ABES College workshop:

Aug. 23, 2008

Announcement

This is a workshop conducted jointly by the Computer Society of India (CSI), Ghaziabad chapter, ABES Enginering College, the Indian Linux Users' Group, Delhi (ILUG-D), Freed.in, and Sarai, CSDS. It will be held at the ABES Engineering College campus, Ghaziabad, on August 23rd, 2008, from 11am to 6pm. The aim of the workshop is to introduce students to the philosophy behind Free/Open Source Software (FOSS), and to show software engineers some of the possibilities afforded them by FOSS.

Please also see the announcement on the CSI site. If you are from outside ABES Engineering College, and wish to attend the workshop, they request that you register by sending email to secretary@csi-ghaziabad.org

Workshop schedule

• 11am-11.30am: Free software: What is the buzz all about? GoraMohanty

• 11.30am-Noon: The Indian Linux Users' Group, Delhi SudevBarar

• Noon-1pm: Linux ShantanuChoudhary
  • Overview of Linux distributions
  • Live CDs
  • Installation
  • Rolling your own

• 1pm-2pm: Lunch

• 2pm-3pm: Apache SupreetSethi

• 3pm-4pm: Postgresql SupreetSethi
  • What is Database?
    • Database
    • Relational in relational database
    • What? When? Why? store in database and not.
  • Postgres as relational database
  • Standard query language
    
  • Language bindings
    

• 4pm-6pm: Python, and Django GoraMohanty

Getting there

• ABES Engineering College (site seems to be down at the moment) is located at: 19th km. Stone, Delhi-Hapur by-pass road, Ghaziabad 201009, Uttar Pradesh.
• ABES Engineering College on Wikimapia: The cross at the centre of the map.
• ABES Engineering College onGoogle Maps

Rides offered/wanted

• Sudev Barar: Faridabad-ABES. Room for 4 more (Pratul, and Nandeep already have seats)
• Supreet Sethi: R. K. Puram/SouthDelhi - ABES. Room for 1-2 more.

Photos

Copies of presentations

• Gora Mohanty
  • Bare-bones presentation on FOSS: I did more talking than are in these points.
  • Django presentation: Based on the excellent tutorial at http://www.instantdjango.com/chapter1.html about the Chicagocrime site created by Adrian Holovaty, and Wilson Miner.
• Sudev Barar:
  • Using a ILUG-D presentation from Kishore Bhargava, though he also talked about the touchy issue of piracy.
• Supreet Sethi:
  • Introductory presentation on Apache. Discussion after presentation included the model of HTTP server and specifically apache.
  • Introduction to databases and specifics of Postgresql.

Feedback from participants

• Gora Mohanty: The response was great: At least 100-odd students, faculty members from several colleges, and other visitors. There was a great back-and-forth between the audience, and the presenters. My only concerns were: (a) The lack of a properly-equipped Linux lab, which forced us to turn a hands-on workshop into a canned presentation. In future, we are going to make it a requirement for such workshops that the college provide a lab with at least 25 computers running a modern distribution of Linux, and (b) We need a process to ensure follow-up with the college, so that this does not become just a one-time thing.
• Shantanu Choudhary: For me this was my first experience with ILUG-D, but was great and after this workshop i think some one other from ILUG-D would have done it better(i caught one fellow sleeping during my presentation). What i think about such work shop is it they do provide students a fair idea of what is going on in FOSS community, but if FOSS is included in there curriculum or is promoted from there faculty members it would do great help. Maybe we can think of having work shop for faculty members of different colleges and ask them of commitment that they are going to use/promote them in there courses, as we are not entitled to change curriculum of colleges.
• SudevBarar: Sorry that I did not stay for the entire day. The turnout of eager faces was good and so was very positive initial from the faculty. Unfortunately getting some one hooked to FOSS with just one lecture is a tough task and we need much more solid presentations/workshops. Over the week end I had an idea if we could use OpenOffice? code and show students some ccuase effect of working on the code. It would be great as a whole suite is open and there could be no better example.
  

-- Main.SupreetSethi - 18 Aug 2008