Nije Shikhi Day 1

Last Sunday, Indrada asked me if I would want to volunteer for the Nije Shikhi project. Nije Shikhi, is a novel idea that West Bengal University of Technology (WBUT) and L2C2 Technologies have taken up in order create a difference in the way technology is perceived by young minds.
Within few hours me and Susmit, a classmate of mine, were inside Dr. Ashok Ranjan Thakur's (Vice Chancellor, WBUT) room at WBUT, listening to his plans to spread the joy of hacking through FOSS and low cost, eco-friendly computing. The idea is to do something like linutop or koolu (yes, the ltsp brainchild of Maddog Hall) that would be used by students (mostly from underprivildged/rural backgrounds) to self learn, with minimal/no adult supervision. The first school to join the Nije Shikhi project Bijra School. Another aspect of the project is to throw open all its resources to the current students of WBUT and get them involved for managing the technical aspect of the project. Students from second and third year can volunteer in a 21-days long fast-track internship programme in FOSS, which includes working weekends. As Indrada writes in this blogpost, "Our goal is to create small, dynamic teams well-exposed to and capable of carrying on activities in a given area of specialization during their post-internship period." At the end of the project you get a certificate from WBUT.

Here you are free as in freedom... you are encouraged to open up tiniest of screws of the devices - no questions asked! You are also given the luxury of a 2Mbps leased line and the entire library, for your reference. Having said that, the intern is not for the faint-hearted where you doze off without actually doing anything... you would be working under the watchful eyes of Indranil Dasgupta, CTA L2C2 Technologies and a FOSS champion - the learning opportunity is what you limit yourself to!

Yesterday was our first day on the job. The team consists of Susmit, Ananya (another classmate) and me. The goal that we are trying to achieve is customizing Fedora 7, building images and implementing disaster recovery policies for the Nije Shikhi boxes that packs in an AMD Geode LX800 (500 MHz), comes with a 40 GB hard disk, and four usb drives. Currently, we are setting up a pxe install server to serve a custom packaged Fedora 7 derivative to the Nije Shikhi boxes.

If you are interested in taking up this 21 days fast-track FOSS workshop, feel free to send an email to indradg AT l2c2 DOT co DOT in.