Hello world!

Hey, my post is a little long, so please read Ayush's post just below this first. Its important as he lists the available domain names that DynamiX can purchase.
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Here is what my idea of a gameplan is... wait let me make some coffee first!
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OK I made some tea instead. Anyhow, I believe that before we can go on to do world domination, and helping other schools organize competitions (as we planned to do.. does everyone know what I'm talking abt? Ayush might not know.. he wasn't in that meeting), we have to get organized from within (the power comes from within!). Its a very depressing thing to say that we're still a gang of 7 11thies and 4 9thies. Makes it 11, but out of that I guess only the 11thies are functioning. No biasing here, I'd have been happier to say the other way round, because that would atleast mean that WE know that WE have to do something... here the prob is that WE have to tell OTHERS to do their jobs. Pretty depressing. I'll summarize all the points at the end, but let me speak my mind in these paras. Another sad thing is that except Ankit Dhotrekar, no-one knows the existence of the blog. And its primarily our fault that the 9thies are not here.. everyone forgot to tell them. :-( So we've got to get them here.

Now my next concern is club expansion. We found out very well in Dyn 2k5 that a club of even 11 functioning members are not enough if we're doing everything at the last moment, which we (atleast I) invariably end up doing. Many of you have seen the Reverse plan that I had drawn up i.e the things we do 1 day before D-Day, and 2 days before D-Day and so on... So if we follow that, we'll be fine. But the real problem comes when we go for competitons. Many a time some member of a certain field (Quizzing, Gaming etc) is not available. Then, we end up not going at all, because mostly we all have availability problems together. This has to be prevented, by having atleast 2 backup teams. With this we still won't end up having a gigantic-sized club (eg: the (now-dead) infamous computer club. People came there only to bunk classes!) We have already discussed this, but I had to mention it again. There is a small victory for us that I must mention: Aman, Bhavna and Ankit Bhalla have expressed a lot of interest in learning Gaming & Web-D; Programming & Digital Imaging; & Gaming and Programming respectively. And Shiva's interested in Quiz & Crossword. So this is interesting, since I told each and every person that the gaming LAN parties that we've been having recently will be discontinued now because of official reasons ( :-( ), they were still eager to get in. I hope you get what I mean. But we MUST try to get in junior members since I'm now getting positively worried about what'll happen after our batch leaves. So we've got to target the current 7th and 8th, and if possible the current 6th. I've seen that sincerity is inversely proportional to the class they're in. Anyhow if we can get their still-malleable brains to explore their interest in some field, we can have a slightly secure future. Its the job of ALL of us, to get new recruits and kind of interview them and each person amongst us should take charge of 1 or 2 juniors to ensure that they come for meetings, to help them get their field etc. I know this sounds like the useless idea that we have in 12th, each teacher *adopts* a coupla students, but it is not the case here. Please! No junk like the junior running up to you saying that his friend stole his pencil etc. Its just that you have to go to the class and tell him/her to come along to the meeting, or that you'll sit down with the person and get to know what all fields he/she is interested in and so on.. Please, this is required. I'm tired of doing this alone.

Next we need a proper meeting system. We CAN'T have a person running to classes calling everyone. I had suggested that we have an attention-seeking red background notice that is put up on the day of the meeting on the notice board outside the computer lab. All Dyn members HAVE to come that way.. can't help it. We don't have a notice board on the other staircase that we 11thies come from. Lemme see, I'll ask for a notice-board. The notice board idea is something deeper than just a meeting update. The idea is that the notice-board is a weekly technology-wall magazine. And for that we have an Editorial board kind of thing in or out of the club. The board is under the club, but all the board members need not be DynamiX members. All the students are encouraged to write or download latest news on tech, sci-tech (like nano-tech etc) and give it to the board members (in hard or soft copy) who will select a few good articles and then print them and put it there. All the other articles go to our online version of DynamiX Newsletter (yep, we'll have an online article management system where all the articles will be put-up in a magazine-style). This will be an encouragement to the students because their name will be splashed on the Internet! (Believe me.. many people fall for it)

Then, we have to start up DynamiX Labs. This need not be a new computer lab. The word Lab means that its a group of students, who will develop and research. DynamiX is (will be) more complex, and all its members are not the developer types. We have a branch (DynamiX Labs) that will comprise of students who are good at programming, Web-D and other things.. even Digital music & Imaging etc. They will undertake to develop new things, like softwares that can be taken to Software Display competitions and so on. It will allow for students to implement new ideas freely, and will help in production of new ideas. Anyhow, we all SHUD request for a new computer lab.. Intel-Lab is fine but seriously, we can't organize stuff like Dyn etc on so small a number of computers. The DynamiX Labs will handle the club site as well as the school site. It will help incubate talent.

And most importantly, we have to plan out the computer course for classes 6-9. I'll be posting the syllabus I & a couple of others had planned out soon. This way by the time the next 6th comes to 10th etc, we'll have a great many students who *know* programming and computers generally. Trust me on this one.

So far, these are what I think neccesary for a stable club that will survive the coming batches.

Now summarizing in order of priority:

1) Drink Tea
2) Inform all about dynamixnotes
3) Recruit new members and have one senior member responsible for 1 or more junior members. Train them in the skills reqd.
4) Arrange a proper meeting system
5) Plan out new computer course for classes 6-9
6) Get a new notice board setup. Actually two (one outside Intel & other outside Chip) for the DynamiX newsletter. Promote it and setup the online site. Form the editorial board.
7) Setup DynamiX Labs. Make a list (on our local intranet blog) of all the interesting projects/ideas that can be undertaken. So that we can work on all as a team or as individuals without loss of ideas.
8) Strongly & jointly request for a new Lab. The ball has been set rolling, but it has got stuck in the official process. We have to combine and push it out of the ditch and see it to the last. Got my analogy?

PS: Whew! I believe this is the longest post ever made! It took me 1 hr 15 minutes to plan and write. <:-O

posted by Shashank Shekhar @ 10:09 PM