Students’ Technical Activities Body (STAB): End-Term Review

The Institute General Body Meets (GBMs) are conducted twice every year with the intent to provide all students a convenient mechanism to provide feedback and addressme.co.nz/ball-dresses.html”>dressme.co.nz/ball-dressme.co.nz/ball-dresses.html”>dresses.html”>dressme.co.nz/ball-dresses.html”>dress concern to the student representatives responsible for various amenities on campus.

The Students’ Technical Activities Body GBM is scheduled from 10:30pm on 29th March at the IRCC Auditorium (SOM).

The content on this website is strictly the property of Insight and the Students’ Gymkhana IIT Bombay. If you wish to reproduce any content herein, please contact us:
Chief Editors: Mihir Kulkarni, Niranjan Thakurdesai
Mail to: insight@iitb.ac.in

Manifesto analysis

A point by point analysis of the Manifesto can be found at here.

General policy

This year saw a general shift in priorities in terms of outreach and audience to be catered. Attempts were made to increase the senior participation by bringing in innovative GCs, advanced workshops and talks from renowned industry professionals. Apart from this, special attention was given to inculcate a sense of “Fun in Tech” among the freshmen through enjoyable project demonstrations and week-long activities such as “Techify your Room”. Industrial and field visits were frequently organized so that students could see live application of advanced industrial technology. Collaborations were made with other institute bodies such as the Academic council, SARC, PG Council, SINE to carry out technical events at a larger scale. The success of the Tech and RnD exposition was an excellent example of how collaboration between the bodies is definitely a thing that should be continued. Measures were taken to solve the existing equipment and infrastructure issues; setting up of the new Tinkerers’ Lab being one of them.

Tech Teams under STAB

Apart from STAB, the technical teams IITB Racing, AUV, MSI, Pratham, etc. provide a platform for students to pursue technical activities in greater depth and are hubs of technical activities in the institute. However, in their current structure, there is very little interaction within the teams. In order to promote sharing of resources and technical knowledge among the teams, a new framework was proposed involving a Gymkhana Technical Affairs Board under which the STAB clubs and Technical teams would co-exist. This proposal was accepted by the SAC committee consisting of Director, DDs and all Deans and the policy is expected to be implemented by next year. [pullquote]Due to the increasing amount of “tech” in the institute, the need to have a General Secretary Technical Affairs is an important topic of discussions.[/pullquote]Due to the increasing amount of “tech” in the institute, the need to have a General Secretary Technical Affairs is an important topic of discussions. Due to the increasing amount of “tech” in the institute, the need to have a General Secretary Technical Affairs is an important topic of discussions.

Change of GC structure

The overall General Championship structure had a couple of changes this year. Two Mid prep GCs were discontinued and a new GC, “Smart Hostel Challenge”, with a flexible and innovative problem statement was introduced, with the hope that it will generate more senior participation and also help to contribute something useful to the society.

The Inter IIT Tech fiasco

The 3rd edition of the Inter-IIT technical meet was conducted by IIT Kharagpur from January 30 – February 2, 2015. Held along the lines of Inter-IIT Sports, the Inter-IIT Tech Meet is a pan-IIT competition which aims to be. The last two editions of Inter IIT tech were held at Bombay(2014) and Kanpur(2013). While the entire competition is still in it’s formative stages, there is no concrete GC structure as such, like it’s sports counterpart.

This year saw a plethora of new competitions including Business Quiz and Case Study, Data Analytics, Product Design, Open Soft, Model Village. The overall winners of Inter IIT Tech Meet 2015 were IIT Kharagpur. IIT Bombay received a Gold in Model Village and a Bronze in Product Design competitions. These two were the only medals won by the IIT Bombay contingent, summing up an extremely poor performance by Bombay. [pullquote]This year saw a significant fall of IIT Bombay from 3rd place in the overall standings last year to no position this year.[/pullquote]This year saw a significant fall of IIT Bombay from 3rd place in the overall standings last year to no position this year. The Inter IIT meet was initially scheduled at the end of December. However, around the end of November, the IITKGP organizing team rescheduled the meet to the start of February so that it could be aligned with Kshitij, IITKGP’s technical fest. Due to this late change of plans, the STAB team had to refloat participation forms, thereby lesser time for publicity. The forms did not get adequate response as the meet was right in the middle of the semester. The club managers ended up personally asking their acquaintances for participation, which eventually led to an inexperienced contingent. Apart from this, some of the contingent members still haven’t been reimbursed their travel costs, as promised earlier.

Commenting on the drop in Bombay’s performance, Rahul says, “The Inter IIT meet was initially supposed to happen at the end of December and we had prepared a strong contingent for it. However right at the end moment, IITKGP postponed the meet to February start. [pullquote]This shift in dates of the meet caused many of the IITs(around 10) to withdraw their participation from the meet. Many of our contingent members had to back off from the meet due to their academic commitments.[/pullquote]This shift in dates of the meet caused many of the IITs(around 10) to withdraw their participation from the meet. Many of our contingent members had to back off from the meet due to their academic commitments. We had to make an entirely new team for the competition and the publicity for this had to be done when the new semester started, at the beginning of January. This gave us less than a month to create a team for the meet. As a result, our team consisted of a lot inexperienced members as compared to last year, which eventually caused a fall in our position.” He adds, “As far as the reimbursements are concerned, we came to know that the Academic council and other bodies have been using up travel funds, meant specifically for STAB. We have talked to the concerning authorities and the reimbursement process has started. A lot of the contingent members have already received their money.”

Here’s a summary of the STAB OC’s performance: