The workshop is organised every year as an effort to promote both fests and also to impart knowledge of basic robotics among college students from Kolkata and nearby suburbs. The workshop started off with an introductory video of Kshitij, followed by a brief description of the events. The video, a compendium of achievements and highlights of Kshitij and Robotix over the years, created quite an impression .

The Robotix workshop started around noon and for the next one hour the audience was guided through the basics of autonomous robotics. Starting with basic differential drives, the presenters went on to explain how an autonomous robot perceives the surrounding environment and acts independently with the help of sensors and processors. The icing on cake, however, was the demonstration of a working line follower robot which left the audience asking for more.

In addition to the workshop the society also held an exhibition of about 15 working robots at Birla Industrial and Technological Museum accompanied by a one-hour session on “Robotics for Beginners” specifically meant for school children which involved the explanation of the making of the simplest manual robot capable of traversal in 4 directions. Hogged by media spotlights, the event turned out to be a grand success, arousing the curiosity of an audience ranging across ages 5-50. With robots capable of playing soccer, mimicking a goalkeeper and navigating across a grid, the exhibition had something to stir everyone’s interest.

However, the show doesn’t end here as the society has a series of workshops planned before the main event in January with a workshop at Techno India, Salt Lake (6th November) and the annual winter workshop for freshers being next in line. The team expects nothing less from these after positive response received from workshops held at Bangalore, Nagpur and Ludhiana during the Durga Puja holidays.

Though Shaurya is intended to be a sports meet, there has been an attempt to broaden the appeal and make it more like a fest. This year’s publicity campaign involved a series of interesting pre-events that have left everyone in anticipation. These included ‘In10sity’ – a slow cycling race, ‘Virtuoso’ – a T-shirt designing competition, both with prizes of Rs.10,000, and ‘Right Write’ – a case-study competition conducted in association with The Times Group. The winners of ‘Virtuoso’ were decided on the basis of the number of ‘likes’ the designs received on Shaurya’s Facebook page, making it a rather unique event. Students can also test their luck with ‘Fortune favors the Fortunate’, an online lottery. Workshops, including one on Maratha Martial Arts, have also been planned during the fest.

This time, with a significantly larger budget, an expected increase in the number of participating teams, pre-events, and even a separate Deco-team, the organizers are hoping to attract greater participation and change the perception that Shaurya is reserved for talented players only. Another commendable development has been their focus on the social aspect. Shaurya has sponsored the sports budget of many a school around the campus to nurture local talent. However, due to the unavailability of accommodation in the common rooms because of Illu preparations, outstation teams will be accommodated outside the campus.

The going so far suggests that Kgp is indeed going to witness a Blitzkrieg (literally meaning sudden war) which, incidentally, is the theme of the pavilion…We convey our best wishes to the participating teams till then!

Regional Symposium on Mathematics

A debut venture from the Mathematics Department, RSM-2010 has a simple objective – to celebrate and revitalize maths as a discipline. It comes packing with guest lectures from three eminent academicians – Prof. MK Ghosh of IISc, an expert on Financial Mathematics; Prof. Seema Nanda of TIFR, specializing in Mathematical Biology; and Prof. D Banerjee of IIAP, a professor of Astrophysics. Aside from events like Cryptic (a cryptanalysis challenge), Mathlete (a mini-olympiad) and Algorithmik (a fast-paced code jam), the fest also features a Scientific Paper Presentation Contest and workshops on Cryptography and SAS (the latter appearing to be a major crowd-puller with almost 200 registrations).

Megalith

Another newcomer to the Dept-fest ring, the Civil Engineering Department’s Megalith ’10 aims to provide a platform for interaction between the industry and academia (and to that end, there’s a panel discussion to get the ball rolling). But that’s not all it’s about, with the fest playing host to a plethora of challenging events ranging from design (Coordinates) to algorithms (Darkode) to robotics (Civionics) to even your run-of-the-mill quiz (C-wiz). Other features to look out for – the Industrial Design Problem, Case Study and Criar, a bridge-modeling contest.

http://www.megalith.co.in

Global Entrepreneurship Summit

As E-Cell’s flagship event, GES is one of the biggest entrepreneurial platforms for academicians, new-age entrepreneurs, eminent business personalities, venture capitalists and the students to gather at one place and share their entrepreneurial endeavours and experiences, and to pledge to take entrepreneurship to greater scales. This year the competitions have increased with the Cleantech challenge being held for the first time in India along with Concipio, Envision, Negocio, Eclairez, Sales Pitch, Online Video Contest along with other on-the-spot events like Bizturks and TGIF. This year will see a lot of foreign as well as national participation in the events as well as in the International Conference on Entrepreneurship. Guest lectures by eminent personalities will be organised along with certified workshops held by CII and Novell. GES 2010 also brings the Startup Camp which is an invaluable opportunity for promising startups of the country to raise seed capital and hire college students as a full time employee or as an intern (as of now, Zice Holidays, Intinno, P2Power Solutions and Orangified have been confirmed in attendance). Wipro will be organising Wi-Camp on the 16th. You can register for Wipro’s Wi-Camp at http://barcamp.org/WiCampKGP/ .

http://www.esummit.ecell-iitkgp.org

“I wanted to thank the IIT KGP students for taking time out to watch the show. It was an incredible experience performing in Kalidasa Auditorium. The Audi was great and the audience was even better.

Thank you IIT KGP for making that evening so memorable for me

We thank Nitin and the Spring Fest 2010 team for making the show possible.

31st October

Stand-up comedy: “I Am Serious” by Rivaldo (of IIT Bombay and Love in December fame):
Venue and time: Kalidas Auditorium at 8 pm. Catch all his previous videos here.

1st November

Performance by British Council: Titled “Jaibati Kanya Story” it will be directed by Tapan Das, who has been associated with various international projects including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
Venue and time: Kalidas at 7:30 pm.

It then moves on to a PEACE FOR YOUTH workshop exclusively for the first year students of IIT Kharagpur on the 1st of November. The workshop aims to be a platform of action for those who wish to live in peace with themselves, their friends, colleagues and with society. It is conducted by two students of human rights from NEPAL.
The application is available at the following address:
http://springfest.iitkgp.ernet.in/SFPeaceForYouthApp.doc

Please submit your applications at submissions@springfest.in

YAM 2009, the 12th in this series, will be held at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal during 14th to 16th March 2009. We welcome applications from PhD/MSc students from various institutes and Universities all-over India, interested in the field of Astronomy, Astrophysics and related topics. Click here to download the schedule.

For more information visit the YAM site.