ICARUS - 2008

the RGIT technical festival

25th, 26th and 27th September

Fly on your way like an eagle; Fly as high as the sun

On your wings like an eagle; Fly and touch the sun

And fly we did.

The technical festival of RGIT has held many names in the past but they have always been committee fests rather than a pure college fest. This time however it was different. All the student bodies including IEEE, ACM, ISA, ABIT and SAE hosted a technical festival and for the first time we got to introduce it as an RGIT TechFest. The neo-story of ICARUS was finally underway.

Undoubtedly the vibrant spirit and high enthusiasm that went into the preparation of the festival reflected in the participation during the festival. The schedule of the festival, which was sponsored by the likes of HP, AMD-ATI, Nitco, Indian Odyssey, IMFS, KIC and IMS, basically consisted of elimination rounds on the first day for Robotics and LAN Gaming and final rounds the next day. Other events like Website Designing (Spin a Web), Coding (Code-Father), Virtual Stock Exchange (E-lal street), Paper Truss, Blindfold Typing, Technical Paper Presentation, Aeromodeling Competition (Touch the Sun) and Rock Jam took place on the first day. Photography (Click n Present), Junkyard Wars (Scrappy Affairs), Ad-making (Ad-Mad) and Treasure Hunt (Conquest) were the second day events. On the third day RGIT hosted a BarCamp that we called Camp-Icarus.

Robotics and LAN Gaming, the so-called evergreen events, received an overwhelming response with participating teams from RGIT as well as other colleges like SP, DJ Sanghvi, Somaiya, VJTI and Vidhyalankar to name a few. Over 40 teams competed for each of the four robotics tracks (Yin-Yang, 'High'-way, Child's Play and Tug-a-bot). AMD-ATI brought their ASUS machines and hosted Call of Duty 4 on LAN. CS, NFS Encore (where the gamers had to compete in various NFS Versions), FIFA 08 and DOTA-Warcraft were extremely competitive and popular. Again over 40 teams registered for CS, over 80 participants in FIFA and NFS. Besides these events, Click n Present, Scrappy Affairs, TPP, Code-Father and Conquest received a participation of up to 20 teams per event.

Needless to say that the organisers and event heads had their hands full but we absolutely loved that. Certificates were distributed in the Valedictory function on the 2nd day to the winners of the events.

Camp-Icarus on the third day had upto 200 online registrations and upto 15 presentor registrations again online (barcamp.rgit-icarus.com). Two rooms with projectors and wi-fi was provided for everyone who wished to use them. Other Camp-Icarus goodies were given and free food was served along with coffee. A less than expected turn-out actually proved to be a blessing in disguise as the discussions ended up being more open and absolutely everyone participated. Hence the basic purpose of a BarCamp was satisfied. The presentations included 'Why Vertical and a Photoshop Tutorial' by Shashank Pisharody and Rohan Balchandani, 'Funding your startup' by Mihir, 'Meri Bhi Website Hogi' by Saumil Parekh, 'Promoting and Monetising your Blog' by Manan Kakkar, 'Podcasting' by Dinesh Soni, 'Useless Talk' by Neeraj Pattath and 'E-Pass' by Nitin Anand.

Let’s just say we flew and we touched the sun 

and we shall continue to do so in the years to come.