FOSS Workshop at VNR-VJIET

VNR-VJIET conducted a three-day workshop on Free/Open Source Software Technologies from 16th-18th March, 2006. I took a session on What is Free Software? and another on Intro to PHP and MySQL. Professors and department heads from a few other Engineering colleges attended the workshop. Although the number of participants was just about thirty, the response and enthusiasm was pretty encouraging. We had a few of them inviting us for talks back in their colleges. One department head requested help in setting up a lab in his college.

Apart from expanding the network, the workshop highlighted something very important. It was just about 8 months back that a GLUG (GNU/Linux User Group) was started in VNR-VJIET. And now, I find that the department head and many professors in the CS and IT departments are influenced by the Free Software philosophy and are happy with the progress in learning the students are making. I especially commend the core student members of this GLUG who are doing a great job by regularly organizing sessions and talks. They did a great job of organizing the workshop. They are also making a great effort to migrate their labs to GNU/Linux based servers and desktops. This is a great step. If such initiatives are taken up in the local engineering colleges, I don't see why it is impossible to get the hyped IIT, IIIT quality education in them.

The future is Bright!

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