Oculus 2022 – Tech Events

Virtual Stock Market

The virtual stock market, a flagship event of the annual techno-cultural Fest: Oculus, was a virtual stock market simulation held on the 26th and 27th of March 2022, at the main entrance hall of Sardar Patel Institute of Technology. Participants came from all over, from SPIT as well as from outside, eyeing the prizes and hampers worth Rs. 35000! 

A mind gruelling and intense affair, the contestants were put through an imaginary simulation with the craziest of storylines and news with various characters, who through their dealings and businesses, affected an array of imaginary stocks like drugs, guns, gold, aviation, oil, and infrastructure.

Participants could use an imaginary currency (V$M coins) of 1 Crore and trade these stocks according to their knowledge of how the dynamic market works depending on the news provided for each round. 

At the end of each round a leaderboard was displayed based on the profits earned by each team and the one with maximum returns after all the 5 rounds, was declared the winner. There were also some hampers for people willing to perform on the spot while the tech team did the evaluation of the scores. The event was a huge success with participants having fun regardless of the results.

“The storyline was amazing and especially the memes in between, also the fact that it was beginner-friendly, made the event even better! From the results we concluded that to understand the market, you must first understand the people and their perceptions”, says Arsh Raina, one of the participants in the event.

-A report by Uthkrisht Narayan

FE Bootcamp Codatron

Codatron, arguably this year’s most successful coding event held in our college, was an online coding competition held exclusively for the first-year students, giving them a platform to express their skills in the domains of critical reading and analytical thinking. It gave an opportunity for the students to use their newfound programming skills, and execute them in an official sense.

Codatron was a subset of the FE Bootcamp, which was an attempt at teaching Python, a programming language, to first-year students. The FE Bootcamp was a two-day event, consisting of online lectures held by the seniors of our college, namely, Aditya Kharote, Aaditya Meher, and Kartik Menon, who also conducted several assignments and doubt-solving sessions.

The event, with the participation of more than one hundred students, was beyond successful. It exposed the freshers to the real-world competitive programming scenario, making them ready for the same.

Omkar Rao stood first in the competition, Mann Bhanushali stood second and the third position was occupied by Suraj Iyer.

-A report by Suraj Iyer

Lockout and Knockout

Lockout and Knockout was an online event conducted by the Oculus Coding League which was open to SEs and above. The event consisted of two rounds, namely, ‘Lockout’ and ‘Knockout’.

Knockout was your standard coding competition which was held over a period of two hours, the top 8 coders made it to the next round, Lockout.

Now, Lockout was something unique and interesting. In Lockout, once a question got one correct submission, the points for that question would go to the respective participant and nobody else would be able to acquire those points. It was conducted on Hackerrank and the Lockout system was implemented by informing the participants if a problem had been solved or not. They were informed on a WhatsApp group and on the website itself.

Harshvardhan stood first in the competition, Tarun stood second and the third position was occupied by Omprakash.

“It was a fun experience, a lot of people participated and the questions were interesting, neither too easy nor too difficult. The competition was tough but friendly. Got to do competitive programming after a long time and realized it’s still fun. A great event overall.”, says Jai Patel, one of the participants of the event.

-A report by Suraj Iyer

Stacked Squad

Stacked Squad, an online technical event of the annual techno-cultural fest OCULUS was a tournament-style team event. The event consisted of two rounds, Round one taking place on the 20th of March and Round 2 taking place on the 27th of March. 

It was especially mind-gruelling as the competition was intense among the different teams that took part in the event. These teams competed with each other to qualify for the next round with a twist of a bidding round.

The rules were elaborately laid out for each round. Among the many teams that took part in the event, only ten were to be selected for Round 2. 

The first round consisted of 6 questions with varying levels of difficulty but was equally met with sheer enthusiasm and intelligence displayed by all participants. The second and final round consisted of teams bidding on premium test cases and problem statements. Their performance in the first round consisted of points that became the currency with which they bid. 

The event went very well as a whole and was carried out very smoothly thanks to the OCULUS committee and subcommittee who did an amazing job at handling the event, making people more excited to join in next year as well.

-A report by Deepika Trevedi