Everyone has highs and lows that they have to learn from, but every morning I start off with a good head on my shoulders, saying to myself, ‘It’s going to be a good day!’.
The day started off in a much delighted way, then I could expect.
A few word about the college.
Parisutham Institute of Technology and Science fondly referred to as PITS is a growing institution of excellence. Spread over an area of more than fifty acres, this lush green campus has one of the finest infrastructures in terms of academic environment and facility.
Parisutham Institute of Technology and Science (PITS) is an engineering institution in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India. The institution is affiliated to Anna University, Chennai. The institution had earlier been affiliated to Anna University of Technology, Tiruchirappalli before the merger in 15 September 2011.
It was founded in 2008 by Mr. S P Anthonisamy, entrepreneur and a member of theParisutham Nadarfamily in Thanjavur. PITS provides technical education in the fields of Engineering and Management. It is a self-financing, minority institution. It has a Finishing School with a curriculum spread over four years for engineering students. The aim is to improve communication skills, soft skills, creativity, perception and assist students in self-development.
A few days earlier Dinesh – Club Lead of PITS had called me up expressing his interest to contribute to Mozilla and start a club in his college. We had pre-planned everything that was required for the event.
As per the discussion the previous night Dyvik and Myself had put up a checklist consisting of various points that needs to be discussed along with the students.
The event kick started at 09:30 AM and I was astonished by seeing a large number of girls than boys. It was really nice having so many WOMOZ up in the club.
Just to get the crowd a little warmed up, I started off with the Spectrogram. A real good argument was going on for a while. Next I started with the Firefox OS and how one could contribute to Mozilla through code.
Next I gave a talk on what exactly Mozilla as a community is and the ways in which you could contribute. Later I gave a talk on Webmaker and its various tools and also explained them the importance of Web-Literacy.
After this I took a session on Appmaker and explained the students about the various building blocks. Everyone loved working with the Appmaker tool since there was less of code and more of design.
Later I took a session on SuMo and localization. I explained them how they could contribute to Mozilla by helping users out with their problems. And how easy it is to convert something from English to your local language.
Of course the event wouldn’t have been possible without the constant help of Dyvik and Dinesh. Hats-off to Dinesh and his team for taking up the initiative.
“I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face and it was dry.
Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it’s just the rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.”
After a week’s tiresome work Subhash, Bharat and Myself(Franklin) were completely exhausted. The entire week passed out so fast as a sway of breeze. Since this was not the first time that we were organizing an event in our University, we knew how to get along with permissions and other endorsements.
Speaking about the Hour Of Code, you might all very well know is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. Also, Webmaker is partnering with Code.org on their global Hour of Code campaign.
Being the Club Lead in my University, I now had a load of responsibilities over my head. After a week’s planning I came out with an idea along with my team members. Initially we had decided to teach the 1st year Engineering students about HTML and CSS, later on we changed the plan and thought of doing something different and unusual this time and targeted the 2nd year Engineering students and came out with a plan of teaching them about “Game Development” Yes! you heard it right, game development using one among the best game engines so far. We decided to teach them Game Development using an Open Source Tool called “Blender”.
Blender is a professional free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender’s features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. Alongside the modeling features it also has an integrated game engine.
Blender is used by NASA for publicly available 3D models. Many 3D models on NASAs 3D resources page are in a native .blend format. The first large professional project that used Blender was Spider-Man 2, where it was primarily used to create animations and pre-visualizations for the storyboard department. Blender has also been used for shows on the History Channel, alongside many other professional 3D graphics programs.
Few Open Projects done using Blender:
Elephants Dream (Open Movie Project: Orange)
Big Buck Bunny (Open Movie Project: Peach)
Yo Frankie! (Open Game Project: Apricot)
Sintel (Open Movie Project: Durian)
Tears of Steel (Open Movie Project: Mango)
We picked up students from the Computer Science Club of our University and also limited the entries to just 50 students. We did not want much of crowd, since lesser the crowd the better we could reach and teach to everyone.
The event kick started by 9.30 in the morning by Subhash, he thought the students how to develop the game “Angry Birds” using blocks available in the website https://learn.code.org/hoc/1
Then we had Subhash, who thought the students about game development using basic blocks available in the following website https://learn.code.org/hoc/1 and created the famous “Angry Birds” game.
Next we had Gabriel on stage who started with the basics of Blender. Gabriel has played his hands dirty with this tool for almost a year and has a very good knowledge and passion for this application.
He first started with a brief introduction about game development. He told the students that game development started as early as 1950’s. But those games required mainframe computers and hence weren’t available for the public. Commercial game development started in 1970s.
Then he told them about meshes(the objects like characters, buildings, etc used in a game). And thereby he emphasized the fact that, to start game development, one must know how to create meshes. Normally, to develop a game, one creates meshes in a separate software(3d Modeller) and then imports it to a game engine to add controls to the mesh. At this point, he told them about Blender, which can do all things like 3D modeling(creating meshes), animation and also develop a game with its inbuilt game engine.
He also taught them about rotating the 3D view itself for a user perspective view and various other predefined views like top view, side view, etc.
Then he moved on to some basic animation. He told them about key framing, which is the most important concept in any animation software. He told them about basic animations like moving an object, rotating an object, etc. He continued with the basics of physics in a game(like gravity, dynamic movement, static, etc).
In blender, games can be created either through logic bricks(predefined game blocks) or a combination of logic bricks and python script. The second way allows the developer to create more flexible games. He taught them about logic bricks, which uses three blocks for every action. These blocks are categorized under Sensors, Controller and Actuator.
These blocks when joined together form a piece of code which is executed every time the controller returns true. The controller is basically a logic gate, while it can also be a python code. The sensor detects/senses any action input(eg: key presses, mouse clicks, collision, message, etc). The output sensor block is sent to controller block which results in either a true or false state. If true, action described in the actuator block will be performed. If false, no action takes place.
He then employed this very concept in the “Bounce” game(one among the most played and known games in the early Nokia devices) which he demonstrated, with sensors detecting key presses and through an AND controller to perform a movement action described in the ‘motion’ actuator.
After this he added rings to the game environment and taught about how to display score and update it when the ball passes through the ring. he also demonstrated this using python script. Finally he made a ‘start’ scene and a ‘win’ scene. The ‘start’ scene will be displayed at the start of the game and the win scene, when the score crosses a certain limit. And then to conclude, he told how to create a standalone game application.
The game can be downloaded from the link below. NOTE: The game is still in it’s early stages of development and is likely to have too many bugs. Link:http://www.4shared.com/file/dM_MqAtvce/Bounce.html
While all this was happening a lot of students had plenty of doubts running inside themselves, they were accompanied and solved concurrently by our Firefox Student Ambassadors namely, Subhash, Bharat, Mounika, Neha, Shefali and Myself.
Final Game Preview:
After all this, I then took over the session and explained the students about the Hour Of Code Campaign and why it was important. I also stated that the Webmaker had partnered with code.org this time.
Later I told them about Mozilla and it’s mission. When I started to speak about Mozilla and Firefox Student Ambassadors a lot of students started raising questions on how they could be a part of Mozilla and start contributing to it. Then I continued explaining them the various Contribution Pathways through which one could start contributing to Mozilla.
By the time I was about to finish with my session I had a lot of students who were eagerly waiting to sign themselves as Firefox Student Ambassadors.
Motto : Training 2 new FSA’s
The sun came up over the plain, hot and brilliant, just as it had done since the beginning of time. This day, the first ray of the morning sun fell on an astonishing light.
As planned the previous night Subhash, Bharat and Myself reached the University at 9 in the morning and the first thing we had to do was arranging for the venue. Very soon after a lot of up’s and down’s we managed to get a small place in the computer laboratory. The meeting kick started at 12:30 in the noon. We had our Rep Shreyas Narayanan and Nikhil Patel an expert in Telugu Localization along with us throughout the meeting. We first started by introducing ourselves to each other. As the motto of today’s meeting was to educate these two volunteers to become active and passionate Firefox Student Ambassadors, Shreyas started explaining them about Mozilla and Mozilla’s mission.
Up next I explained them about the various contribution pathways through which they could contribute to Mozilla. I also told them that for contributing to Mozilla one doesn’t need to be technically sound, you could perhaps try your hands with the non – technical part of Mozilla. Since they do not belong to the Computer Science Department and are from an Electronic Department background they asked me how could we contribute to Mozilla, for which I asked them a question “Do you use the Internet ? as you both belong to the Electronic Science Department don’t you ever use the Internet ?” for which they replied “Yes we do use the Internet”. So as far as you use the Internet it’s your willingness and responsibility to contribute to the Open Web and also protect it. These words sparked a fire in their minds and they were interested to listen to the further talks. Then I explained them about Maker Party and the motto behind organizing a Maker Party.
I then explained them about the various Webmaker Tools, Mozilla Developer Network, Army of Awesome, Spread the word, Writing Blogs.
Before I continue writing, something you should know about our two new WoMoz Mozillian’s in our family.
Well this is completely something which I feel from my part about them.
Let me introduce you to Neha Sadhvi, a WoMoz from Sathyabama University Chennai, basically from Patna, India. Studying Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering.
Well this girl is really enthusiastic in learning new concepts and ways through which she could contribute to Mozilla. She has a passion to talk, Yes! you guessed it right she is that talkative.
Now, let me introduce you to Shefali Sinha, yet another girl from Sathyabama University Chennai, basically from Saharsa, India. Studying Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering.
She is a girl who always thinks about future. So when we met her for the first time, all that she asked me was “When are you guys planning for the next event ?” She was keen in knowing the various pathways of contribution.
Then next Nikhil Patel explained them about Localization and how things work and are to be done.
Nikhil also told them why Localization is important and how it makes others life easier.
After this, a very good question was raised by one among the two FSA’s “What’s the difference between Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Android, both are Open Source ?” A very well answer was thrown out by Shreyas, which really convinced them a lot and also me. He also explained them about the structure of hierarchy in Mozilla.
Then Subhash (FSA) explained them about Appmaker in detail and how the building blocks work and are connected with each other. He also shared with them his life experience being a Mozillian, and also the talents he learnt after joining Mozilla as a volunteer. This is something which really made them feel good and they were inspired by his words and thoughts. He also told them about the past events that we conducted as a team and the fun we have in planning and executing each and every event. He also briefed them about Maker Party and the effort we took to make it a huge success. All these made them more interested and fascinated towards joining and working as a team.
13th of September was apparently a big day for all of us, irrespective of the fact that I also had my exams starting on the very same day. All that I had planned till last night was, finishing my exam by 12 noon and starting directly to the venue. So the very same plan was executed by Me, Subhash (FSA) and Bharat (FSA). Before entering the venue we had our lunch and then followed up. Since by the time we entered the campus “The Train The Trainer” session had got completed, to know what really happened click here : http://dunebuggie.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/day-1makerparty-chennai-train-the-trainer-event/
It was late evening when we reached MIT, I saw the chain reaction team working round the clock and thought of joining hands with them.
By then it was 8 in the evening and all of us were dog-tired standing on our last legs. The team in-charge for decoration were full on board and doing their best they can. The chain reaction machine was complete and we tested it numerous times to find out any flaws.
Fagged out, zonked out, tuckered out we left the place with no more stamina within us and were eagerly waiting for the next Big-Day!
[DAY 02] Maker Party Chennai
Date : 14th September 2014
Venue : Madras Institute of Technology
Finally, the big day has arrived. Something for which we were waiting for so many days. It was a bright and beautiful morning, the sun was shining at its best. Subhash, Bharat and Myself plied the bus from our respected homes and met near the railway station. From there we caught a train that brings us directly to the venue — sounds awesome right ?
As we entered the campus something caught my eye – The Maker Party Chennai Banner!
We rushed to the venue to check if everything was set right. I met Shreyas (Mozilla India Rep), we were discussing about the things that needs to be checked and the items that were missing. We were simultaneously verifying if the sound and the light systems were working functional. Most of the stations were ready by 10:30 am, all the stations were fully ready to kick-off by 11:00 am.
The first station was the Chain Reaction & The Magic Tricks station which was handled by Himanshu and his team of volunteers, Subhash (FSA) and Bharat (FSA).
As this was the first station in the row, it caught many peoples attraction. The chain reaction had to be triggered manually by the user and at the end it would print the name of the user – you should definitely check it out, Himanshu also welcomed the guests by his super mind tricking magic tricks.
Check this out yourself :
The next station was the Appmaker Station, it was managed by Nikhil and Viswaprasath.
This station was crowded by students who were very much interested in developing apps for FirefoxOS. We also had a demo of all the FirefoxOS devices that were available with us. Most of them liked the Intex and the Spice variants of the mobile which were available in the Indian market for just Rs.1999
All that I observed next was something flying and fleeting with ease around the venue. They were non other than the mini drones.
Drones – I’ve never seen them alive
A very special thanks to Srinath for coming and sharing his experience with us.
Wanna watch the Drones in action ?
The next station Vibrant Hue was handled by Greema Michael and her set of volunteers.There was a massive crowd in this station and I could find a lot of colours everywhere round the station.
This was the art station in Maker Party Chennai. She explained and thought everyone who came with peace and patience. She thought everyone the art of painting and the joy in it.
Watch the colors come in action :
A collection of art displayed by Greema.
She was kind enough to make and give away her paintings which she did on the spot.
Check out Greema’s Official Page on Facebook to see a wide variety of art. Click Here
The next station that lighted up the environment was the 3D Printing station by Redd Robotics.
The term 3D printing being a new term or concept, many people came from across the city to watch and see what 3D printing is all about. Thanks to Redd Robotics our Hive Partner at Mozilla India, for being a part of Maker Party Chennai.
We then had Prakash from Simple Labs who gave us a demo of some interesting devices and their applications (Induino).
The Web at times could be compared to the World, wherein it’s not always safe to be. To explain us and teach us on how to be safe on the Internet and to brief us about Computer and Network Security, we had the NULL Community with us at the Maker Party Chennai.
The next station was the “Wikimedia” which was mentored by Mr.Pavanaja from CIS Bangalore.
Students were interested in knowing how they could contribute to Wikimedia and translate English to their mother tongue. Being Linguistic is sometimes important.
The next station was the Game Design Station handled by Arun, Varun and Cerlyn. As a kid we’ve always being fascinated by computer games and have played them a lot. But have you ever thought how they are designed ?
This station was systematically arranged. Cerlyn talked about Game Design to the people, once they are done they moved on to Arun who explained them about Game Art. He then puts your idea’s in actual digital drawing.
They were then directed to Varun who thought them Game Programming. It was really great to see them explain everything to the guests with ease.
The next station was Atmel. Atmel Corporation is a worldwide leader in design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed signal, non volatile memory and Radio Frequency Components.
They had got a lot of devices with them to explain us how modern touch screen device work.
The next station was the Augmented Reality station. It was great having them here with us at Maker Party Chennai.
DIY Electronics calls out to the name BRIX. And Yes! we had them too.
We also had a group of individual makers who showcased a lot of gadgets and stuff.
Arun Magesh had designed a device called MindBot.
Yeah this device was super awesome, it could read your brain waves and move the device as you control your mind.
We saw it live at Maker Party Chennai.
There were a number of people who wanted to try the device on and feel the experience.
And next we had a team from SRM University who came up with a Humanoid Robot.
The best and the most attractive station in Maker Party Chennai was the Google Developers Group Chennai.
They showed us a demo on Android Wear, the smart watch!
A station on App Inventor: beta.appinventor.mit.edu and many more beautiful Google Technologies.
And Yes! we had this wonderful device with us at Maker Party “The Google Cardboard”
We also had a parallel workshop going on, talking about the “Google Glass” yes you heard it right, the Google Glass. We also had this awe inspiring device with us.
We also had a talk on the “Version Control Using GIT” by Jeyanthan and “Computer Security” by NULL.
We had another station called the FSA Contribution Stall which was mentored by Damini, Shashank, Sathya, Achyuth and Myself. Here we had all the students who were interested in contributing to Mozilla and wanted to become a volunteer.
This festive season of Maker Party in Chennai was really great with a crowd attraction building to 700+ attendees. This was one among the best Maker Party in India in the Maker Party Period.
We learnt the art of managing events and other beneficial factors through Maker Party Chennai. We were able to put down all the things that went wrong and all that which went buttery smooth.
I with great confidence could tell that the next year’s Maker Party would be astonishing with a large number of FSA’s from Chennai region and other club and group members.
Coming to the end of this great occasion, a group picture is a must.
Oh Yes! the festive season of Techno-Summit still continues across the North wind with a BLOW!
As mentioned earlier Techno-Summit is an Annual Technical Symposium conducted in our university, wherein a enormous number of students from numerous colleges drop-in to participate in a range of events and workshops.
So we Firefox Student Ambassadors along with our Rep Shreyas Narayanan of Sathyabama University organized and planned for a MozBooth. The motive of this station was to spread the word of Mozilla, it’s awesome products and to recruit some enthusiastic volunteers.
We start the day by keeping in place and arranging all the banners and posters.
Soon after arranging, we found a lot of students who were much attracted by the Mozilla Banners and wanted to check out the station to know more about it.
As students started visiting the Booth, Navdeep Singh started explaining them all about Mozilla and I was showing them the Link to the Mozilla Contribution Page in the laptop.
Later Shreyas added to the station and briefed the students about “How to become a Student Ambassador” we saw a lot of students who were interested in becoming a volunteer. On the other hand I was explaining the students about the various creative tools of WebMaker and how one can create and edit the web with ease without knowing much of HTML and CSS.
By then it was time for lunch so we split in to two. The first half went for lunch followed by the next, this was done so that we don’t miss out on any students. Once we were back from lunch I was surprised to find a huge number of students gathered around our FSA – Subhash Dagubbati. He was explaining the students about the various pathways by which one can contribute to Mozilla.
Adding to this a group of students came, whose attraction eventually fell on the FirefoxOS Tab and FirefoxOS Smart Phone that was placed on the table. They were a group of really nerdy students who wanted to know the complete S/W and H/W specifications of both the devices. I patiently explained them all that I knew about the devices and Navdeep also helped the students.
And after a day’s workout, explaining students about Mozilla as a Non-Profit Organization and its various products it really felt good for all of us.
We all were proud of ourselves of being a part of such a wonderful organization.
Our love and dedication towards Mozilla will always be stable and constant.
It’s the joyful season of Techno-Summit in our university. The only time in the year students get to bunk classes officially. Techno-Summit is a 3 day’s technical symposium, wherein lot students from various colleges come in and participate in various events and workshops. We the students of Sathyabama Firefox Club had organized one such workshop “Localization” with a limited entry, restricting to 50 students for each language(Hindi,Telugu, Tamil). The Computer Science Department of our university is a 3 storied building, with 3 labs in each floor.
Eventually the registration desk was really jam-packed with all the registration in-charges completely occupied with the students and helping them in registering.
Since the seats were limited we received a nice response from the students who were interested in contributing to Mozilla with Localization and very soon we started with the sessions.
The Ground Floor Lab was taken over by Dyvik Chenna one of the leading experts and a top contributor towards Telugu Localization and he was accompanied by Nikhil Patel who is also a leading contributor and an enthusiastic App-Maker and is pursuing his degree from our very own college. The entire session was made so power-packed by our contributors. They made students learn Localization by playing games. As they say “Knowledge which you discover with zeal, can’t be forgotten over a lifetime”, and that’s exactly what they did to make the session fun and active. We also had our two FSA’S (Subhash and Bharath) who helped the students with their difficulties.
Heading over to the next floor, here the session was taken over by Arun Prakash one among the experts in Tamil Localization who resides in Tamil Nadu.
The students were taught a lot of new things about Localization which they didn’t know earlier.
Moving to the 2nd floor, here the lab was occupied by Rajesh Ranjan and Chandrakanth Dhutadmal.
Rajesh Ranjan – he is a full time professional translator and journalist. Currently working as a Language Maintainer, Hindi at Red Hat. He is associated with several Localization projects like Fedora, GNOME, OpenOffice.org, KDE and Mozilla in various ways. Also associated as the Coordinator of Mozilla l10n team for Maithili, OpenOffice.org Hindi Team, Fedora Hindi and Maithili team, Maithili KDE team and Maithili GNOME team. He is also a Team Leader at Translation Project Hindi. He is also a Fedora Ambassador. He started a linguistic project named “FUEL”. Before joining Red Hat he worked with a reputed Media Company “The Indian Express Group” and “Literate World”
Chandrakanth Dhutadmal – he is a post graduate in computer engineering from university of Pune. Starting his career as a University of Pune approved faculty in computer engineering stream, he served various engineering colleges for a period of five years before joining Centre for development of advanced computing (C-DAC) in January, 2006 as Member Technical Staff.
Currently he is working as Senior Technical officer, in Graphics and Intelligence based scripting technology (GIST) group of C-DAC. His specialization includes Localization and Internationalization, Project Management, Software and Quality Engineering and is currently working on various research projects of State and National importance. He is a Certified Localization Professional (CLP Level 1) from The Institute of Localization Professional (TILP) since 2010 and Distinction holder in online certification course in eGov of Govt. of Maharashtra. He is also active member of free and open source projects like “Mozilla Firefox” and “FUEL” project.
During his tenure at C-DAC, Mr. Dhutadmal has been instrumental in getting and executing various projects like www.marathivishwakosh.com and others from state govt. He has participated in various National and International events like elitex, agis , “16th Annual LRC Internationalisation & Localisation Conference” in Limerick, Ireland and “Hindi World Conference” at Johanesburg, South Africa.
Both the contributors thought all the students on how to contribute to Mozilla via Localization. The students were really keen and interested. All the students requested them to conduct a hands-on session too.
After which all the students were give some cool Mozilla swags which delighted them a lot.
A super awesome click with the Hindi Contributors.
Once all the sessions were over in all the floors it was time for a group picture with all the Localizers and Firefox Student Ambassadors.
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” In order to reach and fulfill your goal there are a lot of up’s and down’s in one’s life. It all starts on a Friday evening when we are all set with our backpacks to reach our venue “SRM University”.
SRM University in one among the renowned University’s in and around TamilNadu, and “Aarush” is a National Level Technical Symposium organized by the University wherein students from 100+ college’s come to attend it. This was the venue set for our event and the event was conducted for 2 day’s (Saturday & Sunday).
It’s not easy to accomplish your goals in life was well said, since as soon as I stepped out of my house I saw black clouds over my head with intense breeze. As I was on my way to the bus-junction it started raining cats and dogs. By the time I got into the bus I was completely soaked to the skin and yes the crowd in the bus reminded me of my native city “Mumbai” wherein to board a train you probably just need to stand a few meters away from the train, and the potency of the mob is adequate to get you in and out of the train. By 9:30 in the night Subhash and Myself reached the station where we met Nikhil and Shashank. As it was time for dinner we were on our way to the nearest restaurant where we met our 2 passionate Reps Naresh & Vishwa.
As soon as we finished our dinner the Organizing Committee of Aarush’14 from SRM University were there to pick us up and drop to the boarding house where we could stay for the night. Once we reached the room, the agenda for the next day’s event was planned till late midnight. The workload was split up equally with everyone.
DAY 01
After a frosty night’s snooze, the morning was bright and cheerful. We reached the auditorium 10 minutes prior to the event, so that we get adjusted to the atmosphere and all that astonished me was a massive crowd waiting for the session to start enthusiastically.
Since there were nearly 400+ students it wasn’t feasible to accommodate everyone in a single lecture theater hence we decided to split them in two different hall’s and each auditorium would be handled by 5 Mozillian’s in chorus.
The first session was handled by Shashank(Webmaker Super Mentor) and Franklin(Myself) wherein we played a quick Spectrogram to wake the crowd up. Later we told them what FOSS is all about, and the difference between FOSS over Proprietary software.
Up next we listed out all the products of Mozilla and kicked-off with the Webmaker session. Shashank then explained the students about X-Ray Goggles & Popcorn maker, everyone were much interested in it since one can modify a page without knowing much of HTML.
Next I took over a session on Thimble, before which I asked the students if their familiar with HTML & CSS for which I got a lot of hands-up.
While I was explaining about Thimble and it’s uses a live demonstration was shown by Subhash on the projector screen.
Once we all 3 were done explaining it was now time for the students to start creating their “makes”. Lot of students had doubts which were clarified with ease by Shashank, Subhash and Myself.
Simultaneously in the other hall Achyuth and Nikhil warmed up the students by starting off with the Spectrogram.
Later on Nikhil was explaining about FOSS to the students while Achyuth was briefing about Mozilla and its products and the numerous ways by which one can contribute to Mozilla.
Next Achyuth was explaining the various Webmaker tools and how each tool is different from the other. Later a Hands-On session took place wherein all the students tried each tool and were lost in trance experimenting with them.
By now it was time for lunch and all the students had dispersed for lunch.
Once we were over and done with our lunch everyone became energetic again and were back to work.
Then Vishwa (Rep) explained the students about Appmaker, the students were keen to understand the concept since there was not much of coding and developing an app without coding is what everyone basically likes. Later on there was a Hands-On session on Appmaker. Up next Vishwa explained about Advanced Appmaker wherein he told the students about WebIDE and other useful stuffs.
In the other hall Nikhil was explaining about Appmaker to the students and shared the same common information.
Then the next session was taken over by Sachin Singh who gave who gave an highly structured explanation on Firefox OS.
By then we came to the end of the session for the day and all the Mozillian’s were busy clarifying doubts which the student’s had.
DAY 02
Today the students were much more excited then yesterday to know much more about Mozilla and the ways through which they can contribute.
To brighten the day Shashank and Nikhil explained about WoMoz and its reason for formation as a club.
After which Jerald was explaining about “KidZilla” an initiative started by all of us as a club.
While all of this was happening in the auditorium, Naresh created a Google Form Link and shared it with all the students wherein students can fill in their Name E-Mail ID and the link linking to their Appmakes and Webmakes.
Concurrently back stage Vishwa, Naresh & Nikhil were reviewing all the Apps, besides Achyuth, Shashank & Myself were reviewing all the Webmakes.
Though it was virtually impossible for us to select the finest, we decided to go along with 3 winners.
Finally we come to the end of a marvelous overwhelming 2 day’s Hackathon event at SRM university.
And as they all say, there is no occasion successfully complete without this one!
So all hail for #thedaminipose !!
Well the day started off in a much delightful way rather than I thought it would. I entered the MIT campus at around 10:15 in the morning and was dumbfound by the green foliage of the university campus. It took me a minute to get back to my senses(hopefully I guess my college mates know the reason why).
Apparently I was going around in circles for about 10 minutes not knowing where to go. A few minutes later I gave a ring to Anna(the club lead and organizer at MIT) and she directed me on how to reach the venue.
Initially Shreyas started the session off with the “Spectrogram” which he loves playing . There were a lot of supporters for and against the topic. It was more or less like a Debate wherein there were students standing for the topic and at the same time against the topic, well we found a handful of students standing in the middle “Neutral” who support for and against a topic.
Since the students belonged to the Computer Science Department of MIT they had a more or less knowledge of what Mozilla is. To give them a clear picture Shreyas told the students of how Mozilla is Open Source and a non-profit organization.
He then went on elucidating of an assortment range of Mozilla products, projects and through which students can be a part of Mozilla.
Then we had an awesome hands-on with the Firefox tablet. The working principle of the Firefox OS was deeply explained by Shreyas.
L–>R Franklin(Myself), Subhash, Bharath & Navdeep
The next session was taken over by Achyuth wherein he explained about Webmaker and showed us a demo of PopcornMaker & X-Ray Goggles.
Achyuth
After this the next session was taken over by Shashank, he explained us about SuMo, Thimble & Localization.
Shashank
Later Nikhil took a session on Firefox OS and Appmaker. He explained the students of how to craft an App using Appmaker and it’s incorporated templates and yes because of him I realized that how easy it is to create an App using Appmaker wherein there is less of code and more of design.
Nikhil
By the end of all the sessions we were too exhausted and planned for an awesome mouth-watering lunch as a community.
Later on we had a word with the Chairman of CSMIT who was really engrossed in the idea of HIVE and informed us that he would try his best to talk with the administration and organize a Makerparty in MIT.
Hats-off to all the organizers, Anna & squad wishing you all the best for the near future.
“Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week”, and hence after a hectic week we selected this day for a jaw-dropping MozCafe. Wherein we had our 3 Official Mozillian Reps to guide us through.
Reps that made the day inspiring :
Shreyas Narayanan
Sujith Reddy
Naresh Kumar
I’m grateful to all the 3 Reps for making this day a memorable one.
Talking about Shreyas, this geek made the week amusing. We started kicking off the week by planning for MozCafe a week earlier itself. To make things a little more fascinating for all the FSA’S he invited Sujith Reddy, who is currently a Rep in Hyderabad and yeah who really doesn’t know him ? Since he has gained so much fame and popularity in the Mozillian family, by spreading and preaching the word of Mozilla.
Thank you Sujith once again for shelling out your valuable time with us. It was great having you here.
Oops did I miss someone out ? No not really. In fact I was astonished to see the 3 Rep mentioned above (Naresh Kumar) our long-old friend join us here.
Heading on to the next session wherein Shreyas, Sujith & Damini (WoMoz Head) explained us about the various ways we can contribute to Mozilla being a FSA.
Moving on, Achyuth and Gerald our super-experts in Localization and Visual Design though us both in a mellow-polished manner. Though we felt it initially a little strenuous to gasp things, nevertheless they made it feel like butter.
Left–>Right Achyuth, Shreyas & Jerald
Up next Shreyas explaining us about the all new hype created over the Firefox OS. He explains it’s features and capabilities to us.
Left–>Right Franklin, Achyuth & Shreyas
Oh ! yes being a Rep-cum-Dev, Shreyas gave us a Hands-On review about the Firefox OS Tab he told us that it was written using C++, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5. It runs on an ARM x86 Monolithic kernel. Here are a few images of the upcoming Firefox OS Tab.
Left–>Right Sumanth, Bharath, Subhash & Franklin
Left–>Right Sujith, Gerald & Sumanth
Left–>Right Sujith, Naresh & Damini
In the mean while we planned and started discussing about the upcoming MakerParty Chennai as well as about HIVE Chennai too. We were basically formulating on how to proceed with things in a better and smarter way to make things better and comfortable for all the attendees.
Left–>Right Subhash, Franklin & Shreyas
Well putting in everything up a nutshell, I (Franklin Francis) feel immense pleasure working out with my power charged team. Every person here has a talent of his/her own and is a master at it. I feel home working with them, it feels like being a part of a family. No matter how late in the night it is drop them a message and they’ll get back to you as soon as possible to clarify my doubts. No one is ever perfect so am I, regardless of the number of times I do the same mistake my team is always there by my side to rectify my errors.
After the extremely impressive or daunting Womoz Makerparty conducted and organized at Sathyabama University, we the Student Ambassadors from the 2nd year collaborated and joined hands with the so called Super Charged Student Ambassadors “Core Team” of the 3rd year.
The Core Team consists of :
Shreyas
Damini Oberoi
Nikhil Patel
Achyuth KP
Shashank Gaikaiwari
Jerald
Sathya
Since everything was decided in short span of time , the team worked hard towards laying the framework and arranged in a systematic way.
The Venue too was fixed at a short period of time.
On 27th March Thursday we the Firefox Student Ambassadors from the 2nd Year Franklin Francis
Navdeep Singh
&
Subhash Daggubati, scheduled for the registrations and confined the registration entries to 60.Since this was the first event that I’ve conducted in the university with the motto “teachtheweb”
We eventually prepared the namelist of the students and the session started at 1:00 PM in the Digital Library.
The lead FSA of the 3rd year Shreyas asked the students whether they had attended any previous Mozilla events within the University and was happy enough seeing a few hands rise up.
The next session was taken over by our 3 Legendary Heroes Achyuth, Nikhil and Shashank where they explained about the 3 various Webmaker Tools and their use in real time environment.
Achyuth and Shashank explaining the students about Thimble. We gave the students the general theme as Meme Making as Internet Troll’s are extensively popular. The students made some hysterically funny and rib-tickling makes.
We also had our 2 lady Warriors within the team functioning as, WoMoz team lead Damini and WoMoz volunteer Mounika to assist the boys if they had trouble using the Webmaker Tools.
The next session was taken over by Nikhil Patel and he told the students what X-Ray Goggles is all about.
The final session was about the Popcorn Maker, where initially students experienced some difficulties understanding how Layers work. But nevertheless our saviors were there to explain the students
Shreyas, Achyuth, Shashank, Franklin(myself), Navdeep and Subhash were constantly walking around to help students understand and solve their queries.
At the end of the event our Legendary WoMoz team selected 3 makes out of the 100+ makes, though it was a difficult task for them to judge so many makes at a limited time period, they did their best !
Finally 3 winners were chosen.
Mozilla swags were given to the winners.
And as they say “No Event Is Complete Without The”
Moz Tech 