The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, is gearing up for its annual techno-management fest — Kshitij — that tech buffs across the country and even abroad eagerly await.

The fest will be held from January 29 to February 1, 2009, with 30 technical and 15 managerial events. The categories range from mechanical engineering, electronics and robotics to entrepreneurship and entertainment.

To introduce the uninitiated to the world of Kshitij, a team from IIT Kharagpur held a workshop on radio-controlled glider dynamics and robotics at GD Birla Sabhagar on Sunday.

“The idea was to give school and college students in the city a taste of Kshitij and provide them a platform to realise their potential,” said Himank Shanker, a member of the organising team.

Over 650 participants from across Calcutta and neighbouring cities like Jamshedpur attended the workshop. The IIT students demonstrated how to make gliders and explained the fundamentals of autonomous and manual robotics.

The Kshitij team also conducted a quiz, which gave the winners a chance to directly enrol for the final round of Kshitij 2009’s Laws of Motion, an event certified by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Kshitj 2008 had seen over 20,000 registered participants from more than 350 institutes like the IITs, the Indian Institutes of Management and National Institutes of Technology. It also drew participants from foreign institutions like Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, National University of Singapore and Kyoto University.

“After 2008’s success, we hope to draw an even larger crowd next year,” said Shanker.

Registration has already started for online events — including ones dealing with coding and fluctuations in the global economy and stock market — as well as for stage and campus events.

Robotix, where participants have to showcase the precision, mechanism and speed of their robots, is one of the most popular events. Other flagship events include Carchitecture, a car interior designing competition, El Dorado, a city-planning event, Open Soft, an open ended software design competition, Kryotech, a ventilation and air-conditioning system designing competition and Eureka, a technical paper presentation.