Our activities
Our goal is to let our members enjoy at maximum their free time and we give them chances to get some extra education. For that reason, our club runs a number of special-interest rooms, organizes educational and relax activities and administrates one of the largest student networks in central Europe.
Our members have the chance to take part on a series of interesting projects organized and sponsored by the club. Every member, as well, can bring a new idea of a whole new project and if he successfully presents it in front of the board of directors, he will be given the material and financial resources in order to realize the project in concrete.
Our short-term goal is to satisfy our members, in a long-term we effort to cooperate with commercial and non-commercial companies in order to find new associates, possibilities and experience for our members. On the next paragraphs you can read a selection of our activity agenda.
Network activities
Infrastructure
Our network is built on optic fiber (main backbone – approximately 20 km) and metallic distributors cat6 and cat5e (block backbones and rooms, approximately 230 km switching and routing is provided by active elements from the Cisco company.
Now at days we are testing the possibility to cover the SH area with WiFi technology using four AP Cisco Aironet, each one with two antennas for frequencies 2,4 and and 5 GHz.
Servers
We can separate our server technologies into two categories: servers taking care of the network connection itself and servers taking care of additional services. In the first category we can include DUSPS (Strahov Computer Network User Database, for its initials in Czech) which sends every hour data about user connections and/or disconnections to the active elements such as DNS, DHCP, Proxy, IMAP, SCANNER server and others. In the second category we can include for instance servers WWW, FTP, DVB, TVGRAB, NEWS, WINDOWSUPDATE, IRC, JABBER, LISTS and others. You can find more information on http://wiki.siliconhill.cz/Servery.
Security
Since we run many special-interest rooms, we have to ensure the equipment inside of them and attach a safe access to them. We use surveillance cameras in such rooms using a private server to save their data. To access to those rooms, we have implemented a system of card-readers. The key database to this system is the DUSPS server itself, from which the card-reader system knows who has and who has not access to the specific room.
Testing
Thanks to our collaboration with external companies we have managed to test new interesting hardware pieces from Hp, Cisco, Intel and D-Link. We hope that such work experience will go on.
Educational activities
Cisco Networking Academy Program (CNAP)
Co-working with Cisco Systems we have achieved to get our own local academy. People who finish the 4-semester course in Network Technologies receives an internationally distinguished certificate.
Microsoft IT Academy
Cooperating with Microsoft we are preparing the first non-scholar MS IT academy four our members. More information about that project is available at project page. The lessons should be starting next semester.
UN*X Technologies Center
SUT (for its initials in Czech) is the only educational project oriented to different technologies, most of them founded on GNU/Linux operating systems and other systems derived from UNIX. Seminars and conferences are set up in terms of the project on different topics, for beginners and for advanced users. Also isn’t for us any problem to let our members borrow a piece of hardware and test their own network topologies, some other operating system, etc.
Training School of Petr Stach, the European Champion
We not only run a professionally equipped fitness center, but in cooperation with the Training School of Petr Stach we arrange courses in our fitness center from which our members can get internationally recognized certificates. In the future we want to extend the areas of the mentioned courses.
Autodesk Academia Program
These days we are developing another program that will be also the first time to bye implemented by a non-scholar organization, is an educational program on products from the Autodesk company, of course counting on their collaboration. We will teach in the programs Autocad, Revid, Architectural Desktop and Inventor.
Conferences
Into our educational activities we can also add one-time conferences such as InstallFest, CryptoFest and OpenWeekend. If you want to begin using Linux and you want to get some information, InstallFest is the right choice for you. Many interesting conferences, workshops and exhibitions, of course, everything is documented and recorded. CryptoFest is a one-day conference about security and encryption in the branch of IT. OpenWeekend is an international conference about open technology and everything about open-source.
Projects
The majority of our present activities was started as more or less ambitious project and it was consequently developed.
Audiovisual centre (AVC)
The Silicon Hill club founded its own semi-professional audiovisual centre mainly for documenting actions organized by our club and other subjects, and for creating promotive audiovisual materials. Starting as a small project, the centre rapidly expanded and these days we cooperate with other schools (e.g. FAMU) and organizations (we are planning collaboration with CRo) and is a flagship among club's projects.
Kráčíme (Walking)
A cycle of lectures and discussions concerning burning issues of our society. The first discussion's theme was "Legal aspects of audiovisual piracy", the representatives of CAU participated and it was very successful. The next topic was "Walking towards broadband future", where the ministry of informatics and representatives of CTO and telecommunication companies also took part. Another successful one was "The future of Czech technics" with the president of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus, the ministry of education Petra Buzková and rectors of other Czech technical universities.
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB)
Because of the increasing quality and speed of networking technologies, it was possible to consider broadcasting of a variety of services through the IP. One of these services is a high quality online video broadcast. The task was to investigate possibilities of such service in an IP network. These days we are running VideoLan server and each member of the club connected to the network with their own computer can watch TV broadcast on their own screen.
TV Grab
Having solved streaming digital TV broadcast, it was not difficult to create a virtual video recorder called TV Grab. After registration and logging in, the user can select a program to record. When it is done, the recording is converted to a chosen format and an e-mail is send to the user with a link to the completed record. Each user can download only their own programs.
Finance
In a big club such as Silicon Hill with a large financial flow, a transparent financial system is desperately needed. That is why the system, which allows registered users to enter demands for repaying invoices and bills, paying cash advances or ordering goods. The system automatically generates e-mails for purchasing agent and treasurer of the club, who can react. Each transaction has an enclosed scanned invoice or tax document, so everything is well arranged and registered.
Network printers
These days we are introducing network printers system, that will be closely connected with micro payment system. These two projects should allow storing money on user's account (e.g. as in student's canteen) and printing paid by this money on printers in study rooms.
Support
The Support portal should be the elementary information portal for club members. It is connected with our wikipedia and it contains important information about club, network settings, access to hobby rooms and so on. Apart from that, it also contains a lot of information not related to the club (e.g. current TV schedule, temperature, bus departure times etc.) You can also use it for connecting to the web interface of KOS or searching by Google.
Wikipedia
We created our own wikipedia as we wanted to be able to share and store a great amount of information available in our club. Ordinary members can find here important information concerning connecting to the network, securing their computers against hackers, viruses and other malicious software (linked with Support), using hobby rooms and contacting the respective keepers etc. Active members have rights for accessing "higher level" information such as experiences with organizing past events, contacts to the right people, when they want for example to hire a room, documents, that were used for different purposes and can be used again with only slight modifications and so forth. Except for that, there are information about the active members, too.
Note: Of course, there are dozens of other projects, but it is unnecessary to list them here as this document is already long enough, so if you want additional information, please go directly to our Wikipedia.
Hobby rooms
Fitness centres
We also take care of sport activity of our members. At each hostel block there is a little gym hall with professional equipment. We also built a large fitness centre in a basement of block 2, that competes with modern commercial ones with its parameters and possibilities. Except for the gym hall itself with a variety of tools available, there are 2 aerobic rooms, changing rooms, bathrooms and volunteers can take a massage. The fitness centre can be used by all CTU students, SH club members and CTU and SÚZ employees. The entrance is secured with smart card readers.
Club room
In a basement of block 7 we created a club room for purposes of the club. A conference room, that can be used for lessons and lectures as it has a capacity of approximately 60 people, and a computer room, where the CNA lessons and some others take place, are available.
Study rooms
On several blocks we established study rooms, where the inhabited students can utilise computers connected to the Internet, scanners and printers. Unless it breaks the Silicon Hill rules, anything can be done in study rooms. :-) The entrance is secured with smart card readers.
Photographic studio
At block 6 we created a semi-professional photographic studio with a financial aid of the rectorate. Registered users of Silicon Hill and other Students Union clubs. The equipment consists of reflection surfaces, flash units, spotlights, filters, umbrellas, simply all that can not be missed in a proper photo studio.
Music rooms
We also want to support some of our members, that would like to play or compose music. Our music rooms are professionally silenced, so that the musicians didn't disturb surrounding rooms, the entrance is secured with smart card readers again, the reservation system is on the Internet.
Organizations
Of course we do not limit our activities to Strahov hill. We have been helping with organization of a plenty of events, that apply to the whole CTU Students Union. We can name for example Strahov Open Air festival, sport and cultural event MayDej or current event AhojTechniko (HelloTechnics) 2006.