LOCUS: A Brief History
In an ever-developing world, LOCUS (a committee of students from Bachelors in Electronics, Electrical, and Computer Engineering, Pulchowk Campus) has been continuously providing the students related to such a vast field to develop practical knowledge and skills through competitive participation in its annual tech-festival.
In the year 2003, three enthusiastic and soon to be computer engineers from Pulchowk visited a tech event in Regional Engineering Campus, Jaipur, India (currently known as the National Institute of Technology) that inculcated their fostering minds with the idea that a similar event must be organized by arguably the best engineering college in Nepal. So, they embarked on a mission to bring the reach of a competitive environment for the young minds of Nepal to develop. Girish Bilash Joshi, Amit Krishna Joshi, and Biswa Dahal formed an informal group comprising of the then faculty, professors and made the event possible. Although the committee started off including the students of Computer Engineering, the students from Electronics and Electrical Engineering soon joined the group and made LOCUS possible as we know today.
The first LOCUS, which was a seven-day event provided the much-needed exposure to the projects of the undergraduate students of the technical faculties. The event turned out to be much more successful that it was anticipated and hence laid down a platform for future tech enthusiast to grow. LOCUS-2003 comprised of events like Project Display, on spot software designing, quiz, software, and hardware debugging, tech cartooning and many more. The project supervisor of the quartet, Dr. Arun Kumar Timalsina, who overlooked the event closely stated that all three of them did everything necessary; from marketing to financial management to resource management.
The following year, Nischal Dahal was appointed as the Co-Ordinator along with Smriti Shrestha as the Chief Correspondent. In 2004, the event was aided by the maximum support of the Electrical Engineering students and the event was expanded. The then committee requested a working space and hence the current office was granted by the college administration. The second LOCUS saw a huge number of attendees however the following year wasn’t the same. LOCUS 2005 saw a tremendous fall in the number of attendees and was stated to have no uniqueness.
In the year 2006, LOCUS was finally diversified by the inclusion of the Electrical Engineering students in the committee. The event was then conducted for 3 days and the introduction of new events like software and hardware competitions has been a trendsetter ever since.
The following year saw the addition of an electrical event that included project demonstrations, idea bidding and topics like Alternate energy, Transmission lines, hydropower and many more. The trend was then set and students from all three technical departments were included in the committee for organizing the events annually.
Ever since the first installment of LOCUS, it has been fulfilling the literal meaning of its name, a trajectory that binds us together and provides a path for those who seek opportunities to grow.
LOCUS-2019 (soon to be organized on February 7,8,9) has added a few more events like ROBOLOCUS (robotics competition targeted for +2 students), hardware/software fellowship (workshop/training for +2 and undergraduate students), AI fellowship (training for AI enthusiasts) and promises to be a wonderful platform for those who seek to develop.
References: https://locus.pcampus.edu.np/
