Women Hackathon, a 3 day workshop , second of its kind in this academic year was conducted at Government College of Engineering Kannur on 9,10 and 11 of November 2016.This program was conducted by Department of computer science and Space in association with ICFOSS with an objective of empowering women in the field of free software and information technology. More than 30 students of GCEK from various branches attended the program.
The program started on 9th with an inaugural meeting presided by Dr. K. Najeeb, HOD department of computer science GCEK,in which Dr. T. D John , principal GCEK officially inaugurated the program.In the Felicitation speech Arun M, Executive Director Space, highlighted the need for creating a solid foundation in the field of free software and learning technology through free software.
It was followed by an introductory session on free software in which concepts such as what is freedom in the field of technology , how it is related and depend on our daily life , software as a form of knowledge , knowledge should be received and distributed free and finally how these ideas are implemented and maintained in free software movement are explained.Since all of the participants are from S1 and S3 and also from various branches, they are beginners in the area of technology and in Free software. But soon, we got an interested audience who were convinced on how free software is significant in recent times and how free software becomes another way of life.
Debian Os installation session was started afternoon. Many Girls considered it as a complicated task that cannot be accomplished by themselves. With the os installation section, they were quite confident in doing an os installation by themselves and they understood the learning opportunity involved even in a single os installation.
Day 2 , started with a introductory session on how to get started with using Debian followed by hands-on sessions on GNU/Linux file system , basic commands and package installation. Refreshment games and activities focussed on women empowerment is conducted in between the sessions and they really helped us keeping them interested.
Day 3, started with a session on Python and introduced them tools like Jupyter and ipthon notebooks for effective python programming.Afternoon a session on web technologies took place.Students were totally engaged in all the sessions and we discussed about what all technologies are there for them to explore. We had done a feedback session and students expressed what they acheived through this program, why do they like free software, what are their future activities and also suggestions on how the program can be improved.
Overall it was an interesting experience for both resource persons and students. We hope they will become our strong volunteers in future and can take up more activities in this area since they are beginners in the engineering course.
The resource persons for the Hackathon were : Arun , Jithin, Sachin , Suman,Nishi , Aishwarya (Start-Up Mission fellow).
