Tech city college kids are full of beans

BANGALORE: The city has no Indian Institute of Technology to boast of. The only engineering college of national importance in the state is the National Institute of Technology, Surathkal. But this doesn't make it any less a hotspot for tech fests. In fact, participants from all over the country prefer students from Bangalore colleges as participants.
IITs and other prominent colleges all over the country, keen on enhancing participation from Bangalore, even make the effort to travel all the way here to market the event.
The USP of city colleges is the quality of participation. "Techno fests are about ideas. And Bangalore students are the best in that. Last year, the annual techno-management fest of IIT-Kharagpur had 1,200 students from Bangalore. It's not about numbers, but quality. They may submit 10 ideas, but three or four will get into the finals. Some states may submit even 50 projects, but only three may enter the final round," said Ameya Kannamwar, organizing team member, Kshitij 2012.
The deadline to submit their abstracts is December 12, for the January 27-30 event.
Says Siddharth Menath, part of the organizing team of Springfest: "Bangalore has some of the best rock bands in the country with the potential to reach the finals." Springfest is organizing the preliminary round of its rock band event, Wildfire, on December 13 at Kyra theatre in Bangalore. The final event will be held from January 20-23, 2012.
IIT-Madras also recently conducted an outreach programme of 'Shaastra', the annual technical festival of the institute at BNMIT. "The colleges here give a lot of thrust to extra-curricular activities. Despite the distance, we have students travelling all the way here to attend events. It's encouraging to have such enthusiastic participants," he added.
The other Bangalore attraction is sponsorship -- the fests offer prize money of Rs 1 lakh per competition. Besides major corporates, alumni members also contribute.
With as many as 200 engineering colleges and some of the best colleges from other disciplines, including law, design, management and science (like National law School of India University, Indian Institute of Management, National Institute of Fashion Technology and Indian Institute of Science) to its credit, Bangalore has made it to the list of one of the most sought after participants in such fests.
Moments of pride
* RVCE won a silver medal at IIT-Kharagpur's technical fest last year
* Three rock bands went into the final from Bangalore at Springfest 2011
* BNM student won the glider designing competition in 2011