Sunday, 18. October 2009, 18:27:25
Hi folks! I’m Sarajit from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, India(final year).I’m an amateur web-evangelist and an Opera web browser fan! Couple of months back I attended a presentation at IIT-K while I was there for the techfest techkriti09. If I remember it right, two guys from Opera Software named “Shwetank” and “Wolf” were giving a presentation on “Open Web Standards”, design,Opera on handheld devices and so on… It was quite fascinating to see the capabilities of a browser which I never used even once, then. I realized this on the spot and then was busy processing the information of the presentation and realizing the stupidity simultaneously! After the presentation I was quite charmed with Opera Browser and left my email ID with “Shwetank” whom I asked many questions (and he took all of it!).Couple of weeks later Zara Lauder mailed me and eventually I became an OCC…The first OCC in KIIT University.
Our University
What next? I interacted with some juniors and found that they were no different than what I was, with respect to the web browser awareness! I guess most of us take the browser for granted and end up using whatever comes our way(from friends etc)…It’s very sad because it keeps us aloof from the cool new world of evolved web with dramatic changes in the Internet and Web technologies. So I decided to organize a presentation as part of my OCC activity on
“Internet,Browsers and A Better Browser”. Couple of weeks went by and I was pretty confused what will be the exact content and in what manner should it be delivered. Finally I got my answer!
Then, quickly I stared with making additional posters. Making the final posters took weeks as I rejected many in the process of creating the most appropriate ones!
Then I was pretty bugged by the problem of sluggish internet speed in the particular class room where I planned to organize the event. As my intention was to give live demonstrations of Opera Mail, Opera Link etc, I wanted a high speed internet that would make the whole thing fast and interesting. But I couldn’t find a way out… couple of days later it hit me to make
desktop session recording to do the same… do the whole thing edit out the parts that took a long time.
I made 2/3 demo videos,expressing visually the know-hows in a clear and lucid manner how some feature exactly works on Opera 10! I demonstrated the Opera Mail through the video and also the Opera Link. For Opera Mail, I first showed to “enable” the ‘POP/IMAP’ settings in the mail account then configuring the Opera Mail and finally using it. 
Meanwhile, I talked about the whole thing to Nishant Swapan(now an OCC)from the same university and he quickly registered for the OCC and in no time got a conformation from Zara!Thanks Zara for making things quick!
Me & Nishant Swapan
Campaigning in our University Together we started campaigning for the event. As it was the first Opera event in our university it took substantial amount of hard work on our part to make the authorities familiar with Opera and convince them the benefit of the whole thing. After spending a lot of time and energy we finally got permission to conduct the very first OCC event in our University campus. I started the campaign with Nishant and another guy named Abhishek who registered just couple of days back for the OCC.
Putting posters in a university campus that's equivalent to couple of football fields was very tiring but it was fun too!
We expected much more students than what we actually got as audience for the event, and personally was a bit dissapointed with it. First years were not allowed to attend the presentation as our university is overprotective about freshmen. Wish we could involve them!Finally, on 10th of October in our University campus we held the event.
A brief idea of what exactly we did follows:
The Contents of the Presentation:
The Internet: •What is the internet? : Understanding the giant Network, role of ISPs etc!
•Who owns it? (No one!) : The internet Keepers:
ICANN, W3C,IGF etc.•What’s there for ME? : What do you want?
Choose from:
MIT’s OCW to IIT’s NPTEL, from BearShare to BitTorrent, from www.BBC.co.uk to Wikipedia, from Orkut to Twitter, from Naukri.com to LinkedIn ... many things were discussed.
•A brief history of the internet:
from Sputnik I to Eisenhower, from ARPANET to CERN... •Generations of the Web:
Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and the future Web 3.0 •A 10 min animation video (excellent!) : Downloaded from
www.warriorsofthe.net 
(I edited it with Opera Banners as Image overlays)
Browsers & A Better Browser: 
•History Of the browsers
•Different Browsers
•What makes a Browser different from others etc
•The Opera Advantage: Discussion of Top features:Mouse Gestures,Voice Commands,Security, Special Video Demo(desktop recording!) etc
•The Power Of Choice: Make life simpler using a Good Browser!
The Q&A SessionI was asked many questions throughout the session. In the first place I was a bit nervous, but it changed to happiness soon, seeing a lot of enthusiasm on part of our juniors and peers.
Q: How a 6.5Mb installation file has so many top-notch features all packed inside it, When other browsers have lesser features and larger installation file size?Ans: I was stumped! I gave “Ask the Opera Developer team!” with a smile!
Q: What is Web 1.0, 2.0 and what will be Web 3.0 like?
Q: ISP, router, networks etc related question.
Q: What is Opera Unite?
....
The Quiz:
Another OCC, Nishant Swapan organized the quiz part. I was also assisting him. A newly registered OCC Abhishek Mohta lend a great helping hand by clicking pictures while we were busy delivering the event. He also helped us in our campaigning part and making announcements to students related to the event. He also assisted in the quiz and feedback session. The bottom line: We formed a team and worked together to make the event quite a success. The Quiz covered question related to the:
•
Web•
Opera Software ASA•
Opera Web BrowserPrizes:
]
Opera sent BrowseMe T-shirts, lots of Opera Pens for the event along with my OCC T-shirt and event posters. We received an expensive “express courier” from Opera delivered to us by TNT all the way from Oslo,Norway. Quite excited with all these, we added some more stuffs on our own as prizes… a headphone and a pack of 10 CDs!
Feedback:
All our sadness vanished when we actually saw the feedback. I kind of gauged it a bit before, during the Q&A session. The curiosity to know more about Opera was visible quite brightly in their eyes. Amazingly, most of them knew answers to questions related to Opera and Opera browser, so we had a tough time deciding how to distribute the prizes. We gave the prizes on basis of quickest response and a correct one!
Our esteemed Dean Sir, Prof.Dasgupta (Electrical Engineering), attended the whole 1.5 hr presentation and was very enthusiastic about features of Opera browser. He gave us a high feedback on the feedback form we took printout. I was just thinking if the event could be replaced by exams/labs/projects and the feedback by grades! 
Thank you Opera for giving us a knowledge sharing platform! I hope to spread the word of mouth about the best browser:Opera, like no OCC ever did! 
(besides for the fact that 10.0 is a stable version) 
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