The APOGEE English Press sat down with the coordinator of the Coding Club, Jaiditya Singh, to learn more about the club’s work for the fest.

Providing a brief overview of the club’s structure, Jaiditya mentioned that the club had multiple verticals — frontend, backend, app development, blockchain, and design. These vertices work in cohesion throughout the year, conducting events during fests and working outside of fests, like conducting workshops and collaborating with companies to help promote coding culture on campus.

Jaiditya mentioned that the Coding Club will conduct seven events in APOGEE 2024. They began with their pre-fest event, a talk on the ‘Google Summer of Code (GSOC)’. During the fest, the club is hosting a coding competition with ‘ICL’; their kernel event that takes place every year. This event is quite popular and has attracted many participants in the past. Another event the club would conduct is ‘Cryptic Hunt’, which is being organised for the first time. He mentioned that the club also has a gaming stall that will showcase a VR game developed by the club, similar to previous years. Jaiditya added that they are also conducting a text-to-picture generation event sponsored by Walmart, as well as a hackathon. Jaiditya also mentioned the AI Karaoke Night event they have in collaboration with ACM-W. In this event, participants are asked to fill out a questionnaire, and the model generates a list of songs based on the person’s mood, which is determined by the answers to the questionnaire.

Talking about the preparatory work done, Jaiditya stated that for their legacy events, they already had a base plan ready, which they replicated with a few modifications to rectify the bugs they had in the previous editions. In contrast to this simple process, their new events required some planning. He explained that any new event conducted by the club initially involves a lot of ‘ideation’. Following this, it is necessary to generate the general flow and establish responsibilities for each vertical, as well as outline the stages required to develop the project. He further added that this is followed by the implementation of the project, which is ‘smooth-sailing’.

Jaiditya briefly discussed how the club planned to increase footfall at their events. He mentioned that they had faced some challenges regarding participation in the previous years due to the gaming stall being a standalone event. He explained how the club decided to improve upon that by conducting three events at the gaming stall instead of giving more options to the participants. He also explained how the club used the relations they had built with other participating colleges to network and increase participation in their events.

Regarding his expectations from this APOGEE, Jaiditya mentioned that their primary focus was increasing participation, especially in their kernel event, the ‘ICL.’ They had more than 600 teams last year, and the club is trying to outdo that with enhancements such as higher prize money, earlier starting dates, and improved advertisement and networking. He also mentioned that in previous editions, the events of the Coding Club were very ‘teach heavy’, and the usual participants were very skilled in coding. However, the club has brought about a culture shift to organise a few ‘fun’ events requiring little to no coding experience.

Jaidititya also talked about his experience in the club over the years. As a part of the COVID-19 batch, he recalled how his interactions with his seniors were infrequent and limited. However, as time progressed and they started working together during fests, spending countless hours in the library coding and debugging their projects, the bonds with seniors of their verticals grew stronger.

On a parting note, Jaiditya urged all students to stay for the fest and enjoy it. He pointed out the hard work and effort required by all clubs and departments to organise a fest. He asked everyone to keep an open mind and attend as many events as possible without the fear of prerequisite knowledge required. He stated that most events were designed with the general BITSian in mind so anyone could come and have a great time. He concluded by saying that it is immensely gratifying to the clubs and departments if there is active participation in their events.