Internship during summer

*I have only 6 spots left. If you want in, let me know by Monday, May 30th, 2011.

 Project Oriented

Technical & Business Skills Development Workshop

At NMIT – Summer 2011

Proposal

Goals:

The goal of this initiative is to provide deserving students with real world experience, encourage creative thinking in engineering and incubate future entrepreneurship endeavors. This could also be a launchpad for their final year project as well if needed.

Background:

During their 6^th semester, students worked on a project of their choosing as part of the Software Engineering course. They went through the entire software lifecycle to produce a relevant software product and demonstrated it at the end of the semester. Some of the projects were very high quality and this initiative is to keep them working on these endeavors until a professional product is made.

Students:

Students will be chosen on the strength of their Software Engineering project. We would draft individuals who are wholly committed to this, since this won't be a spoon fed type of an approach.

Students will be awarded certificates of completion on the conclusion of the workshop.

Supervisor:

Mr. Navpreet Randhawa , Sr. Lecturer,NMIT, Bangalore shall act as the supervisor. Each team will have a team lead that would report to me directly. My involvement with the teams would be to provide guidance, supervise their progress and do professional evaluations.I will expect high professionalism and single-minded focus for this.

Environment:

This will be a simulated work environment. Students will be expected to behave in a professional manner, work to complete their tasks and submit to evaluations on their progress.

The setup would work in a ‘startup’ mode – issues ranging from technical proficiency to finding revenue streams to creating business plans would be covered.

This would be a much tougher environment than the SE class project since they will have more ambitious goals and challenging deadlines to meet.

Since this is a simulated work environment, students who do not perform upto the professional standards set would be terminated from the workshop.

Requirements:

·      A lab is needed to give the students a workspace.

·      Students will bring their own laptops.

·      We will begin the workshop on 20^th June and end it on 19^th August.

·      Students will be granted a few days off or work out a flexible work schedule in case they are appearing for professional exams such as GRE or GMAT.

·      Students will be responsible for their own transportation in case the college is not able to provide it.

·      There will be 2 professional evaluations conducted by the supervisor, one midway through the studentship and another at the end of it.

·      Students will give a final presentation of their work during the workshop.

·      Official working hours will be 9AM to 4:20PM, Monday through Friday.

ChoosingStudents:

As mentioned above, students will be selected on the strength of their SE project. Those who already have internships outside the college may not need to join this initiative. In case a team has fewer than required members, more students will be recruited to fill their place. The projects shall remain static.

A maximum of 30 students will be recruited with no more than 6students per team.

Process:

Agile processes will be followed during the workshop. Extreme programming, sprints and daily scrums will be used to keep the projects moving forward. An SRS will be designed in the first week of the studentship and the teams will have to implement all the requirements during the workshop.

Navpreet Randhawa                   Dr Nalini N                                      Prof.Ranganatha Setty

Sr. Lecturer                                 HOD, CSE                                      Dean (Academic)

NMIT, Bangalore                       NMIT, Bangalore                             NMIT, Bangalore

Project Results

We ended the project presentations today and this was at times an exhilarating and at other times an exasperating experience. I saw some very creative and professional work, and was also subjected to some juvenile trash. But all in all, I believe each one of you learnt something valuable from this experience.

Your presentations were for the most part better than the ones I saw from eighth semester students. But I still heard some “…nothing but…” phrases and a lot of people decided to stare at the slides while speaking. Keep working on it and you can only get better from here.

Now, onto the fun part! How did the teams rate in my opinion? So here we go:

Only 2 teams managed to get 10 points for the presentation - eCampus and Aasaan. Other teams which did a really good job were Chatterbox, Pratayakshak (they were the first one to present and set the bar very high), Bluetooth Talks and Lumachis.

Best Dressed Team: Deorum/Legion – Gotta give props to the tie
Funniest Presentation: Wayward Developers
Presentation that followed my instructions to the ‘T’ – Aasaan
Presentation with the most ‘Wow’ factor – eCampus

Good job guys.

Dos and Don'ts for the Presentation

Be professional. Imagine making a presentation to your manager or other executives of your future workplace. Try to follow the following points.

• Be clear and concise. There are no bonus points for having a lot of slides.
• Dress professionally. No jeans, t-shirts, open toed sandals.
• Use the powerpoint, but minimize animation, unless you really need it. Hitting enter everytime to display the next line on the slide is irritating. Flying phrases, flying question marks, flying exclamation points show immaturity. So does incorrect english.
• Practice your presentation, in front of the mirror and with your teammates. Be sure about your role in the presentation.
• Don't read off what is written on the slide. Turning around to read what is displayed out loud tells me you have no idea what you are saying. Learn what is on the slide you have to talk about, and explain it in your own words.
• Make sure your equipment is working, in case you are doing a live demo.
• Don't spend too much time on extra niceties like thanking me, HOD, Director, Principal, fellow classmates, assorted teachers, the Sun, the Moon, the Trees, etc. Basically don't waste my time or your own time.
• Assume technical knowledge of your audience, but don't delve too deeply in the implementation. Basically, don't start a code walkthrough!
• Use a simple colour scheme, don't get too creative with that. Light font on dark background.
• Be passionate, be funny, be creative.

Following should be the rough outline of what you should cover in the presentation:

• Project synopsis, mission statement, scope, etc.
• Enumerate and illustrate the project lifecycle decisions you made.
• Process model, requirements, system design.
• Demo running code.
• What does the future hold for this project?

This should cover about 15 minutes, while I'll ask questions for about 5 minutes. I would ask questions during the presentation instead of at the end as is the general practice.

Good luck! I'll see you soon.

Project Presentation Schedule

The schedule for the presentation is below. Anyone is invited to these. We will conduct these in Room 226. Make sure you come in and see what your classmates have done over the period of the semester. I will put up a separate post on the dos and don'ts for the presentation.

This is pretty much set in stone. Unless your team has a lab internal I will not entertain requests for time changes. All times are IST (Indian Standard Time, not Indian Stretchable Time). 20 minutes for each presentation (15 for presentation + 5 for questions) with 10 minutes break in between.

Team Name	Presentation Slot
Pratyakshak	May 05th, 0930
Smart Media Developers	May 05th, 1000
Smart Phone Browser	May 05th, 1030
WebMasters	May 05th, 1100
Media Player Developers	May 05th, 1130
eRaga	May 05th, 1300
Course Registration Form	May 05th, 1330
PC Remote Module	May 05th, 1400
SFENGINEERS	May 05th, 1430
SuryaKiran	May 05th, 1500
Online Scholarship Application	May 07th, 0930
Chatterbox	May 07th, 1000
ProSoft	May 07th, 1030
Lipyantara	May 07th, 1100
Lycan	May 07th, 1130
Modern Techno	May 07th, 1200
Netshielders	May 09th, 0930
Lumachis	May 09th, 1000
eCampus	May 09th, 1030
Enboyer	May 09th, 1100
Deorum	May 09th, 1130
Legion	May 09th, 1300
Wayward Developers	May 09th, 1330
Aasaan	May 09th, 1400
Bluetooth Talks	May 09th, 1430
Blatand	May 09th, 1500

*edit: Sorry guys, turns out I have to submit your CIE marks on Monday, May 9th; so we'll have to begin the presentation this Thursday.

Favorite Science Fiction Books

Historians love the past, they dwell in it, find their peace and many scruples there. Philosophers look to the higher plane of existence to satiate their thirst. It is only Engineers who deal with the future. It was an engineer who figured out the wheel and it is an engineer who will find out the secret of anti-gravity so we can buy jet packs.

So for a true engineer Science Fiction is very important, it fires the imagination, leads to the "Why not?" attitude, and brings us closer to the future every day.

I am listing my favorite science fiction books. Read them if you can, give me your thoughts about them if you already have, or mention your favorite sci-fi books.

1.

 

Isaac Asimov is the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived. Period. He might arguably be one of the 10 greatest writer who ever lived. The Foundation Trilogy is his crowning achievement. It routinely beat Lord of The Rings in all the competitions. To get a small dose of Asimov's brilliance - read this short story.

2.

This book will make Matrix seem like a slow boring dragged out story. Drama, action and loads of cool futuristic stuff. Very hard to put this book down once you start reading it. Card wrote about 6 more sequels - all terrific, but Ender's Game is his best one.

3.

Orwell is definitely one of the best writers who ever lived. 1984 is a dystopian view of the future - which some people say hasn't come true simply because Orwell wrote this book. Even still, this is political intrigue set in a wonderfully dark future. His prose is simple yet powerful.

*Orwell wrote another book called "Animal Farm" - not sci-fi but one of the best books ever written in my opinion. A book that can be read by a 10 year old and a 100 year old with equal relish and learn something from.

4.

No one comes even close in creating an atmosphere like Frank Herbert did in his seminal book, Dune. The effect is powerful enough to make you feel as if you are sitting in the middle of the desert extremely thirsty.

5.

With lines like these, how can this book be anything but hilarious and awesome.-

Marvin: "I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
Zem: "Er, five."
Marvin: "Wrong. You see?

Honorable Mention - Turbulence by Samit Basu. The only readable Sci-Fi book from an Indian author I have come across.

Let me know your thoughts.