It was great to see such a big turn-out for the briefing yesterday!

Thank you for your support!

Breaking news: we have received 330+ registrations within the first day.

It looks like we will run out of vacancies by the end of today or tomorrow.

Please quickly sign up if you are interested.

The registration of interest for Orbital 2018 is now open.

If you are interested in registering yourself (and optionally a teammate), visit Skylab (http://nusskylab-dev.comp.nus.edu.sg/) then and sign up using your NUSNET ID.

But before doing so, you might want to:

• Read the slides at https://goo.gl/vxD6cN to get a rough idea about the programme.
• Watch the instructional video at https://youtu.be/Co9VegobzfA on how to register.
• Like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/nus.orbital/ for the latest updates.

As part of the Orbital 2018 programme line-up, we have organized an Orbital briefing + NOC information session for you on 14 March (Wed) at 4pm at SR1 (COM1-02-06)!

This event is the one and only pre-Lift-off briefing about Orbital, for all prospective students. We hope to get you fired up about the upcoming summer programme and look forward to your questions, concerns and general discussion. We have also invited guest speakers to share with you about the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme, which is the next step for many Orbital students.

If you are interested in this event, please register using this Google form: https://goo.gl/uADgBY.

In addition, the registration of interest for Orbital is scheduled to start on 14 March (Wed) at 12nn. So please keep a lookout for our email/announcement about this!

For the latest news and updates, please like our Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/nus.orbital/

For more information about the NOC programme, please check out their official website: http://enterprise.nus.edu.sg/educate/nus-overseas-colleges/

We will be coming to your lecture in Week 2 and Week 3 to give you a brief introduction of what Orbital is about and answer your questions about the programme!

The current schedule of the roadshows is as follows:

[Summary: Go to https://doodle.com/poll/ktbybvae8czux52b to pick your slot if you want to interview for 2018 Orbital staff (advisors / tutors) this month. The venue for the interview is COM2-02-10.]

There will be another round of interviews for Orbital staff in mid-January.

If you are interested in helping out in Orbital 2018 as an advisor and/or a tutor, please use the Doodle poll above to sign up for an interview.

[Summary: Go to https://doodle.com/poll/5simzzpb78seg2iw to pick your slot if you want to interview for 2018 Orbital staff (advisors/tutors/developers) this month. The venue for the interview is COM2-02-10.]

Congratulations again to all of the Orbital 2017 graduates. It’s now your turn to go beyond Earth orbit and be a part of the team to help the next 2018 Orbital cohort accomplish their project goals.

We are currently starting our recruitment drive for advisors, tutors and developers:

– Advisors act as peer assessors and cheerleaders for teams taking Orbital — you all had the experience of being under their wing this past summer. Here’s your chance to shine and contribute back to your juniors.

– Tutors act as the primary instructor for a mission control session or a Liftoff session. This means you are in control of teaching a particular subject for 1~3 hours. If you wanted to level up on public speaking and technical tutorials, this is your opportunity. You don’t have to be an expert to teach — anyone can do it if they’re committed, and you can always answer the tough questions offline.

– Developers are in charge of developing and maintaining Skylab (i.e., the official portal for Orbital). Since you have been using Skylab throughout the programme, you should have quite some ideas about what can be improved in the system. This will be a good chance for you to implement those ideas for the benefit of future Orbital students. Experience in ruby on rails and nginx is preferred but not required. You can always pick up the necessary skills as you work on the system.

We are going to be holding interviews primarily at the beginning of the vacation and the new semester. If you wish to be interviewed for any of these positions, please visit the Doodle form (https://doodle.com/poll/5simzzpb78seg2iw) and sign up for an interview slot.

If you are interested but unable to make it for the slots given in the Doodle form, please contact me directly via email (zhaojin@nus.edu.sg) to arrange for an interview. Do take note that more interview slots will be available in mid-January. Please watch out for our second recruitment call early next year.

Look forward to hearing from you!

– Jin (Orbital Coordinator)

FAQ
– I’m going on NOC, can I participate?
– I’m planning to take a full-time internship, can I participate?
– I’m not going to be around SG this coming summer, can I participate?

The answer to these three questions is all the same: Yes, please apply. However, please also read the position-specific information given below:

For advisors: You may know that some advisors were not local during your cohort as well. The job can be done entirely remotely from NUS. That said, applicants who are local and who do physically participate in the activities will generally bond better with their teams (unsurprisingly).

For tutors: You will have to be in Singapore for the sessions that you are assigned to teach. The lift-off sessions will be on 14/15 May while the mission control sessions are scheduled on 19/26 May and 2/9/16 June. Usually we allow you to choose the sessions that work for your schedule and we can discuss about this later.

For developers: You can work anywhere anytime for this position. However, once some development tasks are assigned to you, you should work on those tasks actively and update your progress regularly.

– How much money can I expect to earn as a staff member?
The monetary remuneration is small, but the bragging rights and the additional job you can list on your CV/resume will hopefully make it worthwhile (aside from the intrinsic goodness of helping your fellow SoCian!).

Congratulations to all of the 154 Orbitee teams for completing the programme!  You’re the big winners in forming your own projects and navigating through all the summer hazards to finish your projects.  No doubt that you had wanted to call it quits at some point and wanted to have someone to help guide you a bit more closely.  But you persevered, insisted that you would stay the course, and won the battle against yourself.  You realised the only barrier to your progress was yourself and the fuel was your self-ignited passion.  You return from your summer journey changed, more confident of your own abilities and clear about how you can find your path forward in any technical scenario.

Splashdown featured a number of ways that you can take your work in Orbital forward, which both SoC (through our Entrepreneurship office) and the University (NUS Enterprise, especially NUS Overseas Colleges) have paved for you.  Do weigh these opportunities and assess whether they are appropriate for you.

And now for the formal awards:

• For Vostok:
  Congratulations to
  • Darren Chin Jhun Pyng and Henry Ang Tien Hock of 1340 (Best Project);
  • Raisa Kabir and Cheng Jin Ting of //noComment (Honorable Mention);
  • Wong Peng Fai Shannon and Koo Chin Chye of Team Wannon (Honorable Mention)
• For Project Gemini:
  Congratulations to
  • Lee Jun Yao Francis and Boo Kai Hsien of Booleean (Best Project);
  • Jaivignesh Venugopal and Archana Pradeep of Big Bang (Honorable Mention);
  • Lee Shea Yie Rebecca and Yeo Wei Teck Victor of 1261 (Honorable Mention)
• For Apollo 11:
  Congratulations to
  • Kokul Siddharth Venkateswaran and Gadupudi Mukesh of DANTE (Best Project);
  • Chin Jian Hao Kevin and Ang Khay Wee of Raspberry (Honorable Mention);
  • Goh Wei Wen and Chua Yun Zhi Nicholas of collaborate! (Honorable Mention)

  and for Best Advisers:
  Jazlyn Ang Chue Ching, and Loh Zi Bin Robin

Although you are the stars of Orbital (yes, you are!), there’s a whole host of SoC 30+ advisers, 30+ industrial and alumni mentors, staff, building facilities, A/V, alumni, senior students and student groups and the tireless admin staff from the Undergraduate Office and Corporate Relations that make this happen.  This programme does not happen anywhere else in the whole currently, so be proud that you are here in NUS SoC.  Go SoC!

On Monday and Tuesday (8 and 9 May), we had our (full-house) opening event: Liftoff. More than 350 students took part in the event to learn about software development and the required technologies for their project, as well as to meet their advisors and formulate their project ideas. Towards the end, we had around 180 teams presenting their project ideas at the Ignition sessions.

Liftoff webpage @ the Orbital Website: Liftoff 2017

Slides from the Ignition sessions:
https://goo.gl/OHE7G5
https://goo.gl/L42lOy
https://goo.gl/bM56oD

In addition, on Saturday (13 May), we had our first (and again, full-house) Mission Control workshop on MeteroJS. In this workshop, our tutors, Nick and Tyson, taught the students about how to get started in MeteorJS, write JavaScript, and use mongoDB database operations to create a simple feedback web app.

Mission Control Webpage @ the Orbital Website: Mission Control 2017

(Slides and Videos to be uploaded soon!)

Hope your exams have gone well!   It’s time to start to look forward to Liftoff, the mandatory 2 day workshop on 8 and 9 May.  Join your 350+ 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 will be held in the NUS Enterprise’s fully loaded Hangar, and some other activities in the STMI Executive Training Room.

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

• Map for I3 (The building is marked as SoC @ I Cube on the map.)
• Floor plan for I3 level 1 (The Auditorium is on the left side of the map, while the Hangar is the unmarked white space on the right side.)
• Floor plan for I3 level 3 (The STMI Training Room is on the left side on the map, #03-44.)

The schedule has been updated on the Orbital calendar (available on the website and through Google’s public calendar service), so check it out.  We’ll post some more details about it soon, as well as some of the prerequisite things you may / will need to do before attending on Monday.

If you can’t make it to Liftoff, please let your evaluation group leader know if you are part of a team (use Slack!); if you are a singleton a.k.a. “partner challenged”, just let Jin know by email <zhaojin@comp.nus.edu.sg> or Slack <@zhaojin>.  Groups must have at least one member present to do the duties during the workshop (yes, you have to do some work!).  Exceptions to these two conditions will be approved on a case-by-case basis.