Software Freedom week – 07 Intellect is no man’s property….
SFW-07 was the first step towards an open source revolution in this part of Karnataka, we organized Software Freedom Week to promote the spirit of opensource at its zenith, and it turned out to be a mammoth event witnessing 524 registrations spread along 9 contests from BVBCET & SDMCET colleges, Hubli, Karnataka, India.
It was a week long tech-fest from 15th of October to 22nd of October 2007. The contests were spread over 3 sectors, with the intention of promoting the concept of opensource. Prostar, Stardebugger,tech article blogging & Techstar were the contests for IT branches. System designing & block designing for the Electronic streams Speedstar, SuDoStar, & Wordstar were the fun events open for all the streams.
Apart from the contests we had talks, seminars & Demos featuring Dtrace, CFF & NetBeans. Freebies & Giveaways attracted participants and audience to the event, we distributed about 100 OpenCD’s,Ubuntu CDs. SFD T-Shirts for the volunteers.
Prizes included Gaming consoles, TV Tuners, Web Cams, USB Sticks & head phones, worth Rs 15000/-, we thank “Computer Shoppe” & “Sankalp Semiconductor” the local sponsors. The budget of the whole event was about Rs 26100/- we thank the management of our college & BVB IEEE Student Chapter for supporting the event morally & economically.
Dr R.M Banakar (Branch Counselor BVB IEEE Student Branch), Prof B.L.desai (H.O.D E&C Dept BVBCET) Prof Meenaxi ( professor CS Dept SDMCET), Prof Santosh ( professor CS Dept ) were some of the people who supported the event by all means.
Special Thanks to Mr Syed Riyaz, alumni of BVBCET & the resource person from SUN Microsystems, who visited our campus on the valedictory of SFW-07.
Hats off to the IEEE & ODC ExeCOM (Om Gargatte, Anjana Rao, Prakash S & Khuram Syed from BVBCET & Anant Pai from SDMCET) & volunteers from BVBIEEE & EA for running the event successfully.
A brief overview of the contests.
1. Prostar
A Java programming contest featuring NetBeans & SUN Studio, for 1 year students C programming was allowed. Scenario – Su-Do-ku game Generator & solver. Judgement criteria: Functionong, No of lines, efficiency, User interface etc
2. Star Debugger
A Java debugging contest featuring NetBeans & DevC for 1 year students it was C Code debugging. 45 questions to be solved in 60 mins, It was an online contest.
3. Tech Article Blogging
Theme: “OpenSource Technologies” Individual Participation. The participant has to register & post articles on articles.ieeebvb.org A participant can post as many articles he can!! Evaluation based on No of articles, Originality,Technical content, variety, depth, flow & quality
4. TechStar
A Tech quiz based on OpenSource Technologies, A prelimnary elimination round to shortlist 5 teams for the oral final quiz.
5. System designing
A hardware designing contest to promote OLPC Technology & OpenSparc, Scenario: ALU Designing, with 2, 3 bit operands & 1,3 bit opcode as the i/ps and 6 bit o/ps. No Flip/Flops & registers allowed, only basic gates can be used, basic operatons include Addition, Subtraction, Xor,Xnor, Shift left, Shift Right, Increment & decrement. Judgment criteria: Less no of transistors in the design, Efficiency, less no of gates etc.
6. Block Designing
A hardware designing contest to promoteOLPC Technology & OpenSparc. I/p & o/p specifications are given, the block to perform this conversion is needed to be designed 45 questions to be solved in 60 mins. Below are the non technical events, To involve participation of the students from all streams of Engg so that the open source softwares like OpenOffice, which are of general use could be promoted. During these contests, OpenCds were distributed.
7. SpeedStar
A fun event to trigger adrenaline rush!!!. NFS gaming contest/race played over LAN.
8. Word Star
A unique style of open source promotion!!! A word list of 150 words & big names related to the Open Source kingdom was disclosed in advance. A test was conducted based on those 150 words only!.
9. Su-DoStar
Sudo Ku Solving contest 4 puzzles to be solved in 45 mins.
A brief overview of the talks/seminars & demos
1. A talk on OpenSparc.org and OLPC Technology after the completion of the Sys Designing & Block Designing contest.
2. A talk on NetBeans after the completion of Star Debugger contest.
3. A talk on Code for Freedom Contest by Mr Syed Riyaz, resource alumni of BVBCET from SUN Microsystems.
A brief overview of Mr Syed Riyaz’s campus visit
Mr Syed Riyaz visited our campus on 22nd October, major accomplishments under his visit were,
Meeting with Prof B.L.Desai H.O.D BVB E&C Dept to discuss about the inclusion of openSource technologies in our curriculam as our college has been granted autonomy.
Prize Distribution to the winners.
Inaugural of OpenSource Developers Community.
A Demo on Dtrace to the CS & IS Students.
A talk on Code for Freedom contest, which aims at inclusion of Indian Students in opensource tech development.