Monday Morning (newsletter)

Monday Morning, also referred to as MM, is the official e-newsletter and student media body of National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. Accredited as the second largest student media body in India, Monday Morning functions to bridge the gap between the administration and the student community. It publishes an e-newsletter every week during the academic year of the institute. The newsletter features student issues, professors and alumni, campus activities, department updates, recruitment information, fests, alumni news, weekly polls and interviews with the Director, Deans and Chief Warden among others. The newsletter also features reviews of the Halls of Residence and various other infrastructural entities in the NIT Rourkela campus such as the TIIR building, Biju Patnaik Central Library to name a few. The student media body also covers information about the entrepreneurship and research culture of NIT Rourkela and has coverage on startups incubated and events at the institute. Apart from this, a few articles of Monday Morning have also featured on external websites that encourage unconventional careers. Monday Morning has grown to be a full-fledged website with more than 13,200 peak page impressions in a week. Monday Morning launched its app on Google Play Store on 5 February 2017. As of December 2020, the app has received more than 1400 downloads with an average rating of 4.7. The e-newsletter also has a YouTube channel with 2610 subscribers, as of December 2020.

History
Monday Morning was founded by then final-year students of NIT Rourkela- Shrinivas Ron and Chinmoy Mohapatra on 9 October (second Monday of October), 2006. The enforcement was made possible under the guidance of then Director of NIT Rourkela, Prof. Sunil Kumar Sarangi. Monday Morning started primarily as a newsletter site that published campus newsletters every morning of Monday, highlighting the happenings of the institute. Monday Morning got its first professionally designed website in the year 2010.

Teams and inductions
The team initially consisted of reporters/campus correspondents, photographers, and technical members. Later, a design team constituting cartoonists and creative designers was also introduced. The selection of members to various teams is done through a phased induction process generally conducted in the month of March and is open exclusively to the UG freshmen students. Currently, the team has over 40 members across all teams. The current hierarchy of the team is as follows:


 * Working Team (consisting of sophomores)
 * Coordinators (consisting of third-year students)
 * Mentors (consisting of final year students)

Mentors

 * Afif Janjirkar
 * Animesh Pradhan
 * Ankesh Anku
 * Mohammed Ayaz
 * Raksha Karkera
 * Ritom Sonowal
 * Smarak Das

Chief coordinators

 * Aditya Tripathi
 * Saurav Sahoo
 * Tanaya Sahoo

Design coordinator

 * Rama Krushna Behera

Technical coordinator

 * Vishal Rana

Photography coordinator

 * Debabrata Malik

Presence
Monday Morning started with a website hosted on the institute's domain, which still serves as the primary platform to publish the e-newsletter every week. Multimedia sections, Live Placement Database and Forum are some features which were introduced on the website over the years. Apart from the website, Monday Morning is also present on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube and Spotify (Candidly NITR Podcast).

As of December 2020, the organization has 13,825 followers on Facebook and 3145 followers on Instagram.

Annual print issue
The annual print issue is a printed booklet of 8 pages which has articles involving in-depth analysis of various parameters of the institute. It was printed from 2014 to 2019 and distributed among all the students (about 6000) of the institute during the annual convocation. It was discontinued in 2020 owing to the Student Activity Centre's commitment to becoming eco-friendly and reducing paper usage.

Open house discussion
As the link between the student community and the administration, Monday Morning has organized Open House Discussions (OHDs) to facilitate discussions regarding pressing issues. The first Open House Discussion was held in 2017. Since then there have been 3 OHDs in the last 3 years with discussion topics such as late entry at hostels, PhD students’ issues and fees issue.

Soapbox
The institute's Student Activity Centre (SAC) has annual elections for student postholders of various fests and societies. Monday Morning rolled out the first ever Soapbox in 2017, wherein candidates contesting for various positions of responsibility at the Student Activity Centre got a chance to interact with the electorate. The event witnesses a pitching session wherein candidates put forth their manifesto followed by a QA session with students. The Soapbox is held at the Bhubaneswar Behera Auditorium every year.

Mini print issue (freshmen guide)
The mini print issue or the freshmen guide is a printed booklet of 4 pages which is intended as an introductory guide for all freshmen when they join the institute. The first Mini Print Issue was released by Monday Morning in 2017. The booklet is given to all freshmen on their first day, right after the orientation program. The booklet is an informative guide for freshmen, covering eateries, grading and branch change policies among other information in an interactive format. The booklet was distributed digitally in 2020 owing to the commencement of virtual classes for freshmen amidst the pandemic.

Project Adamantium (2015)
The Monday Morning website launched in 2010 was a beta website which eventually got better with the advent of Joomla. Over time, it was realised that there was a need to move on to a better version of the then website, owing to a slow and hard-dated user interface. In 2015, Monday Morning decided to collaborate with Microsoft Campus Club, a technical club of the institute, to develop a new website. The project was code-named "Project Adamantium" with reference to Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) where Adamantium is a strong, indestructible metal.

Project Vibranium (2017)
With the success of Project Adamantium and advent of the new and a much responsive website, Monday Morning started working on the mobile application which could be used on Android platforms. The project was code-named "Project Vibranium" following the convention of naming a project after metals or alloys in fictional Marvel Cinematic Universe. Using Java for the logic part and XML for the design part, the working of the app was made simple. For this purpose, the team built an API (Application Programming Interface) using PHP, which generated a response in JSON format and decided to introduce caching at the client side device to increase the speed of the app. The current version of the Monday Morning mobile application is a result of Project Vibranium.

Freshers video (since 2015)
The freshers introduction or freshers video is a video project that takes place during end-July and beginning of August. It involves interviewing freshmen and parents about their feelings and expectations apart from clips from the counselling process, orientation program and frequently visited places inside the campus. The first freshers video came out in 2015 and the organization has ensured its release every year since then.

Convocation video (since 2016)
The annual convocation video is a video project that takes place during January or February depending upon the date of annual convocation. It involves light-hearted interviews with convocated Bachelors, Masters and PhD students. The first convocation video came out in 2016 and barring 2017, the convocation video has been released every year since 2016.

Other videos
Apart from annual videos like Freshers introducation and convocation, Monday Morning has also had video projects such as Foreign Students Documentary, Fest Aftermovies and Memoir Video (for graduating batches) among others.

Notable interviews
Some of the most notable interviews that Monday Morning had with guests and alumni at NIT Rourkela include:


 * 1) Sandip Das, senior advisor at Analysys Mason
 * 2) Ranjan Dash, co-founder and CEO of Y-Carbon, a Philadelphia-based materials science company
 * 3) C.P. Gurnani, CEO & Managing Director of Tech Mahindra
 * 4) Akash Khurana, Indian actor, screenwriter, theatre artist and entrepreneur
 * 5) Nalini Ranjan Mohanty, Indian bureaucrat and former Chairman & Managing Director of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL)
 * 6) T.H. Vinayakram, legendary Grammy award-winning Indian percussionist
 * 7) Virander Singh Chauhan, Indian scientist and a Rhodes Scholar, Padma Shri winner (2012)
 * 8) Tapan Misra, Indian scientist who was the director of Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation
 * 9) V. Adimurthy, Satish Dhawan Professor and Dean of Research at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST)