Worth the Workshop?

 

Hello friends and juniors!!! As this is a season of symposium in MIT there is no dearth of workshops this month. Every department conducts a workshop. And what’s more? You can see at least one big company conducting a workshop for such an event. Now I can’t directly point out the names due to obvious reasons but I believe you can guess who I am talking about.

Now personally I don’t attend workshops as I believe everything is available on the internet. But still the same cannot be said for everyone in our college. Spending certain amount of money to learn something new is far better than spending them on worthless things. But still you should only pay for those workshops that are worth your precious money. I am from E.C.E department. I will narrate to you, my experience from the previous year. This is an honest confession and I hope my seniors who are reading this won’t mind it.



I attended a workshop conducted by BSNL about 4G. That must have been the last workshop I ever attended. There is a difference between a workshop and a boring lecture. Oh couldn’t understand a thing! Had they mentioned the prerequisites I would have saved my money. And I couldn’t even leave as they said the certificates will be provided only at the end. In the end, I ended up losing my attendance, and gained absolutely nothing from it.

And this year a junior, who is also a good friend of mine, asked me about this IoT workshop conducted by XYZ famous Indian company in a certain event. I advised him not to attend it and as expected they gave boring lectures and the components didn’t work during the demo which was done only by the instructors.

 



Seriously?!

Why don’t they mention what will be taught beforehand so that we can decide whether or not to attend. It is all a scam in my opinion. On the contrary, for the same major event, a workshop about a controller for just a small fee was conducted by a staff of our college and it was worth every single penny.

 

So why am I saying all this?? I don’t want others to suffer the same fate. Yes by writing this article I know that I am stirring controversy and I am going to be hated for this by certain people. But things have to change. I believe this small post can open the eyes of our college students. After all it is them who are going to bring the change and not anyone else.

So what should a student look for before attending a workshop?

The organisation that is conducting the workshop. And just because they are famous, it doesn’t mean that their workshops are going to be awesome.

Just search about that startup or company’s site and check whether they have conducted similar workshops elsewhere and check the reviews for the same. Next, check for the contents of the workshop. For example since I belong to ECE, I will give an example for a workshop about PIC controller.

How the details should be:

1. Embedded C programming basics
2. Interfacing so and so with PIC.
3. Serial communication with PIC
and so on

How it should not be:

Hey there! Wanna learn about cool PIC controllers? Fear not. Come to this workshop conducted by Airtel!!!!





 

Now even the association I belong to is going to conduct an event soon next month and we have provided the details of each and every workshop in our site, though our Whatsapp messages have the attractive words like the one I have mentioned above. But the contents are very essential. If they have not mentioned the content don’t go. You can trust me on this.

And what’s more? Search about those contents online. You can learn about them on your own too if you want. If you feel that you would benefit by attending the workshop then check for the cost. Is it worth the money? Is it too costly? If that is the case do they give you the components? Or will they be taken back from you? If it is too costly and still they don’t give you the components, my advice is check whether there is another workshop which provides them or wait till you find one.

There are workshops which cost 8.5k per head and only one kit will be given to a team of four who individually paid 8.5k. But the kit will cost only 4k at most. Day time robbery at its peak. They are taking advantage of the fact that you aren’t aware of the true price. I say don’t attend them. I am not bragging, but we conduct those for free for our students in our college at weekends and the only thing the students had to pay for, was the components alone.

 



So friends, this happens not only in symposiums but also in institutions outside our college.

And the most important point is:

You cannot learn everything in just one day. These workshops only cover the basics and it is up to you to learn further and this is possible only through books or the internet. No workshop ever goes deep into a topic. So rather than wasting your money for just the basics I say search for the topics you want to learn and learn them for free on the internet.

Wanna learn python? You have Solo Learn app for it on the internet. Wanna learn arduino? Try arduino tutorials by Coder Bro on Play store. Wanna learn about machine learning or raspberry pi or anything related to python? Search for Sentdex’s channel in YouTube. So basically each and every single thing is available on the internet. All you have to do is search for them. And oh hey!!! Just because I am talking about electronic stuff it doesn’t mean you can learn only electronics on the internet. This applies to each and every department. Coursera and Edx cover a lot of topics for various disciplines. The best ever source for learning stuff is the internet.



 



So I am concluding with this point:
There is nothing wrong in attending a workshop. But it should be worth your money and time and it is not possible to pay for each and everything and hence the internet is a better option.

Written by : Kishore, Second Year, Electronics and Communication.

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