The IIT SPAN, or Indian Institutes of Technology Students’ Presence Across Nation, is a self-governed body composed of elected student representatives of the respective IITs, with the intent to serve as an advisory body and as a platform to hear and address the grievances of its members. The IIT SPAN constitution was adopted in April 2016, citing its various responsibilities, sub-committees, and bylaws.

The IIT-SPAN meet of the academic session 2019-2020 was held at IIT Roorkee Greater Noida Extension Campus, (IIT-GNEC) on 24th August 2019. It was attended by IITs BHU, Bhuvaneshwar, Bombay, Gandhinagar, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Jammu, Jodhpur, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Mandi, Pallakad, Ropar, Roorkee, and Tirupati. Watch Out! covered the event.

The agenda for the meeting was decided beforehand, and most points on the agenda were centered around the upcoming Inter-IIT Tech Meet to be held in IIT Roorkee in December 2019. The meeting opened with a discussion regarding several amendments to be made to the constitution of the Inter-IIT Tech Meet, followed by a discussion on the organizational structure. A decision was made to adopt the organisational model followed by the Inter-IIT sports meet. A discussion also ensued upon the inclusion of events related to designing, entrepreneurship and civil engineering. It was decided that several ‘productathon’ problem statements will be included in order to make the Tech Meet more inclusive.

The Board meet focused heavily upon getting the Inter IIT Tech Meet officially recognized by the Board of Directors, by lobbying the directors of different IITs individually. The structure and organisation of the Tech Meet were discussed, and it was emphasised that organizing IITs should focus heavily upon long term brand creation and continuity of the tech meet rather than focusing solely on the present edition of the event. It was also decided to outsource real-time projects from the industry. The dates for the Inter IIT Tech meet 2019 were finalized (20-22 December 2019). The board also agreed to find better avenues for collaboration, communication, and networking between the industry and academia. An important highlight of the event was that all IITs unanimously agreed upon not disclosing the name of the IIT while presenting a solution to the judging panel of any event in the Inter IIT Tech Meet.

Ultimately, the meeting agreed upon the organizing of a Student Academic Conference open for all UG/PG/Ph.D. students under the umbrella of the Tech Meet. Additionally, the inclusion of E-Conclave (a networking event for the E-Cell of different IITs) under the umbrella of Inter IIT Tech Meet was finalized.

The SPAN serves as a great platform for not only increased interaction and collaboration between the students of different IITs, but also as a portal that helps in addressing the grievances of students in a democratic manner. We believe that IIT SPAN will be instrumental in the future for the cooperation between different IITs, thus offering an avenue for Inter-IIT student communication and networking.

The detailed minutes of the meeting, as compiled by Watch Out!, can be found on this link. You can also find the constitution of IIT SPAN here.