T-7 to Liftoff (Venue will be in I3 Auditorium and I3 Seminar Room)

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Posted on May 3, 2015 by orbital

Hope your exams have gone off with a good bang!  It’s time to start to look forward to Liftoff, the mandatory 2 day workshop on the 11 and 12th of May.  Join your 250+ other Orbitees on our unified summer quest to learn something new and interesting for yourselves.

The venue for our workshop will be at I3, down past SoC and Biz.  We’ll be in primarily in the I3 Auditorium although an alternate track may be held in the I3 Seminar Room (just next door, don’t worry; more about this later if it does materialize.

If you’re not sure how to get there, please check out the instructions here, or better yet, give a shout out on Slack.

Orbital Special Interest Groups

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Posted on April 30, 2015 by orbital

As you will have noticed, Orbital 2015 is using Slack for communications.  Slack is like a chat client and organized into channels (something like old style IRC, if you are from that era).

We have seeded a few channels in our team for groups who want to meet like-minded groups to share ideas.  Join as many or as few as you like.  Advisors, Mentors and Tutors will be joining in channels that also meet their expertise or interests. Feel free to start your own channel using the #sig- prefix convention.

  • Sig-NUS – For teams working on NUS related projects (IVLE, NUSmods).
  • Sig-Cloud – For teams interested or using cloud computing components inclusive of IDEs, PaaS, SaaS (e.g., Cloud9, Nitro.us, Heroku, Amazon EC2, EngineYard)
  • Sig-Game – For teams interested in developing games (Unity, PyGame, HTML5 Canvas, PhaserIO)
  • Sig-HW – For teams (and other interested parties) whose projects might include a hardware component (e.g., quadcopters, smartwatch, arduino, raspberry pi, Lego Mindstorms)
  • Sig-Mobile – For teams interested in mobile app development (on iOS, Droid, etc.)
  • Sig-Web – For teams doing web development of sorts (any stack and any language; Py/GAE, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Py/Flask. PHP/CodeIgniter).

P.S. Finally, if you find Slack useful, you might want to use Slack to create your own team (n.b., not channel) for your own Orbital project, and invite your advisor to be a part.  Some of your seniors have found this platform useful for syncing up with project mates and it seems not to be blocked by certain authorities, specially helpful for teammates that are geographically spread out.

300+ and closing registration for non-SoC

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Posted on April 22, 2015 by orbital

Photo Credits: FreeFotoUK @ Flickr

Whoa! We have a record-breaking 300+ students who are of part of Orbital this coming summer!
Due to the overwhelming demand we are closing registration for Orbital to non-SoC students and students not recommended by NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) to join.  Fret not if you are already “in” (read: in the Slack team) and from another faculty or from NUS High, you’re already part of our big big family!

See you all soon!

…6STePS (6-10pm tonight @ SoC)

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Posted on April 22, 2015 by orbital

You may already be in the know, but our School also hosts a real big bash at the end of the semester (happening tonight, Wednesday night from 6-10pm).  It’s called the SoC Term Project Showcase (STePS) and it’s a larger version of Orbital’s Splashdown showcase.

Tonight is the 6th STePS, and it will be bringing together your seniors in the 2xxx, 3xxx and 4xxx (and even some of the exciting postgraduate modules) who have done term projects in their respective modules.  They’ll also be doing their project presentations just like you will at the end of Orbital.  Drop by for a visit to learn about

Formal registration (with food) is closed already, but you can always drop by this evening.  Expect it to be *very* crowded but full of excitement!  Check out the details on the STePS website for more: http://steps.comp.nus.edu.sg/.

Yeah! — Go SOC!

 

Reading week and 6STePS are here!

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Posted on April 22, 2015 by orbital

Photo credits: estantanche @ flickr

The staff at Orbital wish you the best in your studies during this reading week!  All the best!  Get enough sleep and while you’re studying get ready for your exciting summer ahead.  We’ll be releasing some details about the upcoming Liftoff workshop on the 11th and 12th.  Hope you have booked your extended stay before flying from campus.  Stay tuned!

Those of you who can’t make the workshop, please let us know.  It’s really an integral part of this module.  Please try to make it!  See http://orbital-osqa.bitnamiapp.com/osqa/questions/17/missing-mandatory-liftoff-workshop if you must.

Welcome to Slack!

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Posted on April 9, 2015 by orbital

SlackWe’re going to try to use Slack as our communications platform for Orbital 2015.  All of those who have expressed their interest in Orbital have been invited to join Slack in the orbital2015 team*.  We hope you’ve got your invite and if not, please check your spam folder (we’ve sent it to the address you gave us as your primary in your registration of interest).

Update: about 1/2 of the cohort has joined Slack, but the other half may have missed their invitation.  If you didn’t get an invite at this point (9 Apr 2015), you may want to check your spam and trash mail folders.  We send the invitation to the address you indicated was your primary address.

In Slack, you (and your teammate, if you registered as a team) will be assigned to a peer evaluation group (an EG) within the next few weeks.  Your advisors will be leading you through the Orbital program as part of their EG.  Stay tuned!  You will receive announcements from Orbital via this #announce channel (they will also be available on the orbital.comp.nus.edu.sg homepage).  See you and good luck on your remaining weeks in Sem II.

Orbitees will gradually be added to this team in slack for Orbital.  Tell your friends who’ve filled out the Registration of Interest form at http://goo.gl/forms/5IU2EiGhoH not to worry yet, as we’re trying to bring up all of our administration up to speed in preparation for the summer.

See you on 11-12 May for the Liftoff Workshop!

* for those from other faculty or outside of NUS and SoC, we may not have accepted your registration yet, due to capacity constraints.  Stay tuned!

Amazon sponsors Orbital with US$ 17,500 education grant for projects this summer

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Posted on April 2, 2015 by orbital

Dear all, we’re excited to share with you that Amazon has awarded our course with credits for trying and using Amazon’s famous Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2).  Teams angling for a taste of EC2 will be assigned an account for US$100 for their work on their Orbital summer project.

Stay tuned for more details around the Liftoff workshop.  Looking forward to the exciting summer again!  We’re very excited to be supported by AWS in Education Grant award.

Meet our 2015 Staff!

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Posted on March 24, 2015 by orbital

Photo Credits: NASA

The staff for Orbital 2015 has been interviewed and shortlisted!  We’re pleased to announce we have a great body of Orbital alumni coming back to help you all out on your epic, self-driven summer projects!  Check them out over here.

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Forward planning for NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC)

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Posted on March 23, 2015 by orbital

NUS Overseas Colleges

Breaking News!  Gean shared with us at the briefing that NOC is prepared to let all Orbital students who achieve Project Gemini and above a straight exemption to Round 2 (final) selection interviews for the NOC programme.  Get your leg up on your application for this flagship NUS programme by participating in Orbital this summer!

This just in: NUS Overseas Colleges, the hallmark NUS programme that supercharges exchange programmes and local industrial experiences is in cahoots with SoC’s Orbital programme.  This means a big break for those of you angling for NOC.

NOC is a year-long overseas attachment at a global city that pairs you with a paid internship at start-up to learn firsthand the wide range of responsibilities needed, as well as giving you academic and entrepreneurial acumen as a student attached to a prestigious university.  In the two cities where Orbital students are often attached, that is NYU Poly for New York City and Stanford for Silicon Valley.  Such an experience will set you apart from many peers at other institutions but also from other peers within NUS and even SoC.

NOC Head of Marketing and Selection Processes Gean Chu will be coming to the Orbital briefing on the 11th to describe the pathways forward after Orbital.  She will give you the lowdown on NOC and describe why your Orbital summer gives you the leg-up on the application process for NOC.