TWTW: December 23–29 2018 | #15

The last one of the year

Saturday evening: Spoke with Suvarna, a junior from my college who also happened to study from the same school as I did, about going back to the institution and sharing the wonders of computer science to the children. When we were in school, the 40 minute computer period was ineffectively used where we did not pay attention because we were not going to be graded for the same. As a result we did not explore nor did we understand the potential that something as trivial as HTML held.

The idea I shared with Suvarna is to talk to school computer science teachers and get their help to conduct a workshop to encourage them to explore various options such as programming, web development, etc. A head start can make an impact in the overall performance of the individual. She agreed to talk about this to her mother (a teacher at the school — how convenient!) and together plan out an event for the school students. I hope this goes well.

I completed the 2nd lesson of term 2 of the Udacity nanodegree course. I really understood the mathematical meaning behind a lot of points I took for granted while learning at college soft computing and that felt qiute empowering. I am eager to continue the course once I get back from the Christmas break.

Sunday(23/12/2018)

After the morning service, we left for home town to spend the Christmas with grandmother. It is at a place called Konni, Pathanamthitta, Kerala. I carried a book — The Innovators to read during the break. It is a book that explains how technology came to be. Learned about how innovation and creativity came into existence at Bell Labs.

Stopped in between to visit relatives. I was pleasantly delighted to see the textbook of my college professor in the home of an online math teacher. She too agreed the content is good. Finally we reached home at 7PM. My paternal grandmother was joyful to see the family together. We had some good laughs and discussions that evening.

Training cell informed today that they need to ensure every 3rd year and most of 2nd years complete proper projects as this is quintessential to start a fruitful conversation during the interview process. FOSSMEC needs technically skilled students to provide avenues to apply their knowledge to better serve the community. So far this free and open source software club has only spent time teaching students as they lacked the prerequisites. MACS plans to conduct workshops and ways to connect students with active communities to better help them move forward.

Monday (24/12/2018)

Spent time learning from the Y Combinator class. It was intriguing to learn about the story behind Doordash, Teespring and Justin.tv. They explained how they started what seemed as a weak idea and how they were able to throttle it forward.

I spent a lot of time discussing with Training cell and MACS about ways to enhance the technical wellbeing at college. Also voted for Pioneer tournament round. I went through some phenomenal projects.

In regards to the college work, it was Abhijith who was reminding us of what was practical to be done within the time limit. Adarsh shared with us suggestions on how to solve the root problem of self doubt. We were thinking about keeping a personality development sort of workshop where we would explain to them how to be independent and not loose interest.

But due to limited time for 3rd years, we decided to cut short and get directly to the project completion part. We tried to understand why only very few teams eventually complete the MECLABS project. Most of the points were:

1. Lack of accountability and incentive to work
2. Insufficient bonding with mentors
3. Naive mind to understand how valuable this would be for the resume
4. Familiar team mates tend to slack of eventually

We decided trying to fix MECLABS would be the key to ensure our pursuit succeeded. We spent a lot of hours going over the specifics. This is the final plan we settled for:

1. Call all 120 students of computer science from 3rd year
2. Under their position in terms of preparation, number of projects, skills available etc.
3. Form online groups for each technology for like minded people to converse and interact with one another.
4. Form teams of 4 randomly.
5. Give them tutorials and some time to think about an idea for the project.
6. Once finalized and the roadmap is charted out, let them start execution and keep it going until February.

This way, they will have a project ready for which they can answer questions confidently.

Tuesday (25/12/2018)

It is Christmas! 3AM service at the Church with a good Christmas message for the day. Returned home at 7AM and relaxed. I tried to attempt the Reverse Coding event prelims of Shaastra technical festival.

After a gala lunch and fulfilling time with relatives, we departed and made our way to my maternal grandparents home at Trivandrum. On the way, I started listening to Acquired.fm, a podcast that Quincy Larsen recommended on Twitter. They explain the stories of various tech companies and how certain acquisitions helped them to grow further. I really enjoyed it.

I discovered through this podcast that Facebook acquired Instagram back in 2012 when they were relatively very small. Due to continued support and freedom of action, today Instagram has over 800million active users.

I also found it interesting to learn that the above mentioned Justin.tv later became Twitch, the world famous video game streaming website. I finished listening to 3 sessions by the time we got home.

Had a good time at Trivandrum as well. Spent time reading the book about technology. I got to find out the story behind the invention of transistor. Shockley was a genius but unfortunately his perfectionist drive made it difficult for the rest to get along with him. Unnecessary competition grew when the Traitorous eight formed Fairchild semiconductors yet for the love of science, innovation continued moving forward. The credit of the name of Silicon Valley comes from the fact that Shockley decided to create his silicon semiconductors at that location.

I also realized that Texas Instruments were actively involved in the history, the same company that had a competition for our college. Lesser known facts indeed!

Wednesday (26/12/2018)

Spent considerable amounts of time conversing with my classmates for that project plan. Overall a very positive response. We received some useful feedback and suggestions as well. Though people like Adarsh strongly believe in the 80/20 rule, we are trying our best to ensure atleast 90% gain from this program.

Went in the evening to the mall and did some shopping. Returned home and tried to make a few more calls. I discovered that Leon was already into game development and so I considered talking to him about the AR Food Saver idea. I decided to rename it to Aromapp (AR for augmented reality, Aroma of the food, and app to signify application. Smart? ;) ).

Thursday (27/12/2018)

Made a few more calls and try to read more from the book. Akhil from my class said he wants to start a ideahub website where students can find projects put by seniors and can get to work on it. This is in many ways similar to the idea that I pitched for MECLABS (and the initiation of Cirgle) and so we decided to get this up and running for our juniors within the next few month. Some of the key points we spoke were:

1. You are the best teacher of yourself
2. Internet is for all — the problem is in not realizing it
3. First 2 years of college, our seniors did not guide us and we wasted our time. Now when we realize the mistakes and gaps left, we are barely left with any time to work on it due to college responsibilities.
4. In odd semesters significant time goes in techfest preparation while in the even semester energy is spent for arts and sports fest. These are excellent avenues of developing managerial and non — technical skills. People want to celebrate but tend to forget to find time for the technical skill development.
5. If we spent our less responsible years (freshmen and sophomore year) developing technical skills while taking on more managerial roles later (junior and senior year) it can eventually mould together a strong personality — with a balance of both tech and managerial skills.
6. What our college needs are people willing to take the initiative to stand up and fix problems — but no one wants to be the odd one out due to the possibility of being ridiculed publicly for their gutsiness (except that they forget everyone has the same mindset and so they are not alone — for every 4 people who laugh at you, 1 will admire).
7. This is a long term fix and will require lot of iterations to resolve. Thus we should be patient and willing to make mistakes to figure out the balance to push students forward.

Tino said instead of hurrying and doing projects shabbily, it would be better if we spent time and energy developing the fundamental knowledge of data structures and algorithms instead. Though I agree in Tino’s suggestion, we should still give students one last chance to complete the project.

Anusree, the google women tech maker scholar told me that we should have some pressure points to ensure students complete the task. Unfortunately we did not have any tangible incentives for the students and hence winning their time and attention will be quite challenging. We hope that these calls would suffice to make them understand its value but Adarsh’s 80/20 rule is silently lingering in my mind.

Returned back for Ernakulam in the evening. I listened to the podcast of Snapchat and was shocked to hear that they rejected a $3Billion acquisition deal from Facebook a few years ago. It certainly takes a lot of courage and will power to fight against the alpha wolfs of the tech world.

Friday (28/12/2018)

Jot down the work I had to complete by the weekend. I used Adarsh’s box technique to figure out what was important and what was urgent and accordingly got down to it.

I attempted the online aptitude test by training cell and the competitive programming question by the codechef chapter of our college. Both were hard and I got zero. Times like this remind me I ought to be focusing on personal skill development while empowering others around me.

Thought provoking indeed:

Spent quite some time on calls to understand people and how well of they are in technical skills. Had a long conversation with Bhairavi and she said that companies are really looking for people who can get the work done rather than experts because they will be providing training eventually and that projects was the best way to prove the same.

Finally updated the spreadsheet. If all goes well tomorrow we will be spending our time in forming the teams. I looked back at the priority list I made earlier and realized how badly I missed the targets. My biggest weakness is giving attention to the things that interest me rather than the things that are necessary at the moment. I really need to fix it.

I resumed the computer vision (free) Udacity course to work on my Pioneer Tournament project of musical note recognition application. In the evening, Biswaz (the creator of Keralarescue.in website that saved countless lives during Kerala floods) pinged me.

He plans to submit a talk session for PyCon US! I am so glad he decided to spread the news round the world. Together we discussed how the application should be shaped to send the right tone and message to the reviewing committee so that they understand the seriousness of the entire matter.

At the eye of the storm: how I helped save people during the disastrous Kerala floods

Results of the Pioneer Tournament came. 9 upvotes and 12 downvotes. They all said it was a good idea to pivot as the same has already been implemented. Some even said it was alright if the idea was not original.

“Liked the project and being original is over estimated. 90% is execution! Good luck.” — FelipeBauleLalist

Saturday (29/12/2018)

Via twitter got to know that PyCon India 2018 videos have been released. Unfortunately my talk session was not found in the channel. I have enquired about the same but presume that they limited the number of videos that were more relevant to Python, in which is case it makes sense to skip the lightning talk about community building. Either way, I am glad that the content is now online so I can rewatch any lecture I like!

Biswaz speaks about Kerala Floods and how the website saved lives

I found out that GirlScript Summer of Code project submission frame is now open.

I would like to pitch a few of my ideas here but am not confident to guide them because even I am still exploring the technologies.

We discussed in FOSSMEC and decided we should spread the word about this opportunity to the student community of our college.

I sent the organizers a mail, informing them of the wholehearted support of FOSSMEC for their future endeavors.

Hope they respond eventually.

Looks like a good schedule — will give them an idea of how GSoC works if they do not get through in 2019 for the grander one.

Again, I could not achieve all the 4 grids from the task list I prepared today but I covered the important point of studies and am glad for the same.

Thank you for reading through my TWTW. I hope it helped you in a way. I look forward to continuing this as we step into the 2019 very soon. Have a nice day!