Journey of GDSC VIT, Bhopal 2021–22

By Content Team, GDSC VIT Bhopal

INFO SESSION (25th September, 2021)

Google Developer Student Clubs are a platform where students can learn and grow by collaborating in a community of like-minded developers. It is a place where established or senior developers can contribute and probe along with novice developers. It is an open platform for students willing to learn.

After a successful first year, the new tenure of GDSC at VIT, Bhopal kicked-off with its Info-Session led by the new community lead, Ms. Ishika Kulkarni, our Senior Year BTech CSE (spec. AI & ML) student, along with her team chaperoned by Dr. L Shakkeera, Senior Assistant Professor, School of Computing Science and Engineering & Academic Coordinator, VIT Bhopal University and Faculty Coordinator, DSC, VIT Bhopal University.

The Info-Session 2021–22 was conducted in an online mode on Microsoft Teams platform at 6 pm on 25th September 2021. We were overwhelmed by the support and encouragement of 150+ participants. Our Management Lead and host for the evening, Ms. Vidushi Shukla, commenced The Info-Session 2021–22. She introduced us to the new community lead, Ms. Ishika Kulkarni. With a brief to the journey of GDSC, she revealed the new core team. Our core members for the year are:

1. Mr. Aman Sharma — Technical Lead, GDSC
2. Mr. Abhijeet Chatterjee — Web Lead, GDSC
3. Mr. Akshit Gupta — Web Co-Lead, GDSC
4. Mr. Aayush Mishra — ML Lead, GDSC
5. Mr. Jackson Jacob — ML Co-Lead, GDSC
6. Mr. Dhruv Mehta — Android Lead, GDSC
7. Mr. Vishesh Tripathi — Android Co-Lead, GDSC
8. Mr. Sidhved Warik — Content Writing and Digital Marketing Lead, GDSC
9. Ms. Nandita Jain — Outreach Lead, GDSC
10. Ms. Anamika Tripathi — WTM Lead, GDSC
11. Ms. Parnika Kesarwani — Design Lead, GDSC
12. Ms. Vidushi Shukla — Management Lead, GDSC

Next up, our technical lead, Mr. Aman Sharma, briefed us about events and benefits for community members. Aman was followed by Ms. Nandita Jain, our Outreach lead, who glanced over the opportunities for developers in the technical field. The Technical Leads and Co-Leads engaged the audience by revealing our exciting events and project plans for the year for all the domains. Ms. Anamika Tripathi, the WTM Lead, discussed the role and opportunities for women in the industry. The Content Writing and Digital Marketing Lead, Mr. Sidhved Warik, introduced other technical events. He also briefed over how to join the community and connect through different social media channels. Next up, our Design Lead, Mr. Laavart, explained the Community broadcasts and query resolving platforms like Discord Server.

Finally, Ms. Vidushi Shukla gave the Vote of Thanks and concluded the session.

It was a prodigious experience for the members, and the freshmen were keen to join the club as well.

With this exhilarating start, GDSC is elated to announce the upcoming events as well.

ANDROID 12 MEETUP (28th September, 2021)

Student Developer Club Vellore Institute of Technology Bhopal bolsters developer skills and ultramodern updates not only in the field of web and app development but also in the domain of machine learning and artificial intelligence. GDSC is the right platform for technophiles to get insights into the latest software updates. In continuation of this legacy, GDSC VIT Bhopal organized a session on its youtube channel where viewers were briefed about the vivid features and leverages of using Android 12 and jetpack compose.

The session commenced by extending the welcome address by our VITB GDSC lead, Ishika Kulkarni to all the viewers, she made the congregation aware of the motive that GDSC VIT Bhopal was committed to develop the developing skills by providing hands-on practice on various projects and providing them the deep knowledge of the developing skills through the articles, blogs that published time to time on Github, medium and many more platform. She discussed the agenda of covering Android 12, Jetpack compose by dividing the session into 3 parts that are UI/UX, security and privacy android 12 and jetpack compose new toolkit and followed by one-on-one doubt clearing session. GDSC VITB android lead, Dhruv Mehata, and co-lead, Vishesh Tripathi paved the path towards a greater understanding of these technical topics.

Vishesh Tripathi recounted the benefits of using System UI and Material U, he explained that they(System UI and Material U) had revolutionized the way of designing the user-friendly interface for instance introduction of device theme color pallet, increasing the drive engagement in widgets in android 12, providing the more interactive elements like checkbox, switches, and radio buttons so that user could get more done at the home screen and enhancement of the use of widgets at more and more places via touch and voice along with the influx of system-level for controlling the corner radii, padding. Co-lead illustrated an example of a checklist to promote learning by doing, he even put some light on how notification could be customized. Android co-lead further continued the session, he presented how Google io had transformed the privacy and security of user data by giving more control to end-user. The three major pillars of data security are transparency, control, and data minimization. He explained how by the use of new indicators users might perform actions such as turning the microphone and camera on and off with ease, allowing access to the approximate location by apps was a newly added security feature.

Moving on to the third segment of the session i.e. Apps Startup and performance which mainly focused on augmenting the performance of apps by minimizing startup time, lead too shared libraries with viewers which might help them to implement animations, launch splash screens, and app links. Speaker told how app links were improvised by Google to reduce user friction problems. Adding new APIs for domain verification, dividing app links into small granules, and providing problem detection tools had transformed the app production into a walk in the park. Foreground service was designed for multi-tasking, completing user actions, and disallowing the launch of background activity.

The need for an hour of making full potential use of Jetpack compose was highlighted by the GDSC VITB android co-lead. He put forward the view of traditional tool kit being slower and needed to be revoked as Jetpack compose which was widely used by many task manager apps like Twitter, Reddit was more compatible with powerful smartphones and modern APIs. The popularity of Jetpack compose could be explained by the fact that Twitter on its official Twitter handle tweeted “Tweeter loves Jetpack Compose”.

He presented the descriptive example of a Message list to make the audience understand the use of composing in declarative UI. The precedent was apt to accent the difference between the standard XML layouts and declarative UI.

Owl, the app developed by Google developers, was demonstrated to onlookers in order to clarify it in the best possible way.

The session culminated with a productive doubt-removing round to eliminate the residual apprehensions among the viewers. The credit of making session huge success was not only going to the GDSC VITB team who brought elaborative ppts, examples, code snippets and their output to best convey the knowledge but also to the thousands of auditors who were attending sessions in virtual mode to grasp every bit of information shared in the span of an hour. The devotion of viewers to learn was a definite specimen that a virus could not limit the zeal to learn and progress.

With the quicken of the Android 12 meet up-the first technical event for session 2021–2022 GDSC VIT Bhopal would continue bringing exhilarant events and sessions on the discrete connotations of developer interest

OpenSourcEd (2nd — 3rd October, 2021)

Open source is the foundation of an imperishable future. It is the cornerstone of the developer community. To celebrate this legacy, a month-long awe-inspiring event cum competition is annually cataloged by Digital Ocean to encourage neophytes to contribute to the world of open source to make the world a better place to live.

GDSC Vellore Institute of Technology Bhopal organized a two-day event, Opening the pathway to open source. Approximately one-hour-long sessions were conducted on October 2 and 3, cheered by Aman Gupta, Technical Lead, and Akshit Gupta, Web co-lead. They introduced all the functionalities of Git and GitHub.

On Day 0, the fundamental aim was to introduce the viewers to open source and provide them with hands-on practice over Git and GitHub. GDSC VIT Bhopal focuses on learning by doing with the lively interaction with the audience. The technical lead provided insights about the hacktoberfest and ways to contribute. The session commenced with enlightening the congregation about the perks of Git and GitHub- a prerequisite to contributing to open source. Using an illustration of a calculator program, the technical team tried to develop the concept from scratch. The session was managed in online mode due to the covid-19 crisis, but the team prepared accordingly to expound the technical concepts, by using an interactive PowerPoint presentation and live demonstration. The ppt explained Git as a version control system by the advent of which, managing the multiple version of a source code was like a cakewalk moreover, it enabled users to keep a xerox of the codebase and maintain the track of code history(changes such as addition, deletion, etc.) The technical lead, Mr. Aman Sharma, demonstrated how to download and set up Git on the personal system. The tech lead delineated the git bash and told how it is similar to a Linux environment. He described every microscopic detail/function like public and private access to repositories. To host git repositories on a remote server, a developer tool known as GitHub is widely used that can provide secondary functionalities including a GUI for collaborative development tasks (creating reviews, PRs, reviews).

The main aim of the session was to introduce the beginner developers to the GitHub functions such as creating a new repository, adding issues, forking, and cloning the source code on the local system using the Git Bash or command line terminal. Further, they demonstrated merging repositories by generating the pull request. As the session continued, the technical team was committed to providing every viable and advantageous resource like cheatsheet for Git, registration link, and GDSC VITB portfolio website. The conference explored the other features of GitHub such as how it could be used as an alternative to portfolio websites. The new users were enlightened about how they could track their projects and contribution to open source by the advent of GitHub by using features like graphs. The session metamorphosed a strenuous topic into a walk in the park.

With countless people attending the session, the event was a huge success, and it could not be possible without the coalition of the participants. “Knowledge is like a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere” similarly the knowledge shared by the technical teams and fellow mates during the two-day conference will accompany people throughout their life.

After the immense success of day one, the GDSC community was ready to breeze in day two. The session was chaired by the technical lead along with his ML, web, and android counterpart. It commenced by edifying the auditor about the leverages of participating in Hacktober like a chance to get staggering goodies and schwag, hands-on experience on projects which helps in resume and profile building.

GDSC VIT Bhopal provided a pool of opportunities to make contributions to projects ranging from the domain of web development to android and artificial intelligence. The ML lead stated that anybody with prior knowledge of GitHub and Git can contribute to open source. GDSC VIT Bhopal came up with beginner-friendly projects to enable people to kickstart their open-source journey. The web team came up with the portfolio generator by taking some common input parameters. One could majorly contribute to UI/UX and create new preview components. The android lead Dhruv Mehta explained that the team was on the timer application which could countdown time from 100 to 0 seconds using kotlin for backend development and jetPack compost for UI/UX. The Ml lead Aayush Mishra created a repository to bring all the ML projects under one umbrella. Dhruv Mehta elucidated the contribution guidelines. Keeping transparency and eliminating all disparities the team decided to assign the issue on a first-come, first-serve basis. The issues were cleft on the basis of difficulty level. Aman Sharma, the technical lead cited how one could select the appropriate issue to make a contribution. He even encouraged people to opt for trees as schwag instead of t-shirts in order to save the environment. The lead revealed that the top 3 contributors would get a gilded chance to get featured on GDSC social media to account along with a letter of appreciation.

This Hacktober Fest, GDSC VIT Bhopal transformed the knotty task of contributing to open source into a walk-in park. With the effort of the entire team along with the amiable audience, the session was a huge success.

CLOUD STUDY JAMS (13th October, 2021)

Cloud Jam session is a community event conducted by GDSC VITB Club with the vision to make their viewers learn about fundamental tools and capabilities of Google Cloud. We also had briefed on the topics such as Machine learning, Kubernetes, cloud security, etc.

After this session, viewers will gain practical knowledge about the Cloud Fundamentals and earn Google Cloud badges. The session aims to help viewers who are seeking careers in cloud technology. Viewers will learn about Google cloud programs and services and can be eligible for roles in the IT sector involving cloud tech.

30 days of Google Cloud

Google offered the 30 Days of Google Cloud program, and anyone can enroll in the class for free. This program will provide you an opportunity to kickstart your career in the cloud and get hands-on practice on Google Cloud Platform — the tool that powers apps like Google Search, Gmail, and YouTube.

There are two tracks under this program

Track 1: Cloud Engineering Track

Explore and deploy solution elements, including infrastructure components such as networks, systems, and application services.

Skill Badges

1. Getting Started: Create and Manage Cloud Resources

2. Perform Foundational Infrastructure Tasks in Google Cloud

3. Setup and Configure a Cloud Environment in Google Cloud

4. Deploy and Manage Cloud Environments with Google Cloud

5. Build and Secure Networks in Google Cloud

6. Deploy to Kubernetes in Google Cloud

Track 2: Data Science & Machine Learning Track

Learn & demonstrate proficiency in Data Science & ML topics to prepare roles in data, marketing, and business

Skill Badges

1. Getting Started: Create and Manage Cloud Resources

2. Perform Foundational Data, ML, and AI Tasks in Google Cloud

3. Insights from Data with BigQuery

4. Engineer Data in Google Cloud

5. Integrate with Machine Learning APIs

6. Explore Machine Learning Models with Explainable AI

Cloud Skill badge and certification

We have also talked about cloud skill badges, which learners will obtain after completing each or set lab and particles. Students can show their skill set and proficiency in the cloud by sharing their earned badges in cloud skills. At the end of all labs, we will schedule a final assessment where students can also show their knowledge, implementation, and innovation on how they can use the power of the cloud. After completing each step, Google provides the Google Cloud certification. The certification helps to prove in front of others that they are certified cloud professionals.

About cloud:-

Our hosts well explained the term cloud in the context of computer science. It is a term used to describe a global network of servers, each with a unique function. It is a vast network of remote servers around the globe that are linked together to operate as a single ecosystem. Also, we have explained the difference between cloud and server. In simple words, the cloud provides tons of functionalities with a global range whereas, servers are restricted to some specific functionalities and have a particular zone/area of operation.

Start with a solid platform: -

Till now, our hosts explained the features and functionalities. They also glanced at the computational power of the cloud. But the question here arises how we can use all these features and interact with these cloud tech.

So, there are four ways to interact: -

1. Google Cloud Console

2. Cloud SDK and Cloud Shell

3. Rest based — API

4. Cloud Console mobile Application

It sounds very complex and time taking, but it is not. Cloud console provides a Web-based GUI to manage your project and data. It provides control over resources. You will have a better experience since you don’t have to code everything. You make minor changes in provided or pre-written code to get your job done per your need.

When you create or deploy projects on Google cloud, you might not be using only a single service provided by the cloud. Multiple services may run simultaneously, giving a sense of flexibility.

There could be more than one cloud account associated with a project. To resolve deadlocks, a Resource manager efficiently manages all the resources.

You can access the resource manager with a REST API. It returns a list of all the projects within an account.

There are three attributes to identify the project:-

1. Project ID (Globally unique and immutable after initiation)

2. Project Name (Identifier for the project. Mutable by the user.)

3. Project Number (globally unique, immutable, and auto-assigned.)

Cloud SDK

It is a CLI interface for google cloud products and services. It is a handy tool if users do not want to open a separate shell in the browser to operate the cloud. They can easily access their projects and do all-important development work in their project.

Cloud Shell

It is a browser-based shell interface that will allow users to manage and develop their projects without installing and 3rd party software. Shell is a gateway for all the work on a project webpage (console.cloud.google.com) as it gives Web preview functionality and built-in authorization for project/resource access. It runs on ephemeral Compute Engine VM with zero cost on billing.

Cloud Console Mobile app

It allows users to have complete control over the project by their mobile app. It enables you to stay connected to the cloud, check the bills, manage critical stats and health. You can create custom dashboards to show info like CPU usage, Requests per second, Errors, and many more. The best part of the mobile interface is it doesn’t limit you to anything. You can even code using cloud shell and develop your project. This interface finds its functionality if you are not having your system with you. Still, you can manage things with one touch on your mobile.

Conclusion

To wrap it all, GDSC VITB did its best to give theoretical and practical knowledge about Google’s Cloud Platform. We discussed usage of cloud and careers opportunities available in cloud tech and skillset in the cloud. We portrayed the importance of certification in Google’s cloud platform. Finally, we demonstrated how to create, develop projects, interact and manage all the resources.

ML TALKS (30th November 2021–11th Feb 2022)

Machine Learning is a field that is rapidly growing in importance as it has made many tasks more feasible, efficient, and precise, especially when backed by Data Science. Considering this, GDSC VIT Bhopal was back with the second season of ML Talks where the sessions have continued to make students more familiar and adept with Machine Learning. The entire series was conducted by the ML Team of GDSC VIT Bhopal, led by Aayush Mishra, and co-led by Jackson Jacob, along with team members, Sayan Saha, Mayuresh Agashe, and Hemanth Sai.

The first session for this season commenced on 30th November 2021 at 8 pm, with Aayush Mishra and Jackson Jacob who briefed the Season 1 of ML Talks during the previous tenure. While Season 1 focused on the foundations of Machine Learning and Data Science, this time the sessions covered some advanced concepts as well. Keeping that in mind, this session was still beginner-friendly and centered on Kaggle, a tool to facilitate ML.

Aayush initiated the event by making the audience familiar with the Kaggle platform and primarily the Competitions section. Since Kaggle acts as a reservoir for numerous datasets, he further explained their importance in exploring, analyzing, and sharing quality data. He further explained more about Notebooks and the Code section of Kaggle. Furthermore, he underlined the importance of the Discussions and Courses section. While the former is a forum for all Kaggle users to interact and share opinions, feedback as well as resources for absolute beginners; the latter is useful for various quality courses on Python.

After that, Jackson took over the session and demonstrated how to create, import, and download datasets on Kaggle while explaining Python libraries such as NumPy and Pandas. He touched upon accelerators, which are crucial for Deep Learning models, and concluded his walkthrough on Kaggle.

Subsequently, he described the Performance Tiers on Kaggle namely; Novice, Contributor, Expert, Master, and Grandmaster in the Kaggle Progression System while emphasizing how Kaggle is a happening platform for Data Science enthusiasts. After this, Aayush summarized the entire session while highlighting the importance of learning over acquiring titles. This was immediately followed by both Aayush and Jackson answering some of the questions by the audience.

In conclusion, the first session of season two of ML Talks was successfully brought to an end. The event proved to be both interactive and engaging while making Machine Learning and Data Science enthusiasts aware of the numerous opportunities ahead.

Deep Learning is a subset of Machine Learning. It is based on Neural Networks and is an important element of fields such as ML, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science. As GDSC VIT Bhopal was back with the second season of ML Talks, the second session focused on Deep Learning. It was a combined effort of the ML Team of GDSC, led by Aayush Mishra, and co-led by Jackson Jacob, along with team members, Sayan Saha, Mayuresh Agashe, and Hemanth Sai.

The session commenced on 11th February 2022, at 6 pm with Aayush Mishra, ML Team Lead, and Jackson Jacob, ML Team Co-Lead, briefing the audience about the session, which primarily focused on concepts of Deep Learning as well as TensorFlow: a tool to create Neural Networks.

Sayan, ML Team Member, started the session by explaining what Deep Learning is. He gave an example of how machine learning algorithms are trained for creating a fraud detection program and highlighted how the quality of data determines the accuracy of an algorithm. He further explained a shortcoming with classical ML algorithms and how Deep Learning algorithms tackle the same with efficiency.

Hemanth, ML Team Member, then described the applications of Deep Learning. He used examples such as Speech Recognition, self-driving cars etcetera. He also explained Neural Networks, their features, and applications along with elucidating Forward and Backward propagation.

Hereafter, Mayuresh took over the session and introduced one of the Deep Learning frameworks: TensorFlow. It is an Open Source library for numerical computation using data flow graphs. He elaborated on the history and development of TensorFlow while mentioning the advantages of preferring TensorFlow as it also supports a wide variety of languages. He gave prominence to the TensorFlow ecosystem and mentioned some of its components, namely TensorFlow Lite, TensorFlow Extended, TensorFlow Quantum, TensorFlow Hub, and TensorBoard along with their respective utility. Then he showed a live coding demonstration with Google Colab and signified how data can be visualized to build models from scratch.

Hemanth took over the session to explain Neural Network simulations and their working. Then, Aayush and Jackson highlighted the Machine Learning projects under GDSC VIT Bhopal and elaborated about MediCare, a Machine Learning-based web application. He invited the audience as well to contribute to the repository along with the entire team answering some questions from them.

With that, the second session of this season of ML Talks came to a successful conclusion and ensured that the viewers were able to understand all the fundamental concepts to be on the pathway to build their own Deep Learning models.

ANDROID STUDY JAMS (10th December — 19th December, 2021)

The 21st century has been renowned for being an era of technological developments. We are a meagre 21 years into this century and we have made virtual worlds and artificial intelligence and we have just scratched the surface of what is to come. Smartphones have been at the forefront of all these technological developments and a majority of smartphones are powered by the famous operating system Android. The Google Developer Student club realised the importance Android and its subsequent development held for the future of technology and took it upon themselves to empower the future generations to be more proficient on these fronts. This brought about the indulging and wonderfully curated event of Android Study Jams.

Android Study Jam

Android Study Jam is very literal in its nomenclature with it being an event headlined by people who are proficient in Android app development as well as have an enthralling charisma to empower students with the knowledge that they will find useful in the upcoming stages of their technological and developmental journey. The event started with Ishika Kulkarni, the lead of GDSC chapter of Vit Bhopal, Vishesh Tripathi, the Co-lead of the Android development tea of GDSC chapter of VIT Bhopal and Dhruv Mehta, the Android Lead of GDSC chapter of VIT Bhopal all coming together to give a simple yet wonderful introduction as to what would happen during the course of the event. The introduction covered what topics would be covered over the course of the event, what resources the students can walk away from the event with and what are the prerequisites for attending this event. The speaker made it very clear that the ultimate goal of this event was to enable the students attending the session to build their own android apps. This was a very warm, reassuring and welcoming introduction to the event.

Dhruv took over the podium from this point introducing himself to the audience. He then talked about what the students needed to do in order to get the best out of this event. He then went on to explain how to set up a DSC profile which was pinnacle to completing this event and reaping its benefits. He explained that the subject has been divided into different pathways that the students can follow to learn things starting from the basics of setting up the tools needed for android app development to how to use these tools to their maximum effectiveness. He explained that the progress of the students would be measured by badges which can be earned by completing quizzes which came at the end of these individual packages. These quizzes and earning of these badges are pivotal in completing this event. The event was then shifted to the main aim which was to guide the students in making their first android app which was a simple application.

From this point onwards, the session was taken over by Vishesh who explained that Kotlin was the language that was going to be used in coding the app and android studio was the platform that was going to be used to design the above mentioned app. He started by explaining carefully how to set up android studio while subsequently giving insights on why Kotlin was an interesting and fun language to use. He explained that the awe of Kotlin lay in its simplicity which it showcased while also having the powerfulness of Java. After this he displayed the basic functions of Kotlin carefully explaining the basics so that anyone and everyone could understand.

Then the podium was taken over by Ishika who started up Android studio and gave an insight on what the first app they were going to develop was. The app was supposed to be a single page, simple dice rolling app that threw a dice at every strike of the command giving a randomised number. She talked about how the User Interface (UI) was split into three types with those being:
1. Text UI

2. Button UI

3. Picture UI

She then proceeded to explain the importance of each of these types and what role they played in this.

After this Dhruv returned to the speaking position giving clear point by point instructions on how to set up the UI so it looked at its best and then went on to code the button that enabled the command which led to the rolling of the dice. This was immaculately covered with every point being repeatedly explained in a manner any amateur coder could understand. Once the coding was done, the app was built and it worked successfully without any sort of interruptions.

This brought a close to the first and introductory course of the event with everyone who attended the event walking away with a belief that this event will lead them to new opportunities. The speakers had immaculate chemistry between them that led to the event being so wonderful and simple to understand.

The introduction of Kotlin and basic terminologies involved in Kotlin language were well received by the audience. This is where ASJ Session 2 picks up from. The speaker goes into speaking about the prerequisites needed to run android studio and explains why it is important to the process of android app development. Then the topic is switched to Material design and how it falls into the scheme of Android app development. The speakers Vishesh and Dhruv alternate between each other and talks about the guidelines regarding Material design. The talk about Material Design flowed into talking about the themes and layout in app development. The speakers especially highlighted how setting a proper theme and layout for your app is crucial to captivate the attention of the user and how it can affect the success of the app to a very high extent. They then dived into explaining how different types of layouts exist and how they all differ from each other. Vishesh then discussed Recycler View and how to implement it . Then the topic switched to how to navigate between screens in android apps and how to implement that. Then the topic switched to collections which is a part of the Kotlin framework like many other languages such as Java. The topic then turned to activity and intent and the stages of an activity lifecycle.

The next stage of the session is the one where the viewers had to get involved with Dhruv starting with the development of the second app of the ASJ sessions. This app is a simple Multi Screen Alphabet display app which was thoroughly explained by the speakers. While discussing the development of the app, many concepts in Kotlin were discussed as well wonderfully and clearly. The session was brought to a close with some more concepts regarding Kotlin discussed.

The session was particularly interesting because of the way it was both interactive and indulging at the same time. The session was used to clear up many doubts about the basics of Kotlin language and overall was a great success.

In this session, after going over the prerequisites and hashing over some basic questions, Vishesh stepped into the main content for this session. The started the session off by talking about Navigation Architectural components, what it is and how it is integral to android app development. They then addressed the main part of it being how to implement Navigation Architectural components and how to use it to the user’s advantage. They then talked about Viewmodel and how it is integral to the UI of the app that the user is developing at the moment. This led to the topic of the lifecycle of a Viewmodel and how it is crucial to Android app development. They then seamlessly switched the topic to the Data Binding library which is a tool which binds the UI to the data sources in a derivative way. They talked about Coroutines and how these are to be implemented in code. Vishesh also provided the viewers with the resources to practise and hone their skills on coroutines on. The next topic was about the internet and how data is derived from the internet. They talked about loading content and more specifically images from the internet. The next topic was about Room Persistence library in android and how it functions. They also talked about the major benefits of this library.

After these topics were adequately discussed, Dhruv switched over to the practical part of the session and continued on with the app development and where they had left off in the previous sessions. The alphabet display app was coming along beautifully and you could clearly see many of the discussed topics in practical action. The basic errors that could be committed were displayed and the ways to deal with said errors were also discussed. The session ended with Dhruv asking the audience if they had any questions and clearing some interesting ones. This was the conclusion of a clearly successful third session of ASJ.

SheCodes and Codess (27th Jan, 2022)

Google Developer Students Club, VIT Bhopal has always been the frontline for conducting constructive events. GDSC aims to pique the programming and technical interests of students. Attesting to that was SheCodes and Codess, an initiative by the Women Tech Makers department of the club. It was organized primarily for women to upskill their coding skills and get insights from one of the exceptional final year students of the institution, Ms. Arushi Jain.

SheCodes

The session commenced on YouTube at 6 PM on 27th January 2022 while amassing more than 300 views. “I believe that a woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman but, the search to find the voice can be a real struggle.” With these impactful words by Melinda Gates, Vidushi Shukla, GDSC Management Lead, welcomed the audience and made them familiar with the vision behind SheCodes and Codess.

Ms. Vidushi then introduced Ms. Ishika Kulkarni, GDSC Community Lead, who provided eye-opening insights on female representation in the technical community. She portrayed the bias in the tech-sphere while urging the women to break the barriers by taking cognizance about the participation and mindset of women.

Following that, Ms. Anamika Tripathi, GDSC WTM Lead, explained more about the WTM division of GDSC and their objectives while creating awareness of the opportunities available in the technical domain for women. She gave an empowering speech about the same while highlighting the significance of WTM.

Subsequently, Arushi Jain, the engineering intern at Zynga and winner of the Virtusa hackathon, provided a roadmap to kickstart their programming journey with its key elements being: -

1. Breaking the wall
2. Learning coding languages and technologies
3. Skilling up through projects and ideas
4. Practicing coding and problem solving
5. Self-evaluating and improving on it
6. Performing and enhancing your portfolio

Furthermore, Ms. Nandita Jain (the Outreach lead) and Parnika Kesarwani (the Design Lead) asked a few questions assisted by Ms. Ishika Kulkarni and Ms. Anamika. All the queries were answered quite informatively by Ms. Arushi.

Ms. Vidushi winded up the session by expressing her gratitude towards Ms. Arushi while reminding the audience about Codess. With that, SheCodes, the first WTM event, concluded while setting up the pace for Codess and more empowering events by GDSC VIT Bhopal.

Codess

Codess, a female-driven coding competition, commenced on Hackerrank at 8 PM on 27th January 2022, with its primary focus being for women to enhance their coding skills. It comprised of three coding questions, namely: -

1. Sum in Array
2. String Reverser
3. Repeat Single Character

These questions used various programming and DSA concepts.

The competition carried on for an hour, with the key highlights being the top 5 winners, who would be winning exciting prizes and certificates of merit. Along with that, all the participants would be receiving gift coupons and certificates of participation as well.

In conclusion, both SheCodes and Codess were successful and empowering events by GDSC VIT Bhopal while ensuring that their community of developers and students maintain their spark in programming.

GUIDE TO HOW 11 YEAR OLD’S ARE BECOMING RICH VIA NFTS

NFTs or Non Fungible Tokens are something that has taken the world over by storm in the past one year. Everyone starting with billionaire businessmen and businesswomen to multi national sports icons to popular culture icons have indulged themselves in the world of NFTs. It has become a signature of success and has grown over the world like wildfire. But what exactly are these NFTs? What significance does it hold? Will it sustain in today’s market or is it just another passing fad?

GDSC VIT Bhopal decided to bring new insight into NFTs and this was achieved by the two day event held which covered a multitude of topics ranging from what exactly NFTs are to why they are significant.

The first session was hosted by the co-lead of the web team of GDSC VIT Bhopal, Akshit Gupta who took it upon himself to shine light upon the immense world of NFTs. He first went into a dive into the technology behind NFTs and how the word Blockchain is connected to it. He talked a bit about what Bitcoin is and how it works in the blockchain. He explained what a smart contract is and how it is a transaction receipt in the blockchain. He went on to explain a bit more about Blockchains. He went on to explain about Web 3 apps. He then opened Opensea and how it is a place where NFTs are sold around the world. He explained about the pricing of NFTs and how the price of each NFT is decided. He then showed some NFTs of some famous personalities and explained about the BAYC or the Bored Ape Yacht Club. He then ran a blockchain and showed a command run properly. He then went on to explain what a private key is and explained it further. He then switched to the more technical part of the crypto world but before doing this, he fielded the questions the viewers had and clarified them properly. He even showed how to open a wallet on Metamask. He took ample time to explain some doubts. Then he explained about solidity, which is the language in which smart contracts are coded. He even showed how to write a few commands on solidity. He promised to teach the viewers how to make their own NFTs. He then fielded a few questions before closing the session. All in all, it was a wonderful and knowledgeable session.

In the next session, Akshit went over the topics covered in the previous session and explained them briefly. He also gave a rundown on what all will be covered in this session. He then demonstrated how to make your own NFT with proper instructions. He then showed how to attach a smart contract to your NFT. He then showed what Pinata is and how it is a tool used to upload images to your IPFS folder. He also shared a Notion document which had all this info. He then moved on to Hardhat which is a platform that provides Ethereum development environment. He then showed how to code a smart contract in javascript. He then demonstrated how to link GitHub to Hardhat. He then talked about alchemy which is another platform that is important to Blockchain launch. He then talked about the ERC token standard which sets the uniqueness of NFTs. He then demonstrated how to attach an ERC token standard to your smart contract. He demonstrated a few more functions including important ones such a s mapping. He then took a few minutes to field some questions from the viewers. He showed the wallet on metamaskl and how to link it to your various meta apps. Then once the coding part was done, he minted the token they had made after setting a few parameters and the demonstration was successful. Then to wrap up the session, he fielded a few more questions from the viewers explaining them wonderfully. This session was a lot more practical heavy then the previous one while being lighter in theory. Both the sessions encompassed the basic functions of an NFT, how to make your own NFT and how to publish it. The sessions were very helpful to the viewers who were high in praise.

APIs 101 using Postman (6th Feb, 2022)

Steve Jobs rightfully said, “Learn continually- there is always ‘one more thing’ to learn”. Taking inspiration from it, Google Developer Students Club, Vellore Institute of Technology Bhopal conducted APIs 101 with Postman, another thrilling event to kick-start developers journey. The team organised an interactive and knowledgeable session about APIs and the advent of tools provided by Postman- a platform to create and test APIs.

The session was scheduled for 6th February 2022 and was live-streamed on the GDSC VIT Bhopal YouTube channel. Dhruv Mehta, a Postman Student Expert, hosted the session and briefed enthusiastic showgoers about the API and Postman workspace.

He initiated the event by sharing a real-life example of APIs incorporated in social media. He explained how one can click, apply filters and share an image through hardware API, libraries, and remote API. A remarkable example of the excellent teaching methodology used by GDSC VIT Bhopal was equalising API to waiters in a restaurant. The Conference was divided into segments like introduction, request, and response, trying out, and fellow-up to improve the understanding of the audience.

Dhruv explained how API allows developers to access data and services from servers without looking into the background details. API can be considered similar to LEGO bricks; decompose many services in a project using a small API to make it a whole. It serves the modern need for complex and collaborative software. Postman is a leading player in this domain which can be attested from the fact that 98% of fortune 500 organisations and 65% of global 2000 organisations use it.

The expert demonstrated the Postman workspace and performed methods like get, post, put and delete using the joke API. The session witnessed breezy interaction by the viewers in the chat section. Dhruv elucidated the three major components of request that are methods, address, and path. The illustration of generating a personal workspace and adding requests was presented for the convenience of spectators. He divulged how with the asset of Postman, one can use vivid database languages like HTML, XML, JSON, and more to perform the actions.

Dhruv recounted the perks of using Postman over others as it meets industry requirements and allows its user to copy code snippets in any programming language. At the end of the event, viewers were briefed about the blog writing and social media contest through which the winners could win stunning prizes from Postman.

Blog Writing and Social Media Marketing Competitions

As APIs 101 with Postman commenced on 6th February 2022, the attendees received a wonderful opportunity to earn stirring schwags from Postman.

For that, two competitions were conducted: -

1. Blog Writing

2. Social Media Marketing

For the Blog Competition, participants had to write a blog based on their understanding from the session and post it on Medium, Dev.to or other acknowledged platforms.

On the other hand, for the Social Media Contest, participants had to share their learnings from the session on platforms such as Twitter or LinkedIn.

The deadline for the submissions was 8th February 2022. After reviewing all the blogs and posts, the results were declared on 9th February 2022 with three winners from the Blog Competition and two winners from the Social Media Contest.

In conclusion, APIs 101 with Postman nurtured a peer-to-peer environment for developers and students to learn, innovate and achieve while being a thoroughly successful event.

SOLUTION CHALLENGE SERIES (20th — 21st March, 2022)

Technology cannot be an end in itself but must aim at solving long-term social and ecological problems. A quote by Richard Roger aptly describes that the solution lies in the problem itself.

To solve one or more of 17 United Nations sustainable development goals, Google Developers Community hosted the Solution challenge 2022. Solution Challenge is open to all the members of the Google Developers Student clubs. It was a proud moment that GDSC VIT Bhopal, a diligent community of developers, was determined to enhance the standard of living by ensuring the good health and well-being of an individual with the advent of Google technologies. The Kotlin team worked on a pedometer app- the mobile application used to count the steps and set targets. The session was presided by android co-lead Mr. Vishesh Tripathi, accompanied by Mr. Harsh Raj and Ms. Apoorva from team Kotlin.

The android lead acquainted the viewers with the solution challenge, what it is all about, and the perks of participating. He recounted the astonishing prizes and cited that the top 50 teams are entitled to T-shirts and mentorship from Google. On the other hand, members of the top 10 teams qualified to receive $1000 as a cash prize, schwag, and a gilded opportunity to get featured on google’s blog. The top 3 teams would be featured on Dev Ops live streaming and rewarded with schwag, mentorship, and a cash prize of $3000 per team member.

As the session continued, Apoorva unfolded the pages of building the pedometer app. The team used Kotlin and Jetpack Compose to code interactive and responsive UI components.

Kotlin is a modern, concise and safe programming language developed by JetBrains and open-source contributors. It is utilized to build the multiplatform mobile app, web frontend, android, and server-side.

JetPack Compose is like a boon for the app developers as it transformed the app-building into a cakewalk. It is a modern toolkit for building a native UI. The kotlin team member exclaimed that being a sensor application, permission was required to detect the motion. Mr. Harsh demonstrated the advanced features of JetPack Compose, which enabled the developer to show the UI rendered by function without an emulator. The attributes like draw box, arcs, start angle, color, style, and sweep bolstered developers to beat the clock.

Old maybe the gold, but new can be diamond, and jetPack composes sand kotlin are the precious jewels of modern world android dev.

Aiming towards a sustainable future to ensure the survival of the human race and well being of mother Earth, GDSC took a step forward. Google Developer Student Club organized — a solution challenge where GDSC of colleges all over the world are committed to solve, one or more united nation 17 development goals using Google technologies.

GDSC VIT Bhopal android team took the charge of presenting an innovative idea and committed to enlighten the newbies towards the profession of an android developer whose demand had increased exponentially in past years. The session was chaired by Dhruv Mehta, android lead along with his fellow mates Tanay Dwivedi and Shankar Lohar who were members of the java team. They demonstrated how one could build a login/sign-up page. The UI/UX components are developed using XML and the firebase was used for the backend.

Google’s firebase is widely used to contrive web and mobile applications. Firebase provides in-depth documentation and cross-platform SDKs that help to construct and ship apps on Android, iOS, the web, C++, and Unity. It aims to enhance the app’s experience, personalize your onboarding flow, grow user engagement, or add new functionality. It is trusted by some of the world’s largest leading apps and games for instance The New York Times, Alibaba, Trivago, Gameloft.

Tanay Dwivedi continues the session, he constructed the splash screen along with the login page using XML. He even trained the users to add the new directories to resource and firebase for the backend. The UI was raftered using card view, text view, buttons, and animations. The Facebook authentication using firebase was conducted by Shankar Lohar using the Facebook developer tools/portal

Through the session, the beneficiaries got an overwhelming chance to kick start their journey as android developers. So the quote “The old that is strong doesn’t wither” concludes that XML and java had earmarked their contribution in the field of development.

FLUTTER FEST (25th March — 1st April, 2022)

Flutter is an open-source UI software development kit created by Google. It is used to develop cross-platform applications for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, Google Fuchsia, and the web from a single codebase. Flutter has emerged as a trend among developers, startups, and enterprises in developing applications. Keeping in mind the significance and productivity of Flutter, GDSC VIT Bhopal conducted FlutterFest, a 5-day event to boost the students’ skills while kick-starting their journey into development with Flutter.

The first session commenced on 25th March 2022, at 6 pm with Ishika Kulkarni, GDSC Community Lead, and Aman Sharma, Technical Lead as well as the facilitator for Flutter Festival, who explained the crux of FlutterFest to the audience. This session focused on introducing the developers to Flutter, Dart and Dartpad.

Ishika initiated the event by explaining what Flutter is and how it radically transforms the app development process. She also compared the productivity that Flutter brings by a single codebase in contrast to developing a native app for each device with multiple libraries. She further emphasized the simplicity of Dart, the programming language used to code Flutter apps. She highlighted Flutter’s foundational pillars and how Flutter is built to be fast, productive, beautiful, open, and portable.

Aman took over the session by introducing the viewers to Dart and gave a hands-on demonstration to code in Dart through Dartpad while sharing some resources to help the beginners get acquainted with programming. He described the simplicity of programm ing in Dart considering how the syntax is similar to Java and Python. He explained Dart’s syntax using concepts of functions, data types, conditionals, and loops such as for, while, and do-while.

He also touched upon programming concepts like null operators, nullable variables, list methods, maps, classes, setters, etc which are fundamental to programming. He emphasized the importance of Dart as it is the language used to code in Flutter which in turn eases the app development process across multiple platforms.

Ishika and Aman concluded the session by answering the audience’s questions and sharing the registration links for the upcoming sessions while summarizing today’s session. They also mentioned how by the end of FlutterFest, the participants would be developing a project while enhancing their application development skills.

In conclusion, the first session of FlutterFest was thoroughly successful. It served as a kickstarter for budding app developers while introducing beginners as well to the vast field of Flutter. It set the 5-day event into motion while ensuring that it will be immensely immersive for the students.

SUMMERFEST 2022 (27th — 30th May, 2022)

Summerfest is a week-long event for students that are engrossed in the development of products and solutions to real-world problems. Summerfest consists of a cluster of events that are planned to enlighten the rookies about the various trending technologies that are drastically changing the modern world software and IT industry.

The event consists of conscious speaker sessions, a riveting gaming night, and the most awaited competition of the year HackGDSC, GDSC’s sophomore hackathon. Making pace with the modern world GDSC VIT Bhopal is committed to provide the latest exposure to the developers which enables them to enhance their technical skills in this period of dynamic technological change. The complete event will be organized on GATHER TOWN, an online metaverse platform that is centered around the spaces.

NETWORKING IN METAVERSE

GDSC VIT Bhopal created a custom virtual map on metaverse using Gather Town Platform. Participants could create their own mini avatars and explore the interactive map. This provided a platform for participants to interact with the core team as well as other participants and grow their networking circle.

GAMING NIGHT

No fest is complete without games. We arranged a game nights from 30th May. The evenings filled with lucrative games were open for all the interested students of our University. The event aims to relax and refresh the participants before our final showdown event of Summerfest2022. The Gaming Night will reap many exciting goodies for the winners and selective lucky participants.

HACKGDSC2022

After a week full of events, Summerfest will conclude with the most awaited “HackGDSC2022” on May 27 to May 30, 2022. The hackathon is themed around “Building a Community Towards Sustainable Development”, with the problem statement of — Targeting Local problems with Technology.

This annual mega event is open to all the students of our university, as well as others to encourage healthy competition as well as providing exposure to the global talent. HACKGDSC saw participation of all the University students and aimed to nurture the technical skills and team work. The hackathon was free of cost.

TRACKS

The participants can build a solution at HACKGDSC 2022 under a diverse range of tracks:

1. Machine Learning
2. Web Development
3. Open Innovation
4. Mobile Development
5. Web3 / Block-chain
6. Game Development

Summerfest was concluded with Felicitation Ceremony on 5th of June, 2022. Winners were declared by our tech lead, Aman Sharma. He also announced the track winners. Finally, Sidhved Warik gave the note of thanks and wrapped up the final session of the tenure.