Karthik Re-wired

Happy New Year Folks !

This is a much delayed post ! But as I was on a South Safari in the second half of December 2011 and hence the delay .  This is a post about TEDxNagpur – About how it all started , happened and ended .

*Flashback effects*

It all started with a chat with Harshil Gupta, whom I met during Make a Difference’s “Draw for a Child” competition.  We were chatting about the general attitude of Nagpur and how slow life here is and people are business oriented and blah blah blah blah ( the usual rant ) .  So, I always had this plan to conduct a TED in Nagpur , but never moved my ass to take the effort . and then this chat happened

Deja vu . In other words, TED vu

and that was it . The start of TEDxNagpur . This was somewhere in the month of April – May !  So there was an entire 9 months effort that went into the event . We immediately set the ball rolling and applied for the TED license. It took us a good 2-3 months after clearing all the formalities to get the TEDxNagpur license .

Team , Team , Team :

Read this somewhere – “A+ people work with A+ people” . To conduct an event of TED’s repute, we needed a team full of amazing people . Enter , Khushboo Agarwal : The First addition to our team . Khushboo is a teacher at a reputed ( ? ) Engineering College in Nagpur and teaches students ( hopefully ) about Architecture .

Her enthusiasm was contagious. Just talking to her about designing the stage would get us excited. Apart from inputs on the stage, she would always provide us lots of ideas. No one from our team was assigned any portfolio ( which we intended to do at first , but it never worked ) . Everyone just contributed to the entire event in every way they could .

The Team

Abhinavdutt and Abhijeet – Two really excited and motivated individuals . It’s really hard to find such guys these days . A very good connect with the Student Community all over Nagpur , these guys would just do the work assigned to them in a record time and do even more than that at times .  Abhinav’s room would be the headquarters for us – and we turned it into a mess . Posters , Papers , Food and other materials just scattered around here and there !

The Headquarters would be buzzing with activity day in and day out with people holding phones coming in and out . and this was in a peaceful neighborhood. I am glad, nobody suspected us to be a terrorist organization and complained to the Police.

Ambarish and Shalaka - If you meet them at first,  you could easily mistake them for kids . But the fact is, they are not . They were the ones who would make us laugh, whenever we found ourselves in deep shit . They would be full of innocence. So much, even if they did a mistake – We would let it pass . They were the youngest of the team members but the most active of them all . Except for Shalaka , who would drop once in a while and seem lost like a girl in the Forest . But nevertheless, I am happy she turned out for the event

Aditya and Ankita – A Dynamic Brother – Sister Duo . I sometimes wonder what these literature enthusiasts are doing in an Engineering College. Ankita, is really good at writing stuff . When we would run out of words – She was the one to turn to . She would prepare an article out of nowhere . While we pondered over how the next Facebook status should be , She would come up with the content for that .  Aditya, again, is good at writing .  Read his blogs and you will know. Although we could not use them for what they specialize in , they brought in lots of ideas to the table.

Gauri and Khushboo – The Dynamic girls duo – They were the butt of some special jokes crafted specially for them by me and Harshil .  and they would take it sportingly ( kidding , we were given death threats ). It was real fun working with these ladies.

Vikash and Dhananjay – These guys are Designing Geeks . Right from designing the website materials to the badges , these guys did everything . We would just tell them the concept and they would come up with the output in less time.

Design Design !

 Abhijit Ranade : Abhijit da is a photographer . He helped us set everything from the lighting the stage to camera angles.  He patiently tried each and every color lights and took thousands of photographs throughout the entire event and made sure the photos came out very good.  His picture reflect the efforts we put in for making the event a success.

A Special thanks to Aditya Gupta, Shrirang, Abhimanyu Ghei , Nhea and Neha who helped us in each and every stage . Right from setting up the website , stage ,  designing , planning and execution and selling Tickets . Our team worked day in and day out to make this event a success.

The Speakers :

The Speakers

The toughest part of the event was selecting the speakers . We had 200 [ Yes , 200 Speaker Suggestions :O ] and from that huge list – trim it down to 8 speakers was a huge task . I will not go into the details of why we chose the speakers and how we did – but to give you an idea : We chose speakers who have been instrumental in making a change , have seen change happening or are supporting change .

And I think , we did a great job at selecting the speakers . Undoubtedly , these speakers spoke with real passion and shared ideas that benefited a lot of people .  Apart from that, it was a motivation for the team to personally interact with them over a span of two days . and a pleasure for me and Harshil to interact with their assistants and secretaries from Day 1

The Other Stuff :

It was really challenging to market TED to people . In a place like Nagpur, people would ask you what exactly TED is. And even after explaining it to them, they would not really understand it . We did not go heavy on marketing the event due to a bit of budget limitations , but we pulled it off very well . Got a quarter page feature on Hitavada before the event and Times of India covered it after the event .  Heavy promotion on Facebook and via [ MH-31 Nagpur Unlimited ] though and that is where it all helped us.

We got connected to lots of people during this event who have pledged their support for next time . So next time, hopefully it will be bigger and better  !

Ofcourse, not everything went smooth as I have been projecting till now . The entire journey was a roller coaster for us and we could have done even amazing things – but I guess for a first time , we did a great job. Everybody who attended the event loved it and it was paisa-vasool for them ! Couple of goof-ups did happen but I guess that happens once and then ! All lessons for us .

It was a pleasure working with Harshil on this event. He is one adamant person, and would never take a no . Learnt a lot from him.  He dreams big ( and sometimes really big ) and keeps the excitement in the team going . We ran on this excitement for 9 months and it was a happy ending for all of us !

This post is already too lengthy for me to put in all problems and challenges before us but if you insist on knowing them – Buy me a Coffee and we can have a tell-everything session.

Awesome way to end 2011 .  and it only gets better in 2012 . Me and Harshil are back to planning something even more awesome .  Wait and Watch !

P.S : Want to be a part of TEDxNagpur or future initiatives ? – Click on the link to register or drop us a message on our Facebook page or Twitter