The inauguration of the SRKNEC Sun Club was like an enigma... After starting the activities at beginning of last month, we had to wait till the end of it to officially inaugurate it! In the mean-time, I had to convince my faculty, find the day where the Auditorium is free.. and also the students are free..It also got postponed once! But finally we got thru all the hurdles and inaugrated the Sun Club on 30th August!
Before I begin saying anything, I would like to mention that the students at SRKNEC are really talented but unfortunately I must admit that there is lack of awareness... So, it will take some time to really change the predefined mind-set and understand the importance of Open Source. But I can guarantee that Shift will happen!!
So, during the course of the month we had many small activities. I have listed them here.
Inauguration and Open Source talk:
No of students present: 132
Date: 30th August 2008.
Time: 1 - 2 PM
Venue: SRKNEC Auditorium.
At the start, Prof M.B.Chandak, HOD CSE, introduced students to the CA program. Then he officially announced me as the Campus Ambassador, and Vasusen Patil as the President.
Shift Happens + Open Source
Then I took over.. Firstly I explained - Shift Happens (ssome of slides were taken from presentation by Karl Fisch). This took the students by surprise and got things rolling...
Next I explained why we need to change our outlook and also consider giving importance to things that are outside the curriculum.. And the most happening thing is opensource!! The significance of the Participation Age was also highlighted!
Then the opensource model was explained, and various open source technologies from Sun were introduced namely : Netbeans, Opensolaris, Java, SunSPOT, GlassFish, MySQL, OpenSparc, OpenOffice...
Students were asked questions and were rewarded with chocolates, CDs and DVDs for correct answers!
Introduction to SAI and plans of Sun Club:
Vasusen Patil then took over and introduced the SAI(Sun Academic Initiative) , its benefits and also described the plans of the SRKNEC Sun Club.. He also gave a talk on Software Freedom Day..
Conclusion:
Students seemed really interested and though only about 1/10th of the total college population was present, I think, it was kind of ok for a start!!
As you would agree, Shift Happens but it takes its own time to happen right??
Cheers!
Also upload the image of the poster that we had pasted all over our campus!
Posted by Vasusen Patil on September 04, 2008 at 07:33 PM PDT #