Event Report 2008

6000 + People, 1500 + registrations, 4100 + website views across 46 countries, 61 organizations, 5 schools, 20 colleges, 11 news papers & TV Channels, 150+ volunteers (loosing 5 kgs on an avg! over 2 months of preparation ) about 23 events & 7 days of FOSS promotion. This was software freedom week 2008 !!

The event reached out to non government organizations, government organizations, entrepreneurs, small/large scale industries, College students and school children. It was indeed the biggest open source promotion event in this part of the country. Emphasis was on making a favorable impact on all the people to whom the event reached out, rather than just creating FOSS awareness. The events were designed to sustain the FOSS spirit beyond the week and aid the people who wish to embrace the open source revolution by providing support in terms of training/installation & closed to open source migration assistance. The event was a preface to the Year long activities carried out by the Open Source Developer’s Community of BVBCET.

It all began with a grand Inaugural on 14th September 2008 in Biotech seminar hall of B.V. Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering & Technology, Hubli, India. Mr Rajesh from SUN Microsystems was the guest of honor. The function was presided by Dr Ashok Shettar - Principal BVBCET, and was graced by Prof B.L.Desai - Vice Principal, BVBCET, Dr. Satish Annigeri - Dean Academic Affairs, BVBCET, Dr R.M. Banakar - Branch Counselor IEEE Student Chapter, Mr. Shankar Setty - Faculty, Info. Sc. & Engg. Dept.

This was followed by the Java Starter workshop to promote Java - the revolutionary open source programming language from SUN. This workshop saw 175+ registrations. Thanks to Ms. Varsha Kampli, Ms. Shradha Jadhav, Ms. Chaitra Deshpande and their group from Info. Sc. & Engg. Dept.

Workshop on Joomla Website development was indeed the grand event of the week, witnessing 300+ student registrations, thanks to Mr. Praveenkumar, Mr. Shailesh, Mr. Vijaykumar and their group from Info. Sc. & Engg. Dept for delivering practical and lecture sessions.

The Java Starter workshop was followed by Debugging (Debugger ) and Programming (Prostar ) contests to ensure the application of what had been learnt in the workshop. Special thanks to the whole Info. Sc. & Engg. Dept marshaled by Prof Shankar Setty for organizing these technical events.

Open Talk and Open Debate were the two events that made people think about some burning issues in the FOSS Industry.
Business model presentation event unleashed the business side of FOSS.

The main attraction and heart of SFW 08 events were Reach-out and open desktop. Our student teams reached out to 5 organizations and 5 schools in groups, and delivered interactive sessions on FOSS and its advantages. They created awareness about FOSS that could benefit those institutes.

Reach out team led by Mr. Vikas Kantu & group and Open desktop team led by Mr. Sanjay B & group did a wonderful job of taking FOSS out of the SFW Venue. They evangelized open source and made Software Freedom Week a complete event, with the mission “Freedom of Software is important for everyone, not just software developers…”

“Workshop on opensource Technologies for NGOs“ and Government bodies was an impactful event of this SFW 08. About 30 NGOs and Government organizations participated in this workshop. They were made aware of relevant FOSS by Dr Satish Annigeri - Dean Academic Affairs, BVBCET. Thanks to Mr Naveen Jha of Deshpande Foundation for supporting this workshop and making this event possible.

Open Freshers was an event exclusively targeted for freshers of BVBCET on FOSS awareness, Thanks to Mr. Sanjay B of Info. Sc. & Engg. Dept.
Quiz and Wordstar were the 2 events which saw 400+ registrations between them. Thanks to Mr. Laxman, Rizwana and their group for intellectual entertainment to the student crowd.
System Designing was an event aimed at grooming designing skills of budding Engineering students, thanks to Mr. Sumit Bhat from Sankalp semiconductors, Ms. Divya and their group.

NFS, FIFA, Counter Strike & Other open source games made an adrenaline rush into about 500 gamers, thanks to Mr. Sanket, Mr. Anand, Mr. Mayur and their group.

The real open source promotion among masses happened in the cultural evening cum FOSS Rock show where open source project slides rolled on amidst rocking performance from the BVBCET Rock Band followed by sizzling dances and vocal melody from our very own BVBians entertaining and creating FOSS awareness amongst thousands of people. Thanks to Mr. Shravan and group for the rock show. Thanks to Ms. Naina and group for the enlightening slide show.

The whole event was meticulously documented in the software freedom week bulletin “Ember” thanks to Ms. Shreya, Ms. Reshma, Ms. Asha, Mr. Deepak, Mr. Punit and the editorial board for the hard work behind the scenes.

The event was generously sponsored by IBM, SUN Microsystems, Computer Shoppee-Hubli, Sankalp Semiconductors-Hubli, ALUPRINTS- Hubli. We thank all the sponsors.

The registration counter which was put up in the college campus was responsible for 1500+ registrations. Thanks to Mr. Prashanti, Ms. Asha, Ms. Ashwini, Rizwana and their group for generating such a huge response.

Tech Speak by Dr. Prasad Bhaarath Ram - CTO Google, India , was the main attraction of SFW 08, BVBians were indeed lucky to have him on our campus.

We had Tech speaks by Mr Rajesh from SUN Microsystems, Mr. Sachin Kinagi and Mr. Parsvanath from IBM, we also thank Mr. Ashok and Mr. Virendra from SUN Microsystems our invited judges. Mr Vivek Pawar CEO Sankalp semiconductors was the guest of honor for the valedictory of SFW 08.
SFW 08 was indeed a very big event. Hats off to all 150+ volunteers , who worked hard to make this event a grand success.

There were some fantastic prizes including Apple iPods, TV Tuner Cards, Web Cams, Gaming Consoles, Pen drives and Head Phones with total prize money accounting to around INR 40,000/-

This event was possible only with the strong support from our beloved Principal Dr. Ashok Shettar, Prof. B.L. Desai - Vice Principal, Dr. Satish Annigeri - Dean Academic affairs, Dr. R.M. Banakar - Branch Counsellor IEEE Student Chapter and Prof. Shankar Setty- Faculty ISE Dept.

Special thanks to Mr. Basavaraj Sankeshwar, Mr. Rudramuni and Mr. Khuram for their marathon support right through the event. Special thanks to Ms. Asha, Mr. Sagar, Raavi, Ms. Ashwini and group from Electrical Dept. for their kind support. Mr Amogh from Automobile dept was instrumental in developing the event promo video which has given much publicity, hats off to him.

Special thanks to Gary Serda, Ganesh Hiregoudar, Rajesh Uma Shankar & Vijaya Santhosh from SUN who have been so encouraging all the times. Pia Wough - President Linux, Australia was instrumental in guiding us to overcome the problems our site was facing, we are very thankful to her for her concern. This event was smoothly run due to kind co-operation of HODs from all the departments, Staff & Students of BVBCET, special Thanks to all of them.

Hats off to Software Freedom International (www.softwarefreedomday.org) for marshaling such a successful global movement of software freedom day, we wish them success in the future.

Google CTO Visits Software Freedom Week 2008

On Sept 15th Google India CTO visited our college. We were delighted to have Dr. Prasad Bharath Ram as a resource person to speak on open source. He started off by conveying the significance of open and free source software in multinationals like Google and Yahoo. He spoke about the work culture in Google, their new ventures and inventions. He also told about how Google maintains its huge data base and how does it rank its search results. He mentioned about the continuous work being done by the Google to make their search engine more accurate. Later he left the session open for QA wherein the students actively participated and raised several questions and cleared the queries……
When asked about employment opportunities in Google, He motivated the students to work for the vision and mission of Google i.e. OPEN SOURCE…..

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CEO Sankalp Semiconductors Visits Software Freedom Week 2008

Mr Vivek Pawar - CEO Sankalp Semiconductors India (http://www.sankalpsemi.com/ ) was the chief guest at the Valedictory of Software Freedom Week 2008.

Mr Vivek Pawar briefed about the FOSS Business Model & stressed on developing Leadership & Entrepreneurial Skills.

He also released the Software Freedom Week 2008 Proceedings Bulletin/Magazine Titled “Ember” & distributed prizes to the SFW 08 winners.

FOSS Rock Show to promote Open source among masses

The real open source promotion among masses happened in the cultural evening where open source project slides rolled on amidst rocking performance from the BVBCET Rock Band followed by sizzling dances & vocal melody from very own BVBians entertaining & creating FOSS awareness amongst thousands of people.

Thanks to Shravan & group for the rock show & thanks to Naina & group for enlightening slide show.
Click here for Open source Slide show
Click here for open source slideshow 2

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IBM Tech Speak by Mr Sachin Kinagi & Mr Parswanath

Date: 19th Sept 2008

Time: 11.30 PM

Topic 1: FOSS in IBM

Topic 2 : Virtualization

Resource people from IBM: Mr Sachin Kinagi & Mr Parswanath.

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OpenTalk & OpenDebate held on 20/09/2008

OpenTalk (Elocution on Open Source Technologies)

Open Talk is a contest where in participants have to give a talk/presentation on any of the latest Open Source Technologies/Softwares like Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice, GTK+, Blender, Apache Server, Ubuntu, NetBeans to name a few.

It’s an opportunity where students can get the awareness of latest/best open source softwares.

OpenDebate (Debate on Open Source Technologies)

Open Debate is a contest where in participants have to debate on given open source topic.

The topics to debate where: (1) NetBeans vs Eclipse (2) OLPC is the mission justified.

It’s an opportunity where students can debate on latest/best open source softwares.

Students from various colleges & streams participated in these events.

Date: 20/09/2008 Venue: BioTech Seminar Hall Time: 12:00 Noon

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Open Freshers held on 20/09/2008

(Live Demos, Facts & Videos of Best Open Source Softwares)

Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that is made available along with source code as a distinctive feature. It is often available at no cost. Users can use and distribute the software. And if they so wish, they can study the source code and modify it to suit their needs. FOSS is a recent phenomenon that has the potential to revolutionize the software industry.

The Objective of Open Freshers is

a) to increase the awareness of open source software amongst young engineers,

b) to provide an easy mechanism for engineers to review and select software,

c) to increase the understanding of the merits of FOSS over Non-FOSS,

d) to help the young engineers to save money on software licences, which could be redeployed on hardware,

e) to help young engineers to move away from pirated, illegal, closed softwares.

Live Demos of powerful & best Open Source Softwares will be given followed by Facts & Videos of FOSS.

Participants:

It is an opportunity exclusively open for first year & second year students of all branches and all semesters.

Time: 12:00 Noon Venue: IMSR Seminar Hall

Resource Person: Sanjay B from ISE Department

Java ProStar Contest held on 20/09/2008

The JAVA WORSHOP was followed by a programming contest which was held on 20^th September. It gave a platform for the students to showcase their programming skills. The event got a good response since students from many different colleges also actively participated.

The students were given two problem statements for a time duration of 1 hour.

The problems covered most of the concepts of JAVA. The problems were framed in such a way that one of the problem statement aimed at testing the logical programming skills of the students which could be attempted by students of all semester and the other problem statement tested the in-depth Java programming knowledge.

The programs were evaluated by Mr. Ashok Patil & Mr. Virendra Reddy from SUN MICROSYSTEMS, Bangalore.

Prostar team:Krutika,Varsha,Vijaylaxmi,Anjana,Pushpa,Sangeetha, Avinash, Shwetha.

No. of Participants: 30

Date: 20/09/2008 Venue: Clite Lab

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Java Debugger Contest held on 19/09/2008

The JAVA WORHSHOP was followed by a debugging event on 19^th September. It attracted 80 participants from all over the state. The event was conducted in 2 levels.

First level contained 20 objective questions for a duration of 30mins. The questions were simple and tested Java basics. Participants could be seen scratching their heads over them!!

21 students were shortlisted for the Second level based on their scores. Second level contained some tricky objective questions and 5 programs which the participants had to debug which had a duration of 1hr.

The contest was evaluated by Mr. Ashok Patil & Mr. Virendra Reddy from Sun Microsystems, Bangalore.

Debugging team:Chaitra,Shraddha,Nirmala,Laxmi,Nayana,Vibha.

No. of Participants: 80

Date: 19/09/2008 Venue: Clite Labs

JavaStarter Workshop on 14/09/2008

(Anywhere, Anytime Language)

Java is a secure & pure object oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems making it well suited for Internet Programming. It has been made simple, portable, highly reliable & easy to learn as compared to C & C++. The striking feature of java is that it is platform independent / architectural neutral language.

This workshop aims at exposing everyone who is either excited about Internet or interested in Java Programming. Workshop is open for all branches and all semesters.

Exposure in JavaStarter Workshop helps the participant to participate in ProStar (Programming Contest) & Debugger (Debugging Contest) which is an important drill in enhancing the programming skills of a learner.

Event Summary:

It was a unique event of its kind. The response was overwhelming. There were over 160 students from all over north Karnataka who participated in it. It included even the 1st, 3rd, 5th & 7th semester students. The most important fact was that java was explained in such simple terms that the participants remarked “we did not know that learning java was so easy!!!!!!”

There was a presentation which began at about 11 am in the morning and went on for three hours handled by Ms. Varsha Kampli, Ms. Chaitra Deshpande, Ms. Shradha Jadav. This was followed by a hands-on session in java programming using the net beans software which the students exclaimed as a knowledgeable experience and most of them remarked that it would provide them the right direction in preparing for the PROSTAR (programming contest) and also the DEBUGGER(debugging contest).

To summarize In a nutshell, the event was a grand success!!

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