So many people have talked about the students not being industry ready and this has been a talk for a while. Sometime back, we wanted to take dip and try out something which could lead for a change.
Why?
In a country like India where there is so much of social divide right from basic sanitation to higher learning, we don't think it is reasonable to expect everyone to be same without giving them exposure and skills. The students who are living in cities have access to technology but the people in villages have less access to the technology (the same applies to rich and poor). The folks who have access to technology have opportunity to be well-informed. Unfortunately, there are lot of people still don't get the exposure.
What about others?
We thought about it couple of years back and started an initiative "Open Gyan". The primary goal of this initiative is to give exposure to students in the way of conducting workshops. We just wanted to give a try in this format - conducting workshops.
Why did we choose workshops?
Most of the things in software may it be computer networks or Unix operating systems originated because the people who invented it needed it badly and later they made it available to the world. The wider community fine tuned it. They followed "do-it-yourself" philosophy. With this workshops, we believe that we will be able to give "hands-on" in programming and impart the importance of "do-it-yourself" attitude, both of the traits are much needed in IT/Software (makes sense even in broader sense).
We have done "do-it-yourself" kind of workshops in few colleges and it is gaining the students' interest. They love to do it and learn it more than theoretical.
In case, if you are interested to recommend to your friends (we will appreciate if you recommend after doing a background check whether we are really worth :-)), here are few pointers you should check the following.
Open Gyan - www.opengyan.com {bit outdated and will be updated shortly}Open Gyan @ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/opengyanOpen Gyan @ Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/opengyan
We don't want to mention that this workshop is free (nothing in this world can truly be free). We strongly believe that knowledge grows when it is shared and we are happy to take our paycheck in the form of knowledge gain. As of now (and we think for ever), these workshops will be offered free of cost to students (and we don't have an intention to expand Open Gyan beyond the students community).
If you have any questions, comments/feedback, please do write to us. We would be glad to answer you.