Webcamp 3.0 Kolkata was organized today, September 29, 2013. The venue was the New Alipore office of DPS Technologies India. 8 people from all over Kolkata attended the meetup. There were a few interesting talks and a good deal of discussion about creating a possible Hackerspace/Makerspace in Kolkata. A big thanks to Joseph Matthew (JPM) for arranging the venue and refreshments and thanks to the attendees who made the event succesful.
Talks and Demonstrations
We had one demonstration and four talks at the Webcamp. Joseph Matthew demonstrated first on a ARM board based computer that he has devised, called Skylab. He wants the device to be used in rural schools to teach mathematics by streaming videos from Khan Academy on a local TV screen. Joseph is looking for volunteers who can help spread the word about Skylab and encourage its adoption in schools across the country. Interestingly, Sayak and me had an idea about using Skylab for conducting Webmaker events by running Skylab as a local server running an offline version of Webmaker tools. Anyone interested to know more about what Skylab is what it does, write to jpm.nina [at] gmail.com.
After a round of coffee, Bibhas Debnath demonstrated various techniques used in Python programming at intermediate levels. List comprehensions, Python style guide and Zen of Python were part of his session.
It was followed by Sayak Sarkar with an engaging presentation on Firefox OS. Sayak covered various aspects about the HTML5-based mobile operating system, including Web APIs, Adaptive Search and the Firefox OS Simulator. He also had several Geeksphone Keon devices on display running Firefox OS.
I was up next explaining how LESS CSS can be used to make web development more fun that it normally is. I covered variables, mixins, imports, functions and operations in LESS. I explained when you can use LESS and when it is better to avoid it. The presentation used for my slide is available on this Github page.
My talk was followed by a talk by Sumantro on Mozilla Webmaker tools. He talked about Thimble, Popcorn and X-Ray Goggles. Considering this is the first time he talked about these topics, Sumantro did an excellent job. Sayak picked up the topic from him and gave a brief background of the Webmaker project and its usability in Indian education.
Hackerspace/Makerspace
Sayak, Bibhas, Soumya Deb and me had been independently considering about a collaborative workspace for co-hackers in Kolkata. We had a fruitful discussion about setting up Hackerspace/Makerspace in Kolkata with inputs from all the attendees. In the end, it was decided that everyone present would look for venues where the possible Hackerspace could be hosted. We are still looking for interested people from Kolkata to join this initiative. If you are interested, get in touch with me, Sayak or Bibhas.
A latest update: We may have a trial Hackerspace coming up soon in Salt Lake if things work out. Stay tuned!