Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon in association with IBM conducted a one-day workshop on “The Great Mind Challenge 2015-16” on 5th February 2016. Students from the (CSE, IT and ECS )department along with faculty coordinator Ms. Sarita (CSE) and Ms. Sonia Chawla (IT) participated in the workshop.

The workshop started with introduction of IBM-TGMC, method to register for this competition with the platform “BLUEMIX”. IBM expert Mr. Ankit Singh Dogra started with the general introduction of “The Great Mind Challenge” mentioning about its benefits. TGMC was created with a focus on the need to better educate millions of students for more competitive information technology workforce by parenting with the colleges.

Mr. Ankit said, in India, IBM - The Great Mind Challenge is open only to students, who form teams within their respective colleges. Colleges with registered teams can eventually participate in competition to win project. Main aim is to reach to students from engineering colleges PAN India, who can develop solutions for real-time problems and situations, by using IBM software. IBM TGMC can also be utilized as a meeting ground for large IT Corporations, who are eventually in search of young talent and students from Colleges who are eventually looking for Job opportunities.

Mr. Ankit also explained about the Bluemix Cloud, which participants need to use to deploy their project. IBM Bluemix supports several programming languages and services as well as integrated DevOps to build, run, deploy and manage applications on the cloud. He further said, Bluemix is based on Cloud Foundry open technology and runs on Soft Layer infrastructure. Bluemix supports several programming languages PHP, Python, Ruby Sinatra, and Ruby on Rails and can be extended to support other languages such as Scala with build packs. He also explained about steps to register on TGMC 2015-16.

He ended the workshop by clearing the doubts of the students and mentioned the criteria for prize distribution. The workshop was very informative as the students learnt about the main aim of the competition, simple steps to register and the basic platform on which they need to work.

The Great Mind Challenge is an innovative program that addresses the need to better educate millions of students for a more competitive Information Technology workforce by partnering with colleges and universities. This year, TGMC Felicitation ceremony, an outreach of the IBM Academic Initiative was organized at CMR Institute of Technology, Whitefield, Bangalore on 15th October 2014. Prof. Vishal Bharti, Head of the Department, Computer Science & Engineering got the privilege to receive the award on behalf of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon at the event.

The felicitation ceremony of IBM TGMC 2013 had discussions by various eminent speakers on IBM Entrepreneur Program, IBM Bluemix Day, IBM Cloud - to develop and explore IBM with Academia IBM Library of Services such as Speed, Global Reach and IBM Pass. Mr.Chetan Bhagat, one of India’s bestselling authors, graced the event as the Chief Guest. He delivered an inspirational talk titled ‘Change the World by Changing the Game’. Mr. Kartik Padmanabhan, IBM Ecosystem Incharge, Ms. Sunanda from IBM Software Labs and Mr. Steve, General Manager, IBM Cloud Platform were present at the occasion. During the ceremony, Mr. Steve, General Manager, IBM Cloud Platform opened IBM TGMC 2014.

Awards to all the top performing Colleges in TGMC 2013 and to the top 15 Teams were given by Ms. Malti and Mr. Lawrence. All Girls Team Award were given by Mr. Kartik Padmanabhan and Ms. Sugandha. The winner of TGMC 2013 was MIET Engineering College. Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon emerged in the Top 50 colleges in TGMC 2013 contest.

The event turned out to be a grand success and the icing on the cake was that the IBM officials praised and congratulated the students for their impeccable performance.

Some Glimpses: