise on this and I request my fellow CAs to do the road shows a little aggressively.

4) One more information. Many IT companies are hiring in bulk from ghaziabad & noida region (as Noida & Gurgaon are becoming IT Hubs). So if these colleges and similar colleges in other regions are targeted then the sun community will grow like big-bang. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------