Pragyan

Hey Algae.. What is it Pragyan? inquired Ganesh on gmail as I had my Status message as Pragyan 2009.

Since its holiday time, I have loads of time to read blogs, to write blogs, and besides other things, to keep in touch with old friends.

Our Tech Fest…. I replied.

Reminds me of my college days, continued Ganesh, an 2008 pass-out of a prestigious private college in Tamil Nadu. I was a part of the Guest Lecture Team in my college Techfest. Our techfest meant more to us than anything else.

I could see this guy lost in his old days. I could feel the pride in his eyes.

Have a Look at the Pragyan 2009 website, I said as I typed www.pragyan.org

After a few minutes,

Hey, Do you people outsource this website work? asked Ganesh.

Now, It was my turn to feel proud. It was the time to declare with a smiley that it was our Techfest. OURS. We did every bit of it ourselves. The posters. The Website. The Videos. Everything. And we did it like professionals. I didn’t say much.

All I said was, we do it on our own. In fact, even I’m partly involved in it.

Oh! So you did it? he was surprised.

Not just me. We work as a big team. Almost every NITTian is involved in the organization of Pragyan.

He wasn’t in a mood to project his techfest as something cooler than what Pragyan is. So he continued with the plain truth, Ah, Well… We used to outsource our website work. Even now I guess it is outsourced.

A sense of satisfaction replaced the feeling of pride. I felt more happy than proud to be a part of a culture which believed in the true meaning of a student fest. Students should make it work. The culture of Pragyan. Celebration of Technology..!!

Thats when the proud, satisfied and happy heart of mine wanted to shout - NITT Rocks…!!

Pragyan Memories

This year’s Pragyan was the second one which I’m a part of. This year’s Pragyan was action packed and had guest lectures by many eminent personalities. Packed with workshops, guest lectures and other events this year’s Pragyan was incredible. The dust has finally settled and the memories will remain forever.

I was a part of the organization committee for last year’s Pragyan (Snacks committee) and didn’t have much time to participate in events or attend any guest lectures. The worst part is that we did not even get our certificates for all the hard work we had done. So this year a few of us planned not to join the Organization committee and tried our luck at participation. We registered for many events and workshops in advance and waited for this year’s Pragyan. My friend Jay came from Chennai to attend Pragyan and for exploring NITT and stayed with me for a few days.

Unfortunately we missed the prelims of a few events like Circuitrix and Junkyard Wars due to sudden and unforeseen delays. We wrote the prelims of Dexter’s lab and Manthan during Pragyan. We also participated in Sanrachana where we made ‘the bowling machine’. We also participated in Adrenaline – DotA Competition.

We qualified for the finals in Manthan. The team consisted TV Karthik, Somanaathan and me. Incidentally we three formed the team for Aero Modeling in Anna University’s Kurukshetra. So we named our team ‘Gliders’ for this event. Manthan is a treasure hunt competition in which 6 teams were selected from around hundreds of teams. (Ours was the only second year team. .. ) We were asked to solve a problem and also solve a clue given to identify the next destination. After we reach that place we were asked to do some arbitrary task like connecting a disassembled clock, bell, night lamp, solve sudokus, play minesweeper, etc,.. After doing some such task we were asked to solve the next set of questions and go to the next location. It was fun doing such things. But unfortunately we did not finish in the first three teams due to time difference. Other teams seem to have finished in seconds.
Anyway, its all in the game..

We spent another bulk of our time attending various workshops like the Robotics workshop by Amir Shapiro and the Ham Radio Workshop. The infotainment event – Robotics Display was the best. Though I couldn’t watch it fully (due to my dota game) it was great.

Our DotA clan which we have named SpEX[:-)] participated in the dota competition and went on to the quarter finals. A new clan called the ‘Guardians’ came from Chennai and walked away with the prizes. They are a cool gang of guys who seemed to have practiced on battle.net and played in a way very different from the way we used to play. Anyway it was good experience playing Dota in Pragyan.

Another important thing to say – This year’s Dalal street wasn’t a big hit as last year’s due to a few bugs.
Note : – We haven’t received our certificates for the event Manthan yet. (And we hope to get it as soon as possible and not miss it as we did for last year’s organisation committee).

Pragyan was fun and it will remain etched in our memories forever.