FICS is back in town! Here’s why you should be excited..

If you aren’t all hyped up for FICS, I don’t know what is worthy enough to get your attention here at NUST. When you hear about FICS, does going on a drive through a safari park ring a bell? The answer must be no but believe me you will see calm and poise students turning into wild animals when they aren’t fed with ideas for the FICS this year, because not giving us the best idea may cost them a Rs.150,000 award.

Technically speaking, FICS isn’t something that started its journey as a seminar upon global issues. It is a place for wild thoughts, all converted beautifully into one presentation. But nobody knows about behind the scenes, where students are found destroying each other with mentos and coke explosions.

If I say FICS, and you reply with Finding Innovative and Creative solutions for Society, you already know a lot more about FICS than me. But what you may not know is that FICS is a platform where students belonging to different fields showcase their innovative and creative ideas. These ideas are ultimately executed for improving living conditions of a common man at the grass root level in a society. The emphasis of these solutions may be universal but let’s start with baby steps.

When we talk about solutions, it isn’t necessary to directly go on a solution to remove global warming or end high living costs. We can simply start with the idea of solving the sewerage problem of the old woman who lives at the end of the street (by putting a mixture of coke and mentos up her drain). We can start with the idea of an educational solution where the young toddlers don’t have to worry about the burden of cramming (by directly getting them into university to feel our pain and continue with their cramming). And even solutions that will make our moms stop complaining about their phones not working properly (by abracadabraing their phones whenever they complain about it).

Well, idea or no idea, FICS is not all about having an idea that can change your life. It is a place where you get a chance to explore the monstrous hooligan inside of you that wants to take over the world by getting hold of all the devastating ideas that are being shared there. And finally make a bazooka canon out of these devastating ideas that is consistently firing extraterrestrial discoveries in all directions.

But all this extraterrestrial movement is pacified when we bid farewell to our participants the FICS way and the FICS way is the only way. But all of this comes after the tiresome journey through the rivers and jungles of FICS. For your information, these rivers and jungles mean the three stages of FICS where you are evaluated at each step and the winner moves to the next stage. Like who wants to be judged time and time again for their crazy ideas in this formal atmosphere of FICS with all this formality and nerdy talk from the judges? Wait, that’s you, I think.

Whatever the conditions may be, we must all appreciate that the participants of this event fill the place with an aroma of hard work, creativity, motivation and dedication. Interacting with people of such sort is grooming in the best way possible. Getting to know about them a little, telling them a little about yourself. All of this with the prime motive to understand these people with ideas, and adding a little value to their ambitions. It will not be wrong to state that FICS has seen an idea turning into a solution turning into an ideology because there is no way that people of such diverse magnitude and dimensions can be limited to just an event.

You don’t have to absorb all the knowledge about FICS at once. Because FICS unlike our semesters isn’t a roller coaster ride. You actually get a chance to enjoy FICS like a 10 course Italian cuisine; slowly and steadily with each bite containing a mouthful of flavors. So, stay connected to be a part of three unorthodox idea presentation stages which make up the stepping stone for innovators of tomorrow.

By Abdullah Amir Khan

FICS ’18 Team Publications