Techkriti

Techkriti
File:Techkriti Thumbnail.jpg Techkriti, IIT Kanpur: Annual technical and entrepreneurial festival of IIT Kanpur
Genre	Technical & Entrepreneurial
Dates	3-6 March 2016
Venue	IIT Kanpur
Location(s)	Kanpur, India
Founded	1995
Attendance	40,000 footfalls, 1000 colleges
Patron(s)	UNESCO
Website
www.techkriti.org

Techkriti is an annual inter-collegiate technology and entrepreneurship festival organized by the students of Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. It was launched in 1995 with the aim of developing interest and encouraging innovation in technology among students.

Etymologically, the word ‘Techkriti’ is composed of two words, ‘Tech’ in English which stands for technology and ‘Kriti’ in Sanskrit stands for creation, hence, the word ‘Techkriti’ signifies creation or innovation in technology.

The festival is held over four days every March, attracting footfall of over 40,000 from all over India and abroad.

History

Techkriti was first held in 1995, and has since grown into one of the largest technical festivals in Asia.

Techkriti'07 was held at IIT Kanpur campus from 22 to 25 February 2007. The event was branded as Techkriti Oh-Seven!. The event witnessed an Air Show by the Akash Ganga team of Indian Air Force as part of the closing proceeds.

Techkriti'08 was held from 14 to 17 February 2008, and had a participation of more than 150 colleges. Keynote presentations were given by Peter Grünberg, Kevin Warwick and Harsh Manglik.

Techkriti'09 was held at IIT Kanpur from February 12 to 15, 2009. It featured talks by Stephen Wolfram, David Morrison, G. Madhavan Nair and Ron Eglash, with a fireworks and laser show.

Techkriti'10 was held from February 11 to 14, 2010, with IIT Kanpur celebrating its Golden Jubilee, and featured Dr Nikolaos Mavridis, developer of the world's first Arabic speaking humanoid robot, and also the Facebots robot, which can use Facebook account information to have conversations with friends. This was the first edition of Techkriti after Megabucks, the annual entrepreneurship festival of IIT Kanpur was amalgamated into it, adding entrepreneurship aspects to the festival.

Techkriti'11 was organized from February 17 to 20, saw over 1,500 students from various colleges taking part in the 27 events with total prize money of Rs 22 lakh awarded. Competitions include unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise control, a robot talent show, robogames, simulation game on the Great Wall of China, reactable (a musical user interface), interactive floor, interactive robots, the aero modelling events, Innovate - design events (including Junkyard Wars, Rube Goldberg, Tremor etc.) were also held. Speakers and guests included Russian mathematician Vladimir Voevodsky, astronaut Bruce E Melnick, Michael Gratzel, a designer of Millau Viaduct, Voting System designer David Bismark, Ashish Gupta, Managing Director, Hellion Ventures and Chander Baljee, founder of Royal Orchid Hotels.

Techkriti'12 was held from 27 to 30 January 2012. The festival was based on a theme of 'Technology for the Future'. The chief guest in the opening ceremony was Richard Stallman, the founder of GNU. Competitions, talks, exhibitions, shows and workshops were held, and prizes worth Rs. 25 Lacs were awarded in the various competitions which included SocCon, IDEAS, Wild Soccer, Scimatex, TakeOff, J.K. White Design Challenge, Robogames, Software Corner, Battlefield, ECDC, Insight, Endeavour, Gearloose, Junkyard Wars, Rube Goldberg, Tremor, Eureka, IORC, Stocksim, IOPC, Crypto, Episteme, Radioactive, and Cosmos. Deborah Berebichez ("The Science Babe"), Victor Hayes, Deepak Mohanty and other guest speakers took part in talks organized throughout the four days of the festival. The final day included the performance of the Indian singer Kailash Kher.

Techkriti'13 was organized from 14 to 17 March 2013 with participation from more than 500 colleges including a footfall of over 25,000. Prize money of more than 10 lacs were awarded. The festival's theme was "Fixing the Planet". Speakers included Michael Foreman (NASA Astronaut), Marshall Strabala (Architect-Burh Khalifa), Jeff Liebermann (Host-Time Warp), John Mather (Noble Laureate), Robert Aumann (Noble Laureate), Mahesh Murthy and Oliver Smithies. There was a show of 3D projection mapping, a laser ahow, and a performance by Sukhwinder Singh. There was a vintage car exhibitions with cars such as the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (more than 100 years old), Jaguar, Austin Saloon, Ford Anglia, Singer and Morris Cowley. A record in the Guinness Book of World Records was broken for the largest number of people (1,451) solving a 3x3x3 Rubik's cube in a span of an hour at one place: it was broken on 17 March 2013 with the new record being set for 1,884 solvers.

Techkriti'14 was held from 6 to 9 March 2014, with the theme "Virtually Progressive World". It was planned to be a carbon positive festival, with initiatives including water conservation and women's safety. Events included Robogames, Indian Open Rubik's Cube, Ideas, Techkriti Grand Prix, Tremor, Sky Sparks and Radioactive, with new avenues including Robo Pirates (Aqua-Robotics), Multirovor (Quadrocopter), Richie Rich (Portfolio Optimization), Marketing Villa and Bridge Design Challenge.

"Techkriti'15" was held from 19 to 22 March, 2015, with the theme "Blueprint to a Smarter World". Techkriti got bigger with more exciting competitions, workshops, talks, exhibitions and shows. Competitions included the likes of Robogames, Indian Open Rubik's Cube, Ideas, Techkriti Grand Prix, Multirovor (Quadrocopter),Innovation in Manufacturing Processes and many more. Several prominent personalities from across the globe graced the festival with their presence. K Radhakrishnan, former chairman, ISRO, Anthony Leggett, Nobel prize winner, Pat Spain, Beast Hunter host on Nat Geo, Meera Sanyal, former CEO and chairperson, Royal Bank of Scotland, Herald Rose, Wolf prize winner, Dilip Chhabaria founder, DC Design, Peter Schultz, co-inventor of fibre optics interacted with the students during their guest lecture. To entertain the participants, Techkriti had several shows too. While students danced to the tunes of Beltek and NDS & Blues on the third night, the final night was highlighted by Finnish rock band, Poets of the Fall.

Organisation

Techkriti is an entirely student organized festival. The structure of the organising team is four-tiered. Leading the team are the Festival Coordinators along with a team of Heads, each with an allotted portfolio. Administrative portfolios include marketing, media and publicity, finance, security, hospitality and show management. Event-related portfolios include public relations, web and design. Each Head has his own team of coordinators and executives.

Workshops and talks

Workshops organised in Techkriti are designed to demonstrate advancements in science and technology to the student community. The four-day festival hosts workshops in electronics, aero-modelling and application development. The workshops are conducted by professionals from industry, guests and faculty members of IIT-Kanpur. Some of the workshops organised during the last few years include Cloud Computing by IBM, Sixth Sense Robotics by i3indya Technologies, ethical hacking, telescope making, and Cyber Forensics.

File:David Griffiths chatting with the student..jpg

David Griffiths chatting with the students.

Students and academia at the festival can attend talks by professionals in various fields from India and abroad. Speakers at Techkriti have included APJ Abdul Kalam (Ex-President and Founder of India’s missile program), Richard Stallman (Founder, FSF and GNU Project), Vladimir Voevodsky (Fields Medalist from Russia), Douglas Osheroff (Nobel Laureate-Physics), Michael Foreman (NASA Astronaut), Marshall Strabala (Architect-Burj Khalifa), Jeff Liebermann (Host-Time Warp), Victor Hayes (Father of Wi-Fi), Mahesh Murthy and Oliver Smithies. The "Indian Innovators" panel has included Uddhab Bharali (Innovator from Assam with 39 Universal Patents), Bindeshwar Pathak (Founder of Sulabh International), Rohit Bansal (Co-Founder and CEO, Snapdeal), L Kannan (Founder, Vortex Rural ATMs) and Irfan Alam (Founder and Chairman, Samman Foundation).

Guests at the 2014 festival included Walter Lewin, David J Griffiths, Jordan Soles, Alvin E. Roth, Palagummi Sainath and George Kourounis.

Competitions

Techkriti is known for hosting a variety of competitions with a total prize money of more than 35 Lacs. Competitions serve the backbone for fulfilling the basic motto of Techkriti- developing interest and encouraging innovation in technology among students. Competitions are classified in a few broad categories such as Robogames, ECDC, Take off, Design, Online Events, Presentation, Software Corner, Mixed Bowl.

'ECDC' is a cluster of many events giving students an opportunity to showcase their technical skills in the field of electronics and circuit designing. In 2014, ECDC had 4 events under it: Electromania, Embedded, FPGA and Annontrix. All these events focus on giving a deep insight of the world of electronics to the participants and giving them an exposure through challenging problems.

Robotics has been bringing a lot of brainiacs together from across the world to showcase their talents through their cool and budding bots. In the past, there have been robot armies striving to prove their mettle. There have been bots to overcome hurdles in their path to glory, surviving their journey through water and achieving their goals through image processing. Now we are back again with a bang! There are plentiful opportunities to win humungous prize money and achieve glory.

Business: Techkriti also brings a varied line of Business Events that are sure to test your business acumen, intellectual prowess and much more. From exploring your avenues in marketing to tackling your brain with the good ol’ case study, Business Events in Techkriti have never been more challenging.

Mixed Bowl: Miscellaneous events like Astronomy (Cosmos), Rubiks Cube (IORC), Scimatex and Radioactive await you!

Campaigns

Every year, Techkriti, as a part of its social campaigns addresses one major issue in our world. Last year, we had decided to take on all of them together. "Virtually Progressing World" addressed the wide array of problems that we ourselves create while expanding our never-ending thirst for technology and innovation. We have our social campaigns like Prakriti which is basically saving our planet and increasing greenery of the Earth. We arrange plantation drives in various parts of India. Along with it, Techkriti’13 was the first Carbon positive festival of India. Second we have a Women Empowerment Campaign. Next what we have an Educational Campaign for the uneducated children. We along with Prayas and other NGO’s are working to educate the children. We also have a health campaign where we are organizing health camps in nearby areas in association with the hospitals of Kanpur and Lucknow. We along with Goonj had also organized a collection drive to help the affected people of Uttarakhand. This year we have started off with our Teen Suicide Prevention Campaign "#IamStrong" to minimize the number of teen suicides in our country.

External links

• Techkriti Website