Locus 2020: Technology For Sustainability To Start From January 31st

January 27, 2020, Kathmandu

LOCUS 2020, the 17^th National Technological Festival, is scheduled to be held on 31^st January to 2^nd February 2020 on the theme “Technology for Sustainability”. Leading up to the main exhibition has organized a myriad of events to kindle ideas and aid in technological innovations. The following are the pre-events that have organized so far.

Workshops

LOCUS 2020 officially kicked off with record-breaking participation from students all over Nepal in its first three skill-based workshops for the year, namely, Hardware Fellowship, Software Fellowship, and Home Electrification. The events were meticulously designed for beginners who aspired to pursue technology in the future. Every event was guided by a syllabus prepared with utmost care to provide the right learning curve for the students.

Hardware Fellowship, a 10-day workshop, saw a total participation of 251 students who were introduced to hardware simulation, bread-boarding, soldering, Arduino, and other basics of electronics armed with a pragmatic teaching method. Software Fellowship, not unlike the Hardware Fellowship, introduced a total of 91 fresh-men year students to modern programming paradigms such as Python, web development and a primer to database management systems. Similarly, Home Electrification equipped 110 students with basic skills and solutions to power homes, within the 7 days of the workshop.

Theme Release

LOCUS 2020 committee organized its Theme Release program on December 27, 2019, which was graced by the presence of personalities from United Nations Nepal, namely, Ms. Moon Gurung from UN Volunteers and Mr. Subhash Nepali, SDG advisor from UN Resident Coordinator’s office. Their presence was warranted by the partnership of LOCUS 2020 with UN Nepal wherein the UN offers LOCUS guidance in its strategies formulation. Other dignitaries present in the program were The Campus Chief of Pulchowk Campus, Mr. Laxman Paudel, HoD of Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Dr. Surendra Shrestha, Prof. Dr. Subarna Shakya, and Dr. Arun Kumar Timilsina. The main theme of LOCUS exhibition this year is 3 of 17 UN SDGs:

• 3^rd SDG: Good Health and Wellbeing
• 7^th SDG: Affordable and Clean Energy
• 11^th SDG: Sustainable Cities and Communities

Robotic Operating System

LOCUS introduced a new pre-event on the 6^th of January, 2020, the Robotic Operating System (ROS) Workshop, facilitated by Nepal Future Labs. The event saw exciting participation from 28 selected people coming from different walks of life to learn about the robotics middleware software.

Drone Seminar

As a build-up to one of our main events, Dronacharya, we organized a Seminar on Drones and its areas of Development followed by a panel discussion on the same, on the 13^th of January 2020. The seminar hosted experts and guests from sponsors like FuseMachines, Madhukaa Drone Service and Himalaya Solutions along with an overwhelming number of Drone enthusiasts.

Energy Hackathon
Energy Hackathon, a 4-day event, formally commenced on January 16, 2020, to encourage students to ideate and hack solutions to raging problems in the energy and electricity sector of Nepal. After successful two mentorship sessions, the event is yet to be concluded.

Itonics Hack-a-Week

Inaugurated on January 19, 2020, Itonics Hack-a-week was a week-long event in which 15 teams, each with 3-4 innovative participants, engaged in collaboration to fashion out product in forms of software development, business modeling and ambitious marketing campaign, revolving around the designated themes, the themes for this year being “Tourism”, “Games and Entertainment”, “Smart and Sustainable Cities” and “Health and Education”.

Girls to Code

To celebrate women in technology, LOCUS along with Girls-In-Tech organized a women-only, two-day boot camp on cloud computing and leadership. 58 participants took to Amazon Web Services to learn the basics of cloud computing on the 20^th and 21^st of January, 2020.

+2 Quiz

+2 Quiz, unlike any other events of LOCUS, brought together 15 teams of +2 students in a friendly and rather educational competition. NIST College, Lainchaur bagged the winner title, while Katmandu Multiple College won the title of the 1^st Runner Up.

Walkathon

More than 250 students walked around the major place of Kathmandu on January 25, 2020. The event aimed to raise awareness regarding gender equality that doubled down as a promotional pre-event for our SDG-based main event.

The other events that shall be organized on the three days of our exhibition are:

• Dronacharya
• RoboPop
• RoboWarZ
• Code Camp
• Code Jam

The successful pre-events only make evident the true virtue of the motto, Connect, Compete and Collaborate. Therefore, In the capacity of Media Partner, the LOCUS 2020 committee urges you to convey our messages to the general public and help us make the LOCUS 2020, 17^th National Technological Festival, a grand success. They would also like to take this report to call upon the Engineering colleges, Hardware, and Software Companies and related authorities to contribute to sustainable development by joining hands with us.