TWTW: Oct 1–7 of 2018 : | #3
From exams to extremes, this week pushed my limits and I am so glad!
Sunday (30/09/2018)
My focus went back to academics — something that I took quite leniently lately. Thankfully since I had previously prepared some notes, it helped me pick up the concepts quickly.
Monday (01/10/2018)
Today in the noon I had exam in for Theory of Computation and System Software. I was starting to understand and appreciate the logic behind these topics. The exam thankfully went well but I wonder how much of it did I miss due to minor detail error.
Also in regards to our P2P learning idea, I reached out to Joseph, a second year student from our college and he seemed genuinely interested. We decided to keep our first experimental session on Friday. Since the next day was a holiday, I relaxed in the evening.
Tuesday (02/10/2018)
I scrounged the internet in a desperate attempt to find some concept videos for the fundamental ideas of Microprocessors. Thankfully this gentleman had a magical way of captivating my attention beyond the web.
This and more videos made me think of an irony — of how we pay and go to universities while at the time of exams refer free online resources to learn the same. There certainly is some message worth taking away from this — that we are not valuing our resources rightly or that conventional educational systems are becoming redundant.
I am not sure which side of the argument do I stand by. An ideal scenario would be one where we students surf the internet and find resources much before the exams, and utilize the college faculty expertise to clear doubts. Yet, we slack away and procrastinate, keeping the loop running forever. Irony indeed.
Later that day, Kurian suggested that we should meet FOSSASIA founder Mr. Mario at PyCon India 2018 and conduct an interview for FOSSMEC, the open source community of our college. The python conference certainly held quite some potential for all of us.
Wednesday (03/10/2018)
Woke up to the awesome news that Farha Kareem’s dialogflow bot for Kerala Flood relief on Google Actions got selected to be featured in Google Dev Fest 2018! I was (and still am) super excited to hear that!Even Arya Murali’s (Farha’s role model) bot for Grace Hopper Celebration got selected! It was really great to see what people could achieve with a little nudge and will to explore. Really happy to see her gain world class exposure through her actions. Wish to see her soar up in the sky with many onlookers cheering and encouraging her to stay awesome!
I look forward to their exciting tweets and moments they will be having at the Dev Fest. Meanwhile at college, the exams went well. Stayed back and had a combined study session with friends for a few hours.
Thurday (04/10/2018)
The last day of exams — and they went really well! Now came the long list of stuff I had pending. I packed my bag for PyCon Hyderabad and got some other tasks completed.
Smart forms got shortlisted for the competition that Kurian, Bharat and I applied for. Now we need to build a mobile app for it and release it within 2 months. Our idea needs computer vision, a good UI and well designed storage. Hope in time it goes well.
Friday (05/10/2018)
Today was the D-day to travel to Hyderabad! Excited and bags all packed, we left for the college.
During the lunch break we had the P2P learning session and explained how we planned to execute the program. Joseph seemed interested just as we were. Then at 1PM, FOSSMEC had a meeting about conducting Hacktoberfest at our college on the following weekend. We decided on the structure and the achievers to invite to speak at the event.
In the evening, Kurian, Devdutt and I went to the airport and boarded our flight to Hyderabad. Though we had some difficulty navigating our way through the procedures, we successfully made it! Also, it was a true honor to be the ones with whom Devdutt went on his first flight :)
At the Hyderabad airport we got a taxi to our hotel and slept by 1AM. PyCon was the next day.
Saturday (06/10/2018)
We woke up refreshed and eager to explore what the day had to offer. We attended a lot of sessions from noteworthy individuals. We got to meet lot of other developers such as those from IIIT, VIT, GEC Rajkot and so on. This diversity helped us appreciate how the passion for code and community bridges all gaps. I plan to write in detail about this experience shortly so do keep an eye out for it.
I had opted to speak in Lightning Talks, an opportunity for participants to share their idea with the gathering under 5 minutes. I got to speak first and it was a great experience. I admit that before going onto the stage I was a bit scared but then when I spoke to fellow speakers (Lakshya from Google and Shreyas from IIT Mandi) it helped me relax a bit.
My talk was about the 6 kinds of people in computer science, and people seemed to have enjoyed it! I am really grateful to PyCon to provide me with this opportunity to voice my thoughts and share it with a wider audience.
We met Mr.Mario afterwards and had a very good interview with him. Kurian plans to write about it shortly on FOSSMEC blog.
Sunday (07/10/2018)
Woke up to a lot of positivity and support from my tweet about the talk session. Really grateful to have a supportive ecosystem to back me up. Even at the venue people walked up to me and congratulated me on the talk session. This was quite a new feeling for me :)
In the evening, Biswaz spoke of his story where he used Python to save Kerala from floods. It was in the last moment that he decided to speak up and people truly clapped at the wonderful real world solution he found via open source. Even Enfa, the founder of PEHIA spoke about her thoughts on gender equality in the world of tech and why a supportive community is essential for long term growth.
Thanks to Devdutt, my friends at Kerala got to know about it and congratulated me on my achievement. I am really lucky to have a supportive system as they help me grow. Look forward to explore Hyderabad tomorrow and return back to Kochi. This certainly was a great experience.
Thank you for reading through. Have a nice day.
