Quark 08 – looking back

I attended Quark 08 (a technical festival) at BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus. It was my first visit to the BITS-Goa campus and the sheer size of the campus shocked me, at 100+ acres, it was larger than any college I had come across before.

The events, as I mentioned in my earlier post, were elaborately planned. The organizing students were polite and friendly, they coped very well with the frequent power-cuts that plagued the event.

Something that sets Quark apart from other technical festivals is the absence of any ceremonies. There is no innaugral function or prize-distribution ceremony, what an idea! Certificates were distributed at a seperate ‘Certificate Kiosk’ and prize-money was sent directly to the winner’s colleges from where they could then collect it. The absolute focus on events is something other technical festivals ought to emulate.

I attended some guest lectures/presentations by and Redhat, unfortunately both seemed to be aimed at promoting themselves among BITSians instead of the visiting students. The Aditi guest lecture in particular sounded like a pre-placement talk.

I was impressed by the enthusiasm and dedication shown by the BITS students, even those who were assigned less glamorous jobs of baggage handling or certificate distribution did their tasks cheerfully.

All in all it was a good event, certainly worth visiting again next year.