The 36th edition of BITS Pilani, Pilani campus’s annual technical fest “APOGEE”, was held from 21st February to 25th February 2018. This four-day long extravaganza was executed smoothly. The fest saw participation from students coming from various prestigious universities across the country. The theme of the fest was “A Cybernetic Vision”. The theme inspired a lot of creative artwork and theme-based events that were conducted during APOGEE.
APOGEE opened with the inauguration ceremony, the chief guest of which was Commodore Indrajit Dasgupta of INS Valsura. The inauguration ceremony was also graced by the presence of the Mitra Bot, an indigenously produced robot by Invento Robotics, a Bengaluru-based startup. The clubs, departments, associations, and technical teams of BITS collectively organised and executed a wide array of events in APOGEE. There were talks, exhibitions, as well as kernel (major) events on each day of the fest. Some of the kernel events in APOGEE were APOGEE Innovation Challenge (AIC), Stock Market Simulation, International Coding League (ICL), Airborne, among others. These events were well-received by the spectators and saw healthy participation from BITSians as well as from outstation participants.
Apart from these kernel events, there were a lot of noteworthy exhibitions during APOGEE. Exhibits like Mitra Bot, NAO Bot, BSF Tear Gas Unit, mind-controlled drone, and Indian Navy were a feast for the spectators’ eyes. The famous band “The Local Train” came to Pilani and performed in the central auditorium on the first day of the fest. This edition of APOGEE also featured various acclaimed speakers that delivered talks on interesting topics. The fest saw two international speakers – Danielle Feinberg and David Stork. Danielle Feinberg is the DOP of Pixar Studios and is associated with movies like Brave, Toy Story, Coco, etc. She narrated various anecdotes about these movies during her talk. David Stork, a renowned computer scientist with more than forty patents to his name, talked about how he linked art to computer science to yield astounding results. APOGEE 2018 also saw other speakers from scientific and technological backgrounds. Pilani was graced by the presence of speakers like Sachin Lodha, Neena Gupta, Abhishek Syal, Rana Adhikari, Sanjoy Hazarika, etc. There were also two online talks by distinguished personalities like Sheila Dikshit and Vasu Primlani. NAO Bot, which is considered to be the world’s most emotionally enhanced robot, performed a dance routine during APOGEE which left the audience enraptured.
The third edition of Startup Weekend also took place during this APOGEE. There was also an all-women’s panel in an event called I-Woman during the fest. The panel consisted of influential women like Manasi Kirloskar, Sudha Menon, Shraddha Sharma, and Gurmehar Kaur. Apart from these events, there were also a host of fun competitions conducted by the various organisations on campus. APOGEE featured galleries by the photography and creative activities clubs on campus. On the last day of APOGEE, leading journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Ashutosh, a member of the Aam Aadmi Party, spoke about free speech and ethics in journalism. The fest concluded with a comedy night where famed comedians Aakash Gupta and Kunal Kamra performed, ending APOGEE on a memorable note.