“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 !!
Pictures describe more than what words do!
Flickr DAY 01 : https://www.flickr.com/photos/122049104@N07/sets/72157646296733991/
Flickr DAY 02 : https://www.flickr.com/photos/122049104@N07/sets/72157645953180180/
Makerparty event link : https://reps.mozilla.org/e/aaruush-firefox-os-app-day/
My Mozillian Profile : https://mozillians.org/en-US/u/frnklnfrancis/
Moz Tech 