Critique-General Secretary Technology 2019–20
Disclaimer: The content below is the work of The Scholars’ Avenue as a team and is wholly our opinion as the campus media body on a campus issue. Voters are encouraged to go through this and then make up their mind. We do not promote any one candidate over the other and have tried to stay as unbiased as possible in critiquing their proposals.
Candidate 1: Ninad Patil
Proposal 1:
Revamping the selection process for participation in Inter IIT Tech meet.
Need:
There does exist a lack of transparency in the selection of candidates for the Inter IIT Tech meet because as of now, it’s not clear how the candidates are shortlisted after their résumés have been reviewed.
Feasibility:
Finding professors, publicity of the tech meet and conduction of tests is easily feasible. Forming of centralised support teams in specialized domains, on the other hand, is difficult to execute as sustaining the interest of the participants for longer periods of time is a difficult task.
Impact:
Seeing as to how there is a need for transparency in selections, a lot of students would benefit from the implementation of this proposal. Moreover, the other aspects of the proposal would leave a lot of impact at a minimal cost of implementation cost.
Proposal 2:
Introduction of a Sudo Code Event (8 hours overnight) based on the lines of competitive coding in Open IIT as well as Technology General Championship.
Need:
Many students lack focused guidance when it comes to competitive coding, hence the introduction of such events will lead to their participation in their training in their respective halls and will provide incentives to work further in this field. Moreover, having good coding a profile would be beneficial from a CDC standpoint as well.
Feasibility:
Organizing the event would take little to no difficulty but it remains to be seen how many halls would agree on initiating the event.
Impact:
This proposal would help improve coding culture among the student community, despite having clubs that work towards the same. There is a room for improvement in the same.
Proposal 3:
Tech Buddy Program: Providing Senior Student Mentors to Juniors helping juniors develop their technical skills under proper guidance.
Need:
With the growing diversity in technical skills, it often becomes difficult to narrow down on a certain aspect and work on it. Hence, one needs guidance from people who have already excelled in a field. Moreover, there is a lack of organized academic facility which would help the student community develop their skills efficiently.
Feasibility:
When one becomes a Senior Mentor in this program, one receives recognition from Gymkhana for Voluntary Service, but just recognition is not an appropriate way to reward the mentors. Even if the program works out, loss of interest from the mentees’ side will lead to serious regression in the interest of the mentors as well, and this phenomenon is bound to happen in some or the other way.
Impact:
Provided the program kicks off and lasts for a substantial amount of time, it is going to improve the technical abilities of the student community on campus on a notable scale. Proper consultancy and guidance can even lead to the easy development of skills in the respective fields.
Candidate 2 : Yogesh Kanik
Proposal 1: Organization of Kshitij Expo in Kshitij 2020.
Objective:
To increase and promote the various project undertaken by students throughout the nation, the candidate proposes to organize an event under Kshitij for the benefits of students, especially for RS/PhD.
Need:
A nation-wide Expo showcasing various technical projects would foster research temperament among students and research scholars alike. It would also help to improve Kshitij’s outreach to other eminent institutes.
Feasibility:
The proposal has been chalked out taking in account the timeline for the event, outlining details of budget involved and structure of the event. Although the proposal mentions that the candidate has contacted various start-ups and companies, the names of those companies are not mentioned in the proposal’s groundwork. Evidently it questions the feasibility of getting specific sponsors for the event. Being an event targeted towards research scholars, attracting participation from them would be difficult.
Impact:
The proposal benefits a small section of the entire KGP community and if implemented would likely see more participation from the students of other local colleges of eastern part of the country.
Proposal 2: Boosting the coding culture among the IIT Kharagpur student community by introducing a Hackathon Event as an Open IIT Event.
Objective:
To make the Open IIT Tournament innovative and relevant, the candidate proposes to provide a boost to the coding culture in Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur by including a Hackathon event in the Open IIT Tournament in which students will try to solve the problems related to the IIT Kharagpur Community.
Need:
The benefit of organizing such an event is two-fold; a problem that the students are facing is being solved while at the same time coding culture is being promoted. Some real innovative and effective solutions could be produced through this event.
Feasibility:
The candidate himself feels that the method of obtaining the problem statement may not provide feasible problem statements for conducting a Hackathon, which in case will again lead to getting good problem statements from the corporate companies. Also, an already packed timeline of the various events in campus during the month of October will make it a little difficult for the students to actively participate in it.
Impact:
Having a closed event format in Open IIT itself reduces the objective of Open IIT events. Allowing 2 teams from each hall makes it more of an InterHall event, hindering the motivation of students from different halls to create a team.
Proposal 3: Publish a technical newsletter every semester.
Objective:
In an institute like ours where technical developments occur ever so frequently, the majority of students find themselves oblivious to most of these developments that just might be pertaining to their areas of interest. Fixing this issue is the primary objective of this proposal.
Need:
There is general lack of awareness about the technical events happening in the institute and the world in general, especially among the first years. A newsletter would keep the interested students updated about tech events and research work.
Feasibility:
Starting and continuing the publishing of an e-newsletter is quite cheap. But readership of online articles is very low when compared to printed newsletters. Given that the frequency is twice per year, printed newsletter would be a better option here. Also, designing the newsletter and procuring the research and breakthrough information would not be an easy task.
Impact:
If implemented properly, the newsletter would definitely be helpful in keeping the general public informed about the latest technological advancements. The interviews of winning teams would certainly provide an insight into the strategies they used to achieve what they did.
Candidate 3: Sharma Kaustubh
PROPOSAL 1 : To Conduct an Introductory Workshop on Technology GC
Summary:
To increase the participation and competition in Technology General Championship and provide a basic insight about the Technology General Championship to all the students.
Need:
Could get the freshers acquainted with the technology activities and increase student participation among halls where the GC tech events haven’t been established enough.
Feasibility:
Apart from convincing the GSecs of halls and motivate the students to attend the seminar, this sounds feasible enough. Although we’re skeptical about plans to include “all” students and not just interested ones. Forced attendance (often put in place to ensure “success” of such proposals) , feeding into the “You don’t know what’s good for you yet” attitude on campus would be unwelcome at best.
Impact:
Could be of not more than little benefit to halls where Tech events have already been established and doesn’t this come under the purview of the Assimilation Program (ahem ahem)
Proposal 2 : To conduct event related workshops in different cities across India.
Summary: Started in 2004, Kshitij was conceived with the aim to provide the technically inclined youth a national-level platform, where their talent and expertise would be recognized and rewarded.Having grown exponentially since its nascent years, Kshitij receives overwhelming participation from the student community all over the world. In line with this motto, by conducting event related workshops in different regions of India, we will be to able to provide the participants with the knowledge of our events to prepare them to compete with other participants across the country.
Need:
This would probably be of help to tech enthusiasts across the country and translate to higher footfall at Kshitij.
Feasibility:
The candidate seems to have a lot of Kshitij friends. Doesn’t seem difficult to gain advice on something Kshitij has been doing for the past years. Although it would be helpful to have more insight into how these workshops would be organised and who would be delivering these workshops. It’s hard to comment without more information.
Impact:
The proposal can lead to a marginal increase in footfall and general technical skill of participants at Kshitij. However, one must question its redundancy in the face of events like Kascade.
PROPOSAL 3: To use the feasible and viable submissions of Product Design event of Technology General Championship in proper direction.
Summary:
To use the feasible and viable submissions of Product Design event of Technology General Championship in proper direction and hence, to increase the enthusiasm of participants and participation in the event, by forwarding the submissions to Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship for moulding in a real working model.
Need:
Real-life applications of products designed in GC will boost enthusiasm of participants. While individual efforts are made to implement the designed projects,this proposal might give a better platform for implementation and increase collaboration with our entrepreneurship school on campus,which not many know about.
Feasibility:
Proposal can be easily implemented as long as there’s no problem from Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship. More research into sponsorship and patent rights needs to be carried out.
Impact:
Increased participation in the Product Design GC event, increased awareness about the entrepreneurship school on campus. One wonders what’s E-cell for though.
