FOSS Club SRM - Updates thread

Harsh_Patel · 10 February 2026 15:34

simply sharing the planner sheet. Will be sharing the feedback form results here soon.

The event photos are available here (future events we use ente dw)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1t1aU4bMLf4dgqjVy0Fh8Sw9OuUHJNkAg?usp=sharing

Harsh_Patel · 17 February 2026 15:38

Planning Kickstarted, in the below thread. further event related public updates and post event planners will be posted in the below thread.

Let’s hope this month long format yields crazy good projects!
Happy Hacking to all : )

Tarun_Akash · 1 March 2026 13:49

Hello,

All preparations for tomorrow’s hackathon have been completed and the event is fully set from our end.

Event responsibilities:

Registration Desk: Tushar, Azam and Sourav
Snacks: Ayush, Anish, Adhwaith and Antony
Crowd Work: Team FOSS Club SRM-KTR

Looking back, around one and a half months ago the idea of organizing this hackathon was still uncertain and seemed quite challenging. Since then, with consistent planning and coordination, things have steadily come together, and we now stand ready for the inauguration tomorrow.

Finally, we are all set for tomorrow’s event.

Adwaith_Shan_PK · 31 May 2026 09:16

Hey everyone, I’m Adwaith from FOSS Club SRM-KTR. I was in the organizing team (POC) for the Frappe Workshop, and it was the Open Source Hands-on Session held on 6th May 2026. Sharing a quick overview and GBU of how it went, from an organizer’s perspective.

Event Intro
The Frappe Workshop was an online, hands-on session organized by FOSS Club SRM-KTR, featuring Immanuel Raj, who’s a SysOps Engineer at RtCamp as the speaker. We saw participation from students and also working professionals, all of them seemed genuinely curious about open-source tech. Thorough details regarding the session, technical content, and participant engagement are mentioned in the report attached below.

The FOSS Club SRM’s “Frappe Workshop” turned out to be very successful in terms of content and participation.

Good :

High level of participation by all participants
Nice balance of students and professionals attending the event
Live coding made the workshop more interesting and easy to follow
Insights on the industry provided by Immanuel Raj of RtCamp

Bad :

The workshop started at little past the scheduled time
Some participants were unable to replicate the process locally due to moving from Doppio box to the presenter’s laptop

Ugly :

As this was an online event, there was some lag in connecting and setting up the environment for the live coding sessions.

In summary, the workshop served its purpose well in introducing Frappe and infrastructure tools used by it in open source projects.

EventReport.pdf (537.6 KB)

Sachin_Prasanth · 10 June 2026 12:45

Hey Folks,

I’m Sachin Prasanth, I’ll be starting my new position as a club lead of FOSS Club SRM.
Few things about myself:

Researcher in Trustworthy Machine Learning
Researcher at IIT Madras and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Led the Technical Team and conducted two talks - Zero to One Machine Learning and an Introduction to Docker environment.

I’ll be leading the club for the next few months and will be recruiting new members. Will be announcing the core members soon!

Adwaith_Shan_PK · 1 July 2026 05:17

Hey everyone, I’m Adwaith from FOSS Club SRM-KTR. I was part of the organizing team (POC) for the “Zero to One: GoLang” session held on 27th June 2026. Sharing a quick GBU (Good, Bad & Ugly) of how the event went from an organizer’s perspective.

Event Intro

The Zero to One: GoLang session was an online beginner-friendly workshop organized by FOSS Club SRM-KTR in collaboration with FOSS United, featuring Harsh Patel as the speaker. Harsh is a Software Developer with industry experience in Go, backend development, automation, and large-scale web platforms, making him well-suited to introduce participants to Go and its ecosystem.

The session focused on helping beginners understand GoLang fundamentals, its syntax, development workflow, and practical use cases. Students from different years attended the workshop with an interest in learning a language that is widely used in cloud-native development, backend engineering, and open-source projects. Thorough details regarding the session, technical topics covered, and participant engagement are mentioned in the report attached below.

Overall, Zero to One: GoLang successfully achieved its objective of introducing participants to Go programming through practical explanations and real-world insights.

Good :
Strong participation throughout the session, with attendees actively engaging in discussions and asking questions.
The session was beginner-friendly, making it accessible even for participants with little or no prior experience in Go.
Harsh shared practical industry experiences alongside language concepts, helping participants understand where Go is used in real-world development.
Live demonstrations and code walkthroughs helped attendees better understand Go’s syntax and workflow.
Participants appreciated the interactive nature of the workshop and the opportunity to clarify doubts during the session.

Bad:
A few participants required additional assistance while setting up the Go development environment before following along with the coding examples.
Some topics had to be covered at a quicker pace towards the end due to time constraints, leaving limited time for advanced discussions.

Ugly :
Being an online event, a few attendees experienced occasional internet connectivity issues, causing them to miss parts of the live coding demonstrations.
Minor delays occurred while resolving setup-related issues for some participants, which briefly interrupted the flow of the session.

Summary

The Zero to One: GoLang workshop successfully introduced participants to the Go programming language and provided a solid foundation for those looking to explore backend development, cloud technologies, and open-source contributions. Harsh Patel’s industry experience and practical approach made the session engaging and informative, and participants left with a clearer understanding of how Go is used in modern software development.

Harsh_Patel · 15 August 2026 13:59

Hello everyone,
I am officially out of college and stepping down from the FOSS club. I am going to share a few of my learnings and points with each of the future organisers of the clubs that they can follow.

I was very happy to get help of @Sachin_Prasanth when things got very busy and helping the club sustain. Currently the organiser position has been passed on to vaibhav who will also assisted by pranav from the FU Coimbatore chapter who is currently in SRM for masters. Thanks to you pranav as well to jumping in an sinking ship ASAP to help.

First explore Event Planning Guideline for Conferences - FOSS United Knowledge Base, https://docs.fossunited.org and then just read through below points

Basic things before the below procedures:

Every opinion matters
People are human, forgive them and help them learn
Families first, studies then and then club (ps: my opinion)

Procedures involved, all steps and progress ideally document in the forum:

Discussion meeting discovery event meet to discuss on when and what to do
1. what we are doing this in event is FOSS related
2. CFPs has to be listed always minimum two weeks before the event
3. When we are doing try not to clash with CT’s
4. also don’t clash with Aarush, Milan or any flagship event of any clubs
go to club coordinator
1. get event approval, with sign
2. get venue approval, with email - SRM-SHBF
3. get Dr. V tirumurugan get his sign campus life sir, you need his permission to do promotional activities in SRM, with sign
4. So if you SRM reimbursement always let SRM know 1 year prior
5. if you want FOSS reimbursement submit it in forum event
Once approved with above stuff, post confirmation in forum
1. start posting in social media
2. get 2-3 posters
3. start doing C2C , build an internal schedule with team to facilitate this
4. if extra people are there also setup an helpdesk to get more reach
5. parallely ask our club coordinator that we can send promotional event email to our full dept with HOD approval
6. if the event is after 6pm / late event you need to send permission request to all hostel wardens for late permissions, esp for girls without fail.
Pre-event checks:
1. venue coordinator number - basic utility issues
2. PoC keep two people to attend event related query calls
3. do dry run of the event - what roles are given? what is the timeline?
4. CoC rules (Code of Conduct) explain Team members must adhere to the code of conduct, and when a violation occurs, specific steps must be taken. If a participant or club member reports an issue - such as misconduct or inappropriate comments, they should immediately be directed to involve a neutral third party. This could be another participant, yourself, or a lead maintainer from the club. In this scenario, the lead acts as the primary contact, while you provide assistance. The core principle is to always involve this neutral “turnout” party to handle the situation directly rather than escalating it immediately. For urgent matters, there is a 24/7 code of conduct violation hotline mentioned here Code of Conduct
5. check AV and AC systems one day prior
6. get an print out participant list with having name, email (email compulsory for srm folks) and two field to do the signature before event compulsory, after event (not needed but beneficial)
7. Keep the feedback form ready
On the day of event:
1. have two people for photos and videos
2. one of those two people will actively post stories / posts
3. get signatures for check-in of participants, scan it, share it to sir and get that sign from club coordinator and then stamp seal from HoD Office. this is officially an regular OD proof.
4. if possible, get an group photo of the event at the end
5. lastly, share the feedback form to the participants.
Post event:
1. events Postmortems - Good, bad, ugly to be posted in forum within 14days, Post-Event Reporting - FOSS United Knowledge Base (use club letter head)
2. if possible, also share responses of feedback in the end of event postmorterm pdf.
3. you can also share photos publically in our ente album
4. for club members Present OD, get a list of members who have helped for event, form an email with letterhead requesting present OD give to club coordinator for approval, once approved share withs FA’s … While collecting information of the students for present on duty. Always get the name, email, registration number, faculty name, faculty email, and what degree course they are doing.

As always, happy hacking, keep learning, growing.

Vaibhav_gupta · 2 September 2026 17:44

RAGForge: Build Your Own Local AI Knowledge Assistant

Hey everyone, I’m Vaibhav Gupta, Head of FOSS Club SRM-KTR. We recently organised “RAGForge: Build Your Own Local AI Knowledge Assistant”, a hands-on workshop focused on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and building a local AI knowledge assistant. The event was held on 31st August 2026. Here’s a quick GBU (Good, Bad & Ugly) of how the event went from an organiser’s perspective.

Event Intro

RAGForge: Build Your Own Local AI Knowledge Assistant was a hands-on technical workshop organised by FOSS Club SRM-KTR at SRMIST, Kattankulathur.

The workshop was designed to introduce participants to the fundamentals of Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), embeddings, vector databases, semantic search, and document processing through a practical, beginner-friendly approach.

Participants were introduced to tools and technologies such as Ollama, Qwen, ChromaDB, and Streamlit. The session went beyond theory, guiding participants through the complete process of building a functional local AI knowledge assistant — from uploading and processing documents to generating embeddings, retrieving relevant context, and generating responses using an LLM.

We also encouraged participants to fork the project repository and build upon it by creating their own applications, such as research-paper assistants, documentation chatbots, campus knowledge assistants, or completely new ideas.

Overall, RAGForge successfully achieved its objective of helping participants move from understanding the concepts behind RAG to actually building and experimenting with a working application.

Good

Strong participation throughout the workshop, with attendees actively engaging in discussions and asking questions.
The session made complex concepts such as RAG, embeddings, vector databases, and semantic search approachable for beginners.
Hands-on implementation helped participants understand the complete RAG pipeline rather than learning only through theory.
Participants gained practical exposure to local AI tools such as Ollama and Qwen.
Live demonstrations of document processing, chunking, embedding generation, retrieval, and context augmentation helped participants understand the workflow.
Participants were encouraged to fork and modify the repository, promoting experimentation and open-source collaboration.
The interactive environment allowed participants to clarify their doubts and experiment with the project.

Bad

A few participants faced difficulties setting up the required tools, dependencies, and local AI environment.
Some participants required additional assistance during the initial setup and troubleshooting process.
Due to time constraints, some advanced RAG concepts and optimisation techniques could not be explored in depth.
Participants had varying levels of technical experience, making it challenging to maintain the same pace throughout the hands-on session.

Ugly

Setup and dependency-related issues occasionally interrupted the flow of the practical session.
Some participants experienced system-related difficulties while running local AI models.
Internet connectivity and installation issues caused minor delays for a few attendees.
Managing the technical flow of the workshop while simultaneously addressing individual participant queries presented some organisational challenges.

Summary

RAGForge: Build Your Own Local AI Knowledge Assistant successfully introduced participants to the fundamentals and practical implementation of Retrieval-Augmented Generation.

The workshop provided hands-on exposure to LLMs, embeddings, semantic search, vector databases, document processing, and local AI models, while encouraging participants to experiment and build beyond the provided project.

From an organiser’s perspective, the event was a rewarding experience that allowed us to create a space for students to learn, build, experiment, and explore the possibilities of open-source AI.

The ultimate goal was simple: **move participants from “What is RAG?” to “Wait… I just built this.”

Vaibhav_gupta · 14 September 2026 16:20

RAGForge: Build Your Own Local AI Knowledge Assistant

1. What is your name?

Vaibhav Gupta

2. What’s your Club’s name?

FOSS Club SRM-KTR

3. Event Name

RAGForge: Build Your Own Local AI Knowledge Assistant

4. Event Type

Hands-on Workshop

5. Explain the event briefly

RAGForge was a hands-on workshop organized by FOSS Club SRM-KTR to introduce participants to the fundamentals of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and demonstrate how to build a local AI-powered knowledge assistant using open-source technologies.

The session covered the complete workflow of building a RAG-based application, starting from processing documents and preparing the data, followed by document chunking, generating embeddings, storing them in a vector database, performing semantic search, and finally augmenting an LLM’s context with the retrieved information.

Participants also explored how local LLMs can be run using Ollama and how these components can be combined to create a practical AI knowledge assistant without relying entirely on proprietary cloud-based AI services.

6. Speaker Details

Speaker: Syeda Umaiza
Role: 4th Year Student & President, SWE SRMIST

She conducted the hands-on session and guided participants through the fundamentals and implementation of RAG. The session included:

Introduction to LLMs and RAG
Running local LLMs using Ollama
Working with Qwen
PDF/document processing
Document chunking
Generating embeddings
Semantic search
Vector databases using ChromaDB
Retrieval and context augmentation
Building the interface using Streamlit

7. Was the speaker provided to you by FOSS United?

No. The speaker was identified and coordinated by the FOSS Club SRM-KTR team.

8. Mode of the Event

In-person

9. Livestream/Recording Link

Not applicable – the event was conducted in person.

10. Event Photos

Ente Photos

11. How many people attended your event?

36

12. What went well at the meetup?

The event received a positive response from the attendees, particularly because it combined conceptual understanding with a practical implementation of a RAG application.

The team focused on making the session beginner-friendly while still exposing participants to a real-world AI workflow. The hands-on nature of the workshop helped participants understand how different components of a RAG pipeline work together rather than treating LLMs as a black box.

The organizing team also handled event coordination, participant management, venue arrangements, communication and on-ground execution to ensure the session proceeded smoothly.

A major highlight was the participants’ interest in experimenting with local AI models and open-source tools. The interactive portions of the workshop generated considerable engagement and questions from attendees.

13. What could be improved?

One area for improvement would be allocating more time for the hands-on implementation. Since RAG involves several interconnected components—document processing, chunking, embeddings, vector databases, retrieval and LLM integration—participants could benefit from additional time to troubleshoot their implementations individually.

For future editions, we could also provide a starter repository or setup guide before the event so participants can complete basic installation and environment setup beforehand. This would allow more time during the session to focus on understanding and building the actual application.

From the organizing side, having more volunteers assigned specifically to participant support during the hands-on portion could make troubleshooting faster and improve the experience for beginners.

14. What open source tools did you use at your event?

The primary open-source technologies used during the workshop included:

Ollama – for running LLMs locally
Qwen – local/open model used with Ollama
ChromaDB – vector database for storing and retrieving embeddings
Streamlit – for building the user interface
Python – for implementing the RAG pipeline
Embeddings and semantic search components – for retrieving relevant information from documents

15. Were there any challenges in using those tools?

The primary challenges were related to the setup and integration of multiple components required for the RAG pipeline.

Running local models can also require considerable computational resources, and participants with different hardware configurations may have experienced differences in setup time and performance.

Another challenge was understanding how document chunking, embeddings, vector search and LLM generation fit together. Since these were new concepts for many participants, additional explanation and troubleshooting were required during the hands-on portion.

These challenges were also valuable learning opportunities because participants could see the practical considerations involved in building a local AI application.

16. Was one of those tools a crowd favorite?

Ollama and the ability to run an LLM locally generated particularly strong interest among participants.

The idea of running AI models locally, without depending completely on external APIs, was one of the most engaging aspects of the workshop. Participants were especially interested in understanding how local models could be integrated into practical applications.

17. Link us to the contributions that your community members made at the event

The successful execution of RAGForge was made possible through the collective efforts of our FOSS Club community members:

Vaibhav Gupta: Coordinated and arranged the speaker, planned and structured the event, handled the venue coordination and arrangements, guided the team, assigned responsibilities, coordinated the required permissions before and after the event, and ensured proper discipline and decorum throughout the event.
Godwin, Khushi & Antony: Managed the refreshments and ensured smooth distribution and coordination during the event.
Hari, Priyanka, Ayandip, Azam, Pranav & Shivam: Supported the team with on-ground logistics, venue assistance, arrangements, and other essential operational work.
Meghna & Pinakini: Served as the emcees and managed the flow and coordination of the event on stage.
Ayush, Anish & Tushar: Supported the technical requirements of the workshop and assisted with the technical setup and execution.
Adil & Aditya: Handled event photography and captured the key moments and highlights of RAGForge.

The event was a collaborative effort, with each team member contributing to different aspects of planning, venue coordination, technical execution, hospitality, documentation, and on-ground management.

18. Did you find anybody at the event a good fit to be a mentor or speaker for future events?

Syeda Umaiza would be a strong candidate for future workshops, particularly around RAG, LLM applications, AI engineering and open-source AI tooling.

Her ability to explain the concepts while simultaneously demonstrating their practical implementation made her a good fit for technical workshops aimed at students and beginners.

We would also be interested in identifying active participants from this event who showed strong curiosity and technical engagement and potentially involving them as contributors, mentors or speakers in future FOSS Club activities.

19. Did you spend any money on the event?

A detailed breakdown can be provided as follows:

Expense	Amount
Refreshments	₹2750
Lunch for Speaker & Organizing Team	₹1000
Printing / Posters / Standee	₹245
Total	₹3995

20. Anything else you would want to note down for later?

RAGForge was an important step for FOSS Club SRM-KTR in introducing students to the rapidly evolving ecosystem of open-source AI and local LLM applications.

Rather than limiting the discussion to the theoretical concepts behind generative AI, the event demonstrated how open-source technologies can be combined to build a complete, functional application.

The workshop also reinforced the club’s goal of creating a practical learning environment where students can experiment with open-source technologies, collaborate with one another and build projects beyond the classroom.

For future events, the team would like to build upon this momentum with more advanced sessions around Agentic AI, RAG, LLM engineering, open-source models and AI-powered applications.