I was invited by Gavin Sathan, lecturer at the University of Mauritius (UoM), to attend a workshop on the Internet of Things. I reached UoM at around 09h10 and looked for a parking space, which is usually the hardest thing to do there. Luckily this morning there was plenty of space next to the Paul Octave Wiehe Auditorium.

As I arrived at the R. Burrenchobay Lecture Theatre at the Faculty of Agriculture I met Gavin, who was leading the workshop. A few minutes later Yovan and Eric from the Mauritius Makers Community (MMC) arrived. Avinash Meetoo, Chairman of the ICT Advisory Council, also came and we briefly talked about the Linux User Group. S. Moonesamy came, took a seat in the second row, took out his laptop and was checking his email. After all there was free WiFi provided by the university.

Soulakshmee Nagowah, lecturer of Software & Information System at the University of Mauritius, read the welcome address. To my surprise that was in French and I thought the rest of the day would just be horrible, listening about “Internet of Things” in French.

I then realized that the workshop was sponsored by Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) and that somehow explains the choice of language.

Roshan Halkhoree, Director of Centre for Information Technology & Systems, University of Mauritius, gave a quick introduction on IoT and IPv6 with a few numbers & stats on those topics.

He gave a bad news about the depletion of IPv4 addresses and then the good news on deployment of IPv6. At one point while talking about the Internet of Things Roshan said that « trees might be connected to the internet » and that made the audience laugh.

Kavi Khedo, Associate Professor at the University of Mauritius, talked about various projects in the field of IoT.

S. Moonesamy live streamed the presentation on Periscope, which I believe is the first live stream from a university workshop.

He also live streamed the speech of Sunilduth Baichoo, Dean of the Faculty of Information Communication and Digital Technologies, and that of the Vice-Chancellor Professor Dhanjay Jhurry, CSK.