Technopreneur 2009, held at Gokulam Park Hotel on Jan 31st, turned out to be one of the most prestigious events ever to be conducted by our college! The build-up to the event was nerve-wrecking. The anticipation was greatly heightened by the line-up of speakers that had been announced, and the number of cities to which our seniors had travelled to publicise the event. Days prior to the event, I myself had travelled back to Trivandrum on a jam-packed day, faced with the hectic task of visiting three colleges, GEC Barton Hill, CET, and LBS and meeting with their student representatives to confirm the final list of students seeking passes to the event, and the requisite amounts of money! In a single day, we travelled about 450-500 kilometres : by train, by bus and on foot. A packet of biscuits, a paltry lunch, and a bottle of Aquafina were all the nourishment we could achieve that day. It was demanding, and physically exhausting, yet the satisfaction of having collected an approximate of Rs. 20000(the correct figure escapes my memory) in a single day for our cause was limitless!
The day before the event, we were forced to cut class on Friday to deal with last-minute crises that had hit the preparations for the event. Though our seniors had ensured almost all aspects were taken care of well ahead of time, handouts remained a troubling issue. The nightmare scenario which we desperately wished to avoid was to present these great speakers to an audience which had very little clue of their stature and had no means to find out! On Thursday night, about 8-10 of us worked from about 9-30 in the night uptil about 2-30 in the morning in the MH with hardly a break in between, sorting out the several stacks of handouts that had arrived from the printing press, but remained unsorted. The next morning, with a stronger work-force, we headed to the printing presses with the boxes of sorted handouts to make further additions to each of those handouts and finally proceed with binding. Though about 1200 had so far booked their tickets to the event, another 200 were expected to register on the spot, which is why the target set before us was a staggering 1400 handouts to be assembled and spiral bound in the space of a single day. Chaos soon broke out due to confusion in the order of pages and shortage of certain pages. Our own efforts lagged as a result, and by mid-day, the task seemed fruitless. But we dug in, and worked tirelessly, breaking only for a brief lunch. We toiled from around 9 am till closing time at the printers' at 6 pm. In the end, thanks to our refusal to quit, we managed to succesfully 1342 handout booklets.
The efforts that we ourselves had to put in truly pale in comparison to the incredible amount of time, money and energy that our seniors had put in to organize the entire event. Our energies were drained while managing only a minor fraction of the overall event, but our seniors excelled at managing every aspect of an event that was, in terms of scale, to use a less eloquent terminology, "Technopreneur 2008 ka BAAP". Transport, food, accomodation, hall, guest reception, college-to-college canvassing, collection, flyers and posters, websites, blogs, advertisments.....you name it, and they've dealt with it! The pinnacle of efficiency that any student body can desire when undertaking the organisation of such a gargantuan event with little ground support from the college. They are the true icons I look up to, for they are proof of what you can absorb and gain from these 4 years besides the simple B.Tech degree.
