IIT-M tech Festival Made Special with ‘Maker Summit’

A host of lectures, design competitions, innovations and LED shows conducted over four days would mark the 17th edition of Shaastra, the annual tech fest of IIT-Madras that is commencing on Saturday.

However the big attraction would be the ‘maker summit’ that would be organized on the lines of ‘maker movement’ a worldwide trend in which individuals or groups create and market products that are recreated and assembled using unused, discarded or broken electronic, plastic, silicon, or any raw material from a computer-related device.

Vedant Agarwal, a coordinating member of Shaastra, said,” Maker movement mainly is to innovate or tinker around with objects to build products. In India, it isn’t that big yet and is almost non-existent in Chennai. So we are trying to kick-start the initiative here.”

There would be a product design competition in which 50 participants will have to create products that are social projects (benefit society), life hacks (help in daily activities) or trans-media story telling (using technology to narrate stories).

According to IIT director Bhaskar Ramamurthy 40 winners would get full paid summer internships.