Excel, Model Engineering College
Excel is the annual techno-managerial festival hosted by Govt. Model Engineering College (MEC), Cochin, Kerala, India in association with IEEE. The symposium, conducted over a period of three days, is intended to bring to the forefront, budding innovative engineers from all over India and to provide a platform to showcase their technical skills and management capabilities. Excel incorporates versatile technical and managerial events which include both online and on site competitions, workshops, talks and seminars, video conferences, exhibitions and pro shows. Since its inception in 2001, this national fest has been attracting students from across India. So far, 13 editions of Excel have been successfully conducted.
History
Excel was introduced in 2001 as a platform for the students to present and exhibit their technological innovations. The capital required to run the event was raised through sponsorships. Grants from IEEE and funding provided by the college also played a significant part. Exhibition stalls were put up, and competitions were held, headed by each of the then existing branches (Electronics & Communication Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering and Electronics & Biomedical engineering) . The subsequent editions of Excel witnessed the inclusion of larger number of events, each of them testing the knowledge and skill of the participants. In association with the Yi chapter of the college, the event Technopreneur - a lecture series was organised alongside Excel in the years 2006 and 2007.
TEDxMEC
TED is a non-profit organization devoted to IDeaS Worth Spreading. TED, which stands for Technology Entertainment Design, is organised with the aim of bringing together people from these three worlds under the same roof. Govt.Model Engineering College is the first college in India to host a TED event.
The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. TEDxMEC, held in association with Excel, is an initiative of Govt. Model Engineering College, Cochin. The main motto of TEDxMEC is to motivate and inspire the student community to dream bigger.
Some of the notable personalities in the recent editions of TEDxMEC were:
- Soorya Krishnamoorthy, Founder of Soorya Stage and Film Society.
- Hormis Tharakan, Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing
- Jithin C, Founder of Make A Difference
- Sabriye Tenberken and Paul Kronenberg, Founder Director and Co-Founder of International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs
- Mr. Joby Mathew, Disabled World Arm Wrestling champion.
Events : An overview
Technical events, an integral part of Excel, are held throughout the 3 days of the fest. While events like circuit debugging, circuit design and analysis, C programming and debugging were part of Excel right from its inception, Electronics Events like assembly language programming, wave cloning and Computer Science events like Hackmaster, slash bin slash bash, 4*120 and #include were added in the later editions of Excel. eXtundo Prodigo, an Electrical Engineering event, made its debut on the Excel stage in the year 2011. ROBOLT and Robowars, the Robotics events, made its first appearance in Excel 2008 and has been a major attraction from then on. Ro‘bolt’ named after the famous sprinter Usain Bolt, is a competition of speed where the aim is to create the best maze-solving line tracer robots. Robowars is a one on one fighting challenge where defeating the opponent’s bot stands as the main objective. The general events include: Principia Mathematica(a mathematics quiz), Best Manager(quest for the sprouting manager), The EXCEL Quiz(a perfect college quiz), treasure hunts, photography competitions, short film making competition and a vast variety of games.
Innovations for a Better Tomorrow (IBETO)
An initiative by team Excel to search for technical innovations with potential social benefits. This nationwide event invites engineering students to send their ideas for technical innovations that can help society in some way. Viable ideas with good social impact are given the chance to developed into working projects or models, with the organizers incurring the expenses for the project and also providing mentors to guide and mentor selected candidates with project development. The highlight of the event is the Rs. 1,00,000 prize money given to the best implemented project. The event was first conducted in 2012, as a part of Excel 2012.
Workshops & Talks
.ISSUE! is essentially a platform where renowned speakers gather and discuss on a socially relevant issue of the time. The youth of a nation steers the pace of development, and .ISSUE! is a venture to produce young people with substantial social awareness; to prevent the engineers from reducing themselves to sectarians.
Previous speakers at Excel include:
- Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan, Former CEO and Co-Chairman, Infosys.
- Prof. Yash Pal, Scientist and academician.
- Mr. Suhas Gopinath, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Globals Inc.
- Mr. Atul Chitnis, Founder, FOSS.IN.
- Mr. Shreyas Srinivasan, Co-founder RadioVeRVe.
- Mr. Jayaram, Product Engineer, Texas Instruments.
- Mr. David John., Design Engineer, Montalvo Systems.
- Mr. Ajith Basu, Chief program executive, Agastya International Foundation.
A number of other workshops are also organised as part of Excel on topics ranging from Avionics to MATLAB.
Pro Shows & Exhibitions
Over the years, Excel has hosted a variety of shows and exhibitions. They include an Airshow, Water rocket show, ISRO and NPOL exhibitions. EXCEL 2010 had dazzled audiences with powerful performances by the piano maestro Stephen Devassy while EXCEL 2011 saw the college grounds taking life with the performance by the Rock band AVIAL.
See also
- Model Engineering College