Ragam 07: Where the Lime costs 5Oops... my bad... it was actually Nokia Ragam 07... where the die rolls 7... the annual cultural extravaganza at my college, National Institute of Technology Calicut (NITC). This fest, our fest, which is reputed to be among the top college cultural fests in the country, was from March 14th to 17th of this year. This year, we had performances from none other than Shaan, and a rock show by Evergreen.

But why the title? I wanted to write on the phenomenon by which food items magically increase in price during the days of Ragam in NITC. A harmless glass of lime juice, which would have cost you Rs. 3 on any normal day, sunny or rainy, suddenly turns into this gun-totting film-noir gangster who robs you of Rs. 5. A burger becomes the typical mafia godfather, to seek an audience with whom you have to shell out in excess of Rs 25. All this is with the hope of raising a few extra bucks to fund the fest. Not a criticism from me, mind you, but I hope in future years we can hope to rise to such a level that we can provide refreshments to the participants, organisers and audience at a much more reasonable rate.

At any rate, this was the largest Ragam NITC has ever hosted... a 50% increase in budget (Over 25 lakhs!), a 200% increase in sponsorship, and a 25% increase in participation from the previous year. Not to mention flawlessly co-ordinated proshows. The three nights were colourful and vibrant, featuring Group Dance, Shaan, and Evergreen and Fashion Show on the last night respectively. The event was pulled off without a hitch, thanks to the sponsors, esp. Nokia, and the entire organising team of Ragam, who worked day and night for months to pull off this mega event.

Where was I in all of this? Yours truly was in charge of maintaining the website and making horrendously hilarious videos for Ragam '07. Website maintenance has a physical component as well, especially in NITC. First you painstakingly put together all the crap into a presentable form, and put it up on the web. Then people come to you at odd hours, demanding that increasingly tiny changes be done, maybe a single page, maybe just a typo... I'm only too happy to do it. But over here, it means running to the Computer Centre each time you have to make even the smallest of changes... that does not impress me much since the moment I get back, there will be the next bugger sitting in my room, telling me to change something else. Late night marathons to the CC becomes a regular part of my life during the days preceding Ragam.

Check out the website http://ragam.nitc.ac.in/
(Credits go out to my fellow webmasters Girish R Varma and Anukool junnarkar, who did most of the HTML part. My work constituted the flash site)
The ragam blog... late to start, but featuring some excellent blogs.

The videos were the better part... a team of us gets together just two days (48 hours, dammit!!) before Ragam and decide that we need to air some goofy videos during the nights, when our Open Air Theatre will be packed with a crowd of around 3000. Plans were made in a jiffy, our minds clashing together to make the stupidest of ideas sound 'cool'... The next step... to hire a professional videographer for a day and shoot videos of people on campus singing an all-time favourite.. Shaan's 'Tanha Dil'. That part went quite smoothly. Next part... mastering video editing softwares within a span of hours and edit the raw videos into a presentable form. My roommate Anantharaman (Takla) also pitched in and made an AutoCAD Video (AutoCAD 2007 can make path-based animations... COOL!!) and in-house animator Nikhil John Kurien (JohnKu) made a beautiful 3dsMAX video. Thus, by the night of day one of Ragam, we had four videos up and running to awe the audience.
The team: Myself, Chutney, Venki, Vivek, Virus, JohnKu, Takla, Mayank, Saket.

Am returning from a 2pm - 5pm extra class in Dynamics of Machinery (DOM)... The post-lunch drowsiness, the arrangement by the helpful professor to have the class air-conditioned for the lecture, and, invariably, the 'dynamic' nature of the subject, combined to create an atmosphere in which even the most hardened insomniac would fall face-first in an instant. I watched helplessly as my friends fell all around me, quicker than US soldiers on Omaha beach. I strove, I persevered, I fought back the demon who was trying so desperately to close my eyes and get me thrown out of class. A shot of caffeine during a 10-minute break did more than its part in keeping me up. The professor, bless him, did everything he could to keep the students' attention on himself than on blurred images of their own desks. He showed videos, animations, and even cracked jokes. Still men fell everywhere... good men... valorous men. Finally, he decided to stop the carnage at 4:20, and we were let out. I am a survivor... yeah!!

The past weekend marked the culmination of months of effort, to organise and execute the fourth largest FOSS community event in India: FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Meet @ NITC 2007. Being a part of the coreTeam, I was there.. all the slogging, all the sleepless nights, and all the excitement. The event featured more than 40 speakers from across the country, speaking on such varied topics as 'FOSS in Life: How to get a girlfriend through FOSS' to 'Read copy update mutual exclusion locking in Linux' (??) .. Featured were heavyweights such as Atul Chitnis (VP, Geodesic) (no pun intended) and Dr. CN Krishnan, Project Manager, NRCFOSS, Anna University, Chennai.

All in all, it ended up being not just an expression of the open source software community, but of the much more general community who believe that all information, whether programs, science, technology or knowledge must be made free and available to all. To that end, we had a workshop on wiki editing, and unconferences by the most powerful names in blogging in India, Kiruba Shankar, and Kiran Jace.

Above everything, it was a fun-filled atmosphere, where each person who attended the event felt that he/she could achieve anything. Just watching these amazing people, and what they have been able to accomplish so far, is truly inspiring.

For details of the individual talks, speakers and schedule, visit http://foss.nitc.ac.in/