“Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology” , said John Tudor. Nevertheless this has proved to be true always over the past and will be in the future. Technology is so much fun, but the probability of drowning in it is high. Amrita was not an exception. The feel of this craze crept into the students of Amrita and led to the launch of the Microsoft campus club in Amrita school of Engineering, Coimbatore on 26th March 2008 as TECH{KNOW}LOGY club. The club was initiated by the Microsoft Student Partners and has 500 members. It is hoped that the students would benefit immensely viz. understand and learn the importance of teamwork, team spirit and have fun doing projects. They would have the access to the MSDNAA – Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance, the Microsoft official portal for downloading and learning more on Microsoft technologies. The MSDNAA was established along with the launch of the club, in 2008.
The major objectives of the club are:
Since its inception, the club has conducted many technical events on emerging technologies, such as sessions on Microsoft Visual studio 2008, Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Robotic studio etc conducted by the club had over 60 student attendees.
t{know} has setup a Gitlab CE instance on Amrita’s own domain for improving code sharing and collaborative software development among Amrita students. It is live (since 24th April, 2017) and available on git.amritanet.edu. The installation, configuration and setup processes were done by t{know} club members led by Ananya Bahadur of 2013-2017 batch B.Tech CSE and Sachin Kamath of 2014-2018 batch B.Tech CSE.
The event was conducted by The AI2 Team. The session started with the speech by Mr. Prashant, an Android App Developer, entrepreneur and an Alumnus of Amrita School of Engineering, Bengaluru. He discussed the importance of Apps in Today’s world.
The event was then conducted by Sangeeth Raaj, a student of CSE. The platform of App Inventor was introduced and a few basic apps and their codes were discussed in detail. The session discussed the User Interface options provided by AppInventor. A number of Apps were built. A simple HelloWorld app, an improved Hello World App, interface of a calculator, webpage viewer is a few of these. The session went on for 2 hours and finally concluded by 7 pm. The turn up was around 86+.
The session started at 5 pm with a short recap of the previous day’s discussions were briefly touched. Then sensors and their usage were dealt in detail with a few example apps. Mini competition was conducted testing the participants on the topics covered. They were expected to showcase their skills and build an app as a practise for the upcoming hackathon. Magic app using Accelerometer was built for the purpose by a student. It was improvised later. Chocolates were given out as a sign of encouragement and appreciation. Then databases (Firebases) and File Storage were covered. A model of a chat app was discussed. The students were given instructions regarding the Hackathon. The session concluded by 7:30 pm. The turn-up was around 75.
The session started at 8:30 pm. 30 Teams turned up which amounts to 70 students. The participants were briefed regarding the rules and regulations of the event. They were given ample time to solidify their ideas and come up with a game plan. As the event progressed by 10 pm. each team were called on the dais to explain their app ideas. The mood was lightened up by pep talks from the Organisers. Refreshments were distributed to keep them going. The event went on until 5 am in the morning. Final Evaluation began at 5 am. The teams were analysed based on the completeness, usefulness and complexity of their apps. Final winners were announced by 6 am. Certificates of appreciation was given out to participants and Organisers. The events of 3 days were overseen by Mrs. Sini Raj Pullari and Mr. Dayanand V of CSE Department.
An event was held by tech{know}logy club on October 18, 2016, Tuesday, titled “t{know} kickstarter event” where we had participation of over 100 students. As for the event, it started off with Sachin S. Kamath introducing them to the world of Linux and Git. It was an interactive session and was followed up by a round of questioning. Siva Rama Krishna was next, and went on talking about Security and CTF. He defined the term “Hacking” and gave a birds-eye overview of Security.
Next came Sathya Swarupan who talked about the importance of the three main web development languages(HTML, CSS and JAVASCRIPT). He showed an example website that he had made, showcasing how these three languages go hand in hand. Kogul Karna took over, and talked about backend languages mainly, PHP, he went on to talk about the libraries that people use most commonly to achieve a solid backend. Next up was Aakash Krishna, who talked about the importance of Java, he talked about its applications and went on to talk about webscraping. In webscraping showed an example program he had made that downloads from youtube and converts in to mp3. Afterwards, Sourav Johar continued on from webscraping, he talked about how it can be done in python, he went on to show how python is a very effective programming languages and he went on to show a few examples in Python. We also gave away a lot of GitHub stickers and a T-shirt was given to the person who won the “Draw an Octocat” contest.
We also conducted a short CTF event, the participants were very eager to find the flags. We rewarded the first person to find all the hidden flags with a snickers bar. We wrapped up the event by asking the participants to fill out a feedback form. We have received 27 feedbacks so far, and it appears that python, web scraping, CTF and Java were the most interesting, and they would like future events to be based on them. Overall, all the people who participated had a fun time, and are definitely willing to come to another event.
A Club Induction program was held on August 16, 2016. All first year students belonging to CSE, ECE, EEE attended the programme.
Introductory Session for First and Second Years September 22, 2015 Tuesday @ Computer Lab 1, Main Block. The second session, by Aakash, Bernett and Aravind, introduced the concept of Dynamic Programming. Some intriguing problems were discussed and we were very happy that so many juniors enjoyed Competitive Coding. Around 35 first year and 13 second year students attended the event. The team had a long chat with Second year ICPC teams after the event.
Mini Hackathon for First Years (September 19- 20, 2015). On the occasion of Software Freedoom Day, we wanted participants to experience as much free software as possible and realize its power. So we hosted a (first ever) Hackathon. First year students attended the same.
Sarup Banskota Alumnus of B. Tech. CSE gave an inspiring talk to juniors on how to find and realize goals and make the best out of the four years at college, from a CSE guy’s perspective on September 10, 2015, at Seminar Hall, CSE Block.
Introductory Session for First Years September 08, 2015 Tuesday. This event witnessed overwhelming participation with 50+ first year students and around 15 second year students.
First year B.Tech students from various departments majorly CSE, ECE, EEE were attendees of the program on August 11, 2015 Tuesday. Dr. Vidhya B delivered a speech. Senior students of B.Tech CSE delivered talks on various topics like An introduction to FOSS, problem solving, perception of power, everyday hacks, Cyber Security, stuxNet virus, competitions, Competitive Coding, its importance, benefits and performed a live crack using SSH.
The odd semester of the academic year 2013- 14 was an eventful one for the club. We conducted 4 events, including the induction ceremony for the freshers.
Software Freedom Day is celebrated every year on the third Saturday of September all over the world.
