TECHNEXT INDIA 2017

Computer Society of India-Mumbai (CSI) in association with FOSSEE and Spoken Tutorial, IIT Bombay hosted a Two-day Annual Academic Conference and awards for Academia ‘TechNext India 2017’ on 14th and 15th January 2017, at the Victor Menezes Convention Centre, IIT Bombay, Powai, Mumbai. Dr. Neelam Ruhil, Head of the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon attended the conference.

The conference comprised of more than 45 speakers, 600 academicians and industrialists as well as industry professionals. The key highlights of the same were- Awards to Academia, Principal Meet, HOD Meet, Start-ups Meet, Hackathon and Technical Session.

Day 1: 14th January, 2017

The day began with the opening ceremony by Mr. Ajit Joshi (CSI Secretary, Mumbai Chapter). Then there was inaugural talk by Prof. Kannan Moudgalya, Professor, IIT Bombay. He welcomed all the esteemed attendees from various fields and the participants for different events & discussed about Spoken Tutorial, Scilab etc. Dr. DB Pathak conversed the role of faculty in career management of students.

Mr. Srinivas Garimella, Director- Industry Solutions, Microsoft was the keynote speaker who addressed the participants giving the overview of CSI and the event along with the CSI secretary. This was followed by a Panel Discussion on ‘Bridging the Gap between the syllabus and the requirement of IT industry’. The panel members were, Mr. Ranjana Narawane, MD, Accenture, Mr. Avinash Awate, Program Director, IIT BombayX, Dr. Anant Balkrishna Marathe, Principal, HVPMs College of Engineering, Ravindra Shevade, COO, NCDEX eMarkets Ltd. and Prof. Ambuja Salgaokar, Associate Professor in CS & Director, Institute of Distance and open learning at University of Mumbai.

The panel discussion covered the main reasons that create the difference in the courses taught and the demands of the industry, also the solutions were discussed that could help in bridging the gaps and meet the requirements.

Another Panel Discussion was on ‘Contemporary Issues in Technical Education’ whose moderator was Dr. Kannan Moudgalya, IIT Bombay and the esteemed panelists were Prof. R. Srivaramangai (University of Mumbai), Prof. Santosh Noronha, IIT Bombay and Dr. Ganesh Magar, Head of Dept. Computer Science, SNDT Women University. It was a very informative discussion covering the main issues faced in today’s world of technical education. The discussion came to an end with an interactive question/ answer session.

The event was further taken over by Raj Gopal A S, Managing Director at NxtGen Datacenter and Cloud Technologies who gave an Expert Session on ‘Cloud Technologies’. He explained the advantages of cloud services and cloud desktop solutions. Also, he gave an outline about how one can grow and shrink the business model, create truly redundant IT hardware and enhance the security by isolating data.

Other parallel sessions that were being held included Spoken Tutorial and FOSSEE Workshops, in which Priya K from Spoken Tutorial, IIT Bombay took a session and taught the participants ‘How to learn Drupal using Spoken Tutorial CD’. Also, an ‘Introduction to FOSSEE Image Processing Toolbox’ was given by Shamika Mohanan, FOSSEE, IIT Bombay.

Day 2: 15th January, 2017

On the Second Day, Mr. Sawant from Accenture inaugurated the session & discussed about the various trends in Artificial Intelligence which further ended with his vote of thanks to all those who contributed in the Conference.

Then there was Discussion on ‘Relevance of online education to placements’ which was chaired by Dr. D. B. Pathak, IIT Bombay, who is also the recipient of Padma Shri Award. The esteemed panel included Dr. Shirish Sane, Vice Principal, Prof. and Head, KKWIEER. Dr. Pathak explained in his speech how online education plays an important role in providing relevant data and study material from the placement view.

The TechNext India 2017 Distinguished Awards to Academia was also conducted by CSI- Mumbai Chapter. The awards recognized the very best in academics and rewarded the Distinguished College, Distinguished Principal, Professor and HOD for significant contribution in the Academics.

The award ceremony took place at venue. Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon was awarded as Distinguished College Award and Dr. Neelam Ruhil, Head of Department of Computer Science and Engineering from Dronacharya College of Engineering was also awarded as the Distinguished Head of Department.

At the end of the conference Mr. Ajit Joshi, CSI Secretary Mumbai chapter gave the vote of thanks to all the participants and the venerated group of delegates from various fields and sectors. The conference proved to be very informative and knowledgeable for everyone present at the venue.