Meeting Minutes: Pune, 13th September 2009

Below are the minutes of the meting held at Synygy on 13th September, 1:30 pm:

• We had around 40 students present.
• Main agenda was to show them the movie ('Iqbal') and talk about it before and after the movie.
• Students were asked to write down the difficulties they face in their lives as a son/doughter, brother/sister, and as a student. After the movie they were to write if they could learn anything from the movie on these.
• However, due to technical problem with my laptop we could not start the movie till 3:15. We used this time to discuss other things.
• They were asked if they would prefer Monthly Meetings or Workshops. They said workshops will be better and they want that. They were informed that this is the last monthly meeting and we will have the first workshop (Focused on preparing for recruitment) on 27th September, 2:30 pm at Synygy cafeteria - only for graduation/diploma students. Other workshops will be planned soon and they will be infrormed about it.
• We brainstormed other ideas for workshops and this is what the students came up with:
  • Extra curricular activities
  • Seminar, projects & presentations
  • Computer courses
  • Soft skills / personality development
  • Sports
  • Information about companies
  • Industrial visit
  • Competition
  • Cultural activites
  • Guidance on competitive exams
  • Preparation of competitive exams
  • Educational assignments
  • Group discussions / mock interviews
• We had a followup discussion on these topics (something we should plan to do - or follow up on - in the near future):
  1. Workshop on Projects and Presentation (to be conducted in two parts):
     • Part 1:
       • Session on how to create powerpoint presentations
       • Decide topics
       • This will be an individual exercise and no topics can be repeated (this was decided by the students only)
     • Part 2 (with a gap of at least 4 weeks from the part 1):
       • Submit a word document (soft copy or a print out) on the chosen topic: 5 to 15 pages
       • Give a presentations (using powerpoint) in front of everyone for 5 to 10 minutes: minimum 5 slides
  2. Prepare and present a drama/dance
     • Drama: Abhijeet, Pritam, Sachin, Suryakant, Vaibhav, Monali, Snehal
     • Dance: Gayatri
     • Students are to coordinate this and they are expected to come up with scrips by 1st week of November
     • FoC doesn't have anything to do in this, we will just provide them time to present these during one of the workshops
  3. Computer Courses (to be done in workshop, no recurring classes)
     • 2 hours session: introduction to C/C++
     • 2 hours session: Introduction to hardware and networking
     • Discusson on new technology
     • No timeline or commitment of doing this for now, we will keep this in mind and will organize something if this looks important and feasible.
  4. Industry visit:
     • We will continue to try for this but students need to think about what do they expect to learn from these visits. They want to visit a manufacturing company and a software company.
     • Have asked them to prepare a set of questions they would ask if they go for a visit.
  5. Information about companies:
     • Not feasible to do this in detail using FoC workshops
     • Talked to them about the importance of them interacting with each other, apart from attending the FoC activities: creating groups amongst themselves and sharing information.
     • Formed one group of students who are doing computer engg or are looking for IT jobs. Abhijeet has the list of students (there were 8 in all). Each spoke about what he/she wants from the group and what is it that he/she can offer to the group. They are to tell us on 27th September that what they are going to do do as a group - collect information on companies, learn new courses, do a project etc.
     • If students are interested, we will form more such groups when we meet on 27th Septmebr for the 1st Workshop.
• Unmana and Sajeel came with other laptops so finally we could start the movie at 3:15 and it completed on 5:30. After the movie we had a small discussion what one could learn from the movie.
• Students were informed that there will be mentoring sessions on every 1st and 3rd Saturday at the FoC Library from 2 to 5 pm.