I’m back from my sojourn to IIT Bombay, and man was it an experience, or what?! There were positives, there were negatives, but some of the events had HUGE, and I mean HUGE shortcomings! Most noticably, this year the management was extremely poor! There seemed to be the lack of coordination between various departments and committees! That lack of coordination, almost cost people their lives at the Technoholix events at night, that is, at least in the first evening!

The first day was good, though not as exceptional as it’s been for the last two years that I’ve been attending. There were the standard events like Last Straw, Open Hardware, Open Software, Open Design, etcetera, and these were predictable by now! Around 12pm, we started hearing rumors about the unveiling of a Mercedes-McLaren F1 car! This sparked off a lot of curiosity, a lot of enthusiasm, and a bit of lunacy to creep into everyone! The event was scheduled to start off at 8pm, but we were in the line at 5:30pm itself! We started off 5th in line, but as time passed by, and as more and more “friends” of the people ahead of us in line started adding up, the line started growing, and growing a lot!! Finally, around 7:30, people started getting impatient, they started making a noise, they started pushing the people ahead to let them go! It was a stampede, and chaos reigned supreme! People fell over each other, fell on top of each other, and basically risked the life and limb of every person in the line!

Finally giving in to the crowd, and in a bid to control the pandemonium, the Organizing committee started letting people to enter into the SAC grounds. People were running in, trying to get seats before they were over, and all this, for an unconfirmed rumor! Was it really worth it? I asked myself the same question and kept pondering on it long after I got a seat. And then, the Laser Show started, and the Car was unveiled, and all my doubts were forgotten in a moment! The car was AMAZING! It was my first experience of being so close to an actual Formula One Car!! It was a dream come true!

The second night had Humanoid Robots designed by a professor from the University of Winipeg, Canada. It was a fun experience. It was extremely interesting to hear the professor talk about his objectives, and how he and his students had designed the Robots and embedded them with enough AI to carry out tasks.

The Third day had my workshop, and I was rather busy with it all the while. The moment I was done with it, I left for Nasik. The workshop was great. It was conducted by a person from Nortel (formerly Nortel Networks), and was rather interesting and informative. Definitely a wonderful experience!!

So, leaving behind some of the disappointments (and a near fatal incident), it was a great experience. Now I have to take care of some Project work, and then leave for Delhi on the 4th of February for the International Conference starting from the 7th of February.

See you around!