Outstanding School Service 2009-2010

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" - Leonardo Da Vinci

This is an age of technology, everything that was dreams of the recent past is becoming today’s present. Such acute advancement in technology was only an imagination of the past, but as the resources are spreading among the masses, the world is constantly diversifying in every technical and non technical field. With so much variance in the current trends of technology and their volatility, one need to find a place that is simple, vivid, user friendly and fun to visit. Having said that, most of the youth of the world these days maintain their cyber presence equally as their physical one and often get their daily feed of technology and social circle via internet. The current trend in web services is centralization of services and the most popular of the websites are just targeting this fact and combining themselves with other sites to provide everything on the front page.

ACM SEECS website has been designed keeping in mind the above principles of simplicity and ease of use. Here is a review of noticeable features of the website.

The framework of the website has been laid using the JOOMLA CMS. JOOMLA is an open sourced GUI based CMS which is easy to handle and takes around 10 minutes to get a website up and running from scratch. Besides, the CMS itself is easy to manage hence providing quick and timely updates. JOOMLA lays the basic structure of a website so one does not have to do the hefty work of doing it manually. Other customizations are purely based on user skill and requirement. The bottom line is that the website is easy to update and manage.
The theme we used is an open sourced theme provided by a company named Rocket theme and it is called quasar. The thing which was kept in consideration while choosing this theme was that it should not include complex designs and interface, also with the ACM code of conduct regarding the website, it was decided to choose grey and blue as the colors for our site. 

The FrontPage is designed as such that a user finds everything on the FrontPage and he does not have to scroll through complex structure of a website to get what is required. Everything, from registration to ACM portfolio to galleries and videos can be found in our Main menu bar.
The previous version of our site was static and lacked content, so this time it was decided to put videos and image galleries. This serves as a good recreation of a user and leaves him nostalgic. The 3-D gallery powered by Phoca inc. provides a very pleasant view of floating pictures in a flash enabled web browser.

Tags cloud in the bottom right of the FrontPage provides quick access to the most visited pages. The feature that I like the most in our website is links to the other chapter, which is present in the footer of our website. Most of the work in the world is done by global participation and collaboration, to promote it at national and regional level the chapters should work together to perform wonderful things.

Sitemap provides the basic structure of the website. Joining forms are also available to download, and submit via email or a hardcopy so that people don’t have to rush to departments to obtain them. Also the online feedback form is available so that we can constantly improve our website based on user requirements.

This website has been developed by three undergraduate students, who do web and graphic development as a hobby. ACM SEECS could have put the work on some commercial organization, but the object of having it done by our own students was to motivate learning and to promote it practically.

Future Horizons: SEECS ACM Student chapter's IT committee has decided to further improve the website by adding the following features in the coming month, some of which are already under beta testing like the "Events calendar". The improvements suggested are:

• Radio channel for both Local and international technical radio stations.
• Provision of E-books and reference suggestion portal.
• Birthday reminder and RSS Feeds for the website.
• Event calendar [in beta testing stage].

In short we hope that ACM SEECS student chapter website provides a pleasant experience to the user. Also we converted to JOOMLA for main reasons of simplifying the process of updates so that everybody could update the site whenever they find time. I hope you will have a very refreshing experience by visiting our site that is: http://www.acm.seecs.nust.edu.pk. 
Thank you.
Prepared By – IT Committee SEECS ACM Student Chapter

NUST-SEECS ACM STUDENT CHAPTER

“It is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of service”      ”-    Albert  Einstein

SEECS ACM Chapter is a sub domain of the International Society "Association for Computing Machinery". It is with pleasure and confidence that the ACM SEECS Chapter states the mentioned horizon is being emulated here at university level and constant efforts are being made to spread the culture in the whole country by holding of national events where intellectuals, students and people from industry from varying places meet to improve upon the standing of the society. It believes in the sanctity of services that is why it is on the go to prove and improve itself in terms of services.

School Service #: 1

• ACM Student Welfare Association NUST (ASWAN).
• No. of Students benefiting: 50
• Description: The most important contribution that our chapter gives to our school is the establishment of ASWAN i.e. ACM Student Welfare Association NUST. This association is a subsidiary of ACM Student Chapter at SEECS and has been established to support the brilliant and bright students who cannot pursue their studies due to reasons such as financial constraints etc. Apart from its role as a vital forum for the exchange of information, ideas, and discoveries, ACM Student Chapter NUST-SEECS has a great concern for fellow students. It feels its responsibility to provide every possible help required by the deserving students. That is the reason ASWAN was formed under the umbrella of ACM NUST-SEECS Student Chapter. ASWAN is purely based on pro-bono-public. With the objective of student welfare, we have braced ourselves in order to play the role of sheet-anchor to provide assistance to the students who do not have the resources to realize their academic ambitions.
•  The ACM Student Chapter at SEECS is planning to organize a festival as per its tradition in order to raise funds for ASWAN. Details about ASWAN can be found at: http://acm.seecs.nust.edu.pk/

School Service #: 2

• English Corner
• No. of Students benefiting: 100
• Description: The ACM Student Chapter took the initiative of boosting up the confidence of students when it comes to Communication Skills in English. For this purpose, it has been arranging special workshops for students where they are encouraged to express themselves in English. This not only increases their confidence in spoken English but in the longer run it will help them a lot with presentations and interviews.

School Service #: 3

• Help Sessions /Tutorials
• No. of Students benefiting: 200
• Description: The ACM Student Chapter organizes help sessions and tutorials for its students on monthly basis. The main purpose of these activities is to help students who are lagging behind in studies and also to help those students who wish to learn new technologies. The ACM Student Chapter serves the students by organizing three main events:
  • Multimedia Week: These series of workshops were organized to familiarize students with latest
• multimedia tools such Adobe Photoshop, and MX Flash 2004.
  • Linux Security Workshop: An extensive one month workshop familiarizing the students with the security parameters and measures of Linux.
• Details can be found on:  http://acm.seecs.nust.edu.pk

School Service #: 4

• Informative Seminars and competitions
• No. of Students benefiting: 200
• Description: In extension of its school services Program, the ACM Student Chapter at SEECS organizes series of informative seminars for its fellow students. The aim of these seminars is to enlighten students with new ideas, technologies and people. Some of the seminars conducted under this scheme are:
  • Career counseling by Tech-Access
  • Seminar by Takaful Insurance company
  • Information Seminar on Microsoft Imagine Cup 2009-2010
  • Lecture by Mr Don Costello
  • Video and photography competition

School Service # 5

• NUST All Pakistan Arts Science and liTerature Exhibition and Competition -NASTEC 09
• No. of students benefiting: 550
• Description: On Dec 11th and 12th, ACM organized an ALL PAKISTAN ARTS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EXHIBITION AND COMPETITION with a participation of over a 350 from other universities of Pakistan. The event was covered by Radio1 FM 91 and DUNYA TV.
• For more details:  http://nastec.seecs.nust.edu.pk 

School Service # 6

• Young Leader's Conference
• No of Students Benefiting: 350
• Description:  ACM-SEECS is planning to organize Young Leader's Conference on 21st and 22nd of May 2010 spanning over the twin cities and their universities and colleges. This event will enhance the developmental and analytical skills of students in politics, development and business. Many dignitaries from the industries shall deliver seminars and witness the event
• For more details: http://acm.seecs.nust.edu.pk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86:ylc&catid=36:upcoming&Itemid=74

School Service # 7

• Global Innovation Tournament
• No of Students Benefiting: 50
• Description: ACM-SEECS organized Global Innovation Tournament locally and a team qualified for the semi-finals of global tournament held at Stanford University amongst 5 qualifying teams. The theme of the competition was "MAKE SAVING MONEY FUN".
• Details can be found on: http://acm.seecs.nust.edu.pk/

School Service # 8

• Regional Office Setup
• Description: ACM-SEECS is looking forward to setup the very first Regional Office of ACM at H-12 in collaboration with other ACM Chapters of the Islamabad region. Moreover, it is also planning to persuade other universities to setup their local chapters
• Details can be found on: http://acm.seecs.nust.edu.pk/

School Service # 9

• Collaboration with other ACM chapters of Pakistan
• Description :ACM-SEECS is looking forward to organize events now at National Level in collaboration with other ACM chapters of Pakistan. It has recently signed a collaboration document with FAST-NU chapter and the two chapters will be organizing GEEK WEEK together in near future.
• Details can be found on: http://acm.seecs.nust.edu.pk/