Nail Biter's Eve

It's 14th of October, the Eve of TECH SUMMIT'2009...
The Tech Festival hosted by the staff and students of my department.
We've put more into these 10 days of preparation than we did in an entire year of college.
And all I wanted to do this semester was to get through it with little burden and make peace (if I could) with certain demons(within and out there).
As it turns out...life has other plans.

My juniors had been pestering me and my pals to put together an IT meet for quite sometime.
Didn't happen last semester cause our HOD was serving her last month in college and didn't want the baggage.
Well she's gone....we have a new HOD who's clueless and treats us like we are too....
There was no way we could pull this together with her in charge...or so I thought.

We have a new Vice-Principal, Rev Fr.Stani Slaus,who's been quite an inspiration to all of us.
An MBA from XLRI, a towering personality and calm as they come.
We knew from the time he took over that if this meet was to happen,only he could make it so.

But we needed a solid concept in place before we could put it on his table.
Spoke to the HOD...and in her usual condescending and get-away-from-me style she shook her head.
So I let it go..I had my own plans to take care of.
But the idea stayed at back of our heads for a few weeks.

So one evening, all of my KAAMCHOR & CO got round to brainstorming this whole idea.
Thought up the name TECH SUMMIT 2009.....didn't know enough Sanskrit (or French or Greek ) to come up with anything aesthetic.
Put up some of the events that it could have......Contests..Workshops...Gigs...the usual.
Broke it down into smaller bits and conceptualized the whole thing.

Hemanth's pretty good with PhotoShop...so we sat and designed what could be our poster.
We loved what we saw and decided that this meet was gonna happen..... come what may !
We put each event on the table and worked it out from scratch.
Took us bout a week...we had a full inter-college festival......on paper.
So what next ?....how do we get the green light ?.

Needed a proper mission statement and draft if we were to convince the management that we had something solid.
Did it overnight...showed it to the guys and they loved it.
Showed it to Little Red Riding HOD and she hated it.
Green Light??? ....Ha!
We needed to jump the signal for this one.

Went to VP's office that evening and he warmed up to it.
But sent us back to the HOD to get her to push it.
It took him a while to see how disinterested she was and how good our meet could be.
After a lot was said and done....we were in his office the next evening and after a few phone calls he told us to get on with it.
Here's the catch...The meet could only be scheduled for the 15th and 16th....
it was on the 1st of Oct that we got the GO.

So we worked......and worked some more.
Split up into committees.
Overlapped duties and pulled the sponsors together.
Traveled far and wide to get the IT bosses to take up the workshops.

Finished the Prelim Preparations.Made all the PPTs.
Shot a music video....(file's huge...will encode and put it up sometime.)
Pulled a dance gig together.Organized a Hardware Expo.
Catering,schedules,trophies,dresses,sound stage,Lab Installations.......aaaahhh!
All this .....and a still indifferent staff.
Hope they don't mess it up....if don't want to support it.

Had a total showdown with HOD yesterday.....it was bad....let's just say I'm glad that this semester is over.

I'm glad that we have Fr.Stanislaus guiding us and pray that we move things as planned.
I've grown in this fortnight and find myself adoring and appreciating our team more than anything in the world right now.
As General Co-Coordinator of the Festival, I'm skating on pretty thin ice and have to watch my moves.

24hrs and we'll be moving...
What do we do till then ?
Might I suggest chewing our nails???!!!

Deepthi,Jesse,Rene,Hemanth,Varun,Mahesh,Soumya,
Prashanth,Jonathan,Venu,Emmy,Chris,Joel,
Kranthi,Chandu,Shrikanth,Ashwitha.
Elizabeth,Grace,Juelle,Ragavi,DTP Boys.
and the other TECH SUMMIT guys I've missed out...

YOU ARE AN INCREDIBLE BUNCH...WOULDN'T COME THIS FAR WITHOUT YOU !!!!!
BLESS YOU ALL...!

and Sneha...you've done a lot for me without even knowing it...this one's for you.