Transition of Thoughts

TEAM ECCLESIA

BEFORE

After – Surf Excel Safedi!

Finally my long awaited post on the journey of Team Ecclesia – The literary events of Transcend – SIBM Pune’s cultural and management fest is here. This post is not about Transcend ’10 – that is the events, the fest, the participants or about the different events that were organized over the three days – 5th, 6th and 7th Feb 2010. But it is about one specific set of events called Ecclesia – The literary event “bouquet” (I came up with this word :P) of Transcend ’10. Its about the journey as to how a team of 5 at first was reduced to 4 and then it practically though not literally became a team of just two individuals. But despite all the hardships and difficulties Ecclesia had to face and the fact that it was one of the underdogs, it proved all the critics and naysers wrong with amazing participation from IIMs, XLRI, SP Jain, NITIE and FMS to name a few.

It was almost the end of December I think and I as usual was wondering whether I would get a chance to do something during Transcend ’10. I have always had this interest in working in different things – and working for the college fest is one of them be it Riviera at VIT University or Transcend at SIBM Pune. One fine day, I got a call from the Co- Curricular (Co-C) team saying that they wanted me to report to the Team Room by so and so time in the evening as they wanted me to be a part of a team to organize some event. When I reached there, I found 4 other people along with the Co-C team. People most of whom I knew but some I didn’t but none to whom I really spoke much to. As time went by, the Co-C team explained that they wanted us to organize the Literary events for Transcend ’10. They gave us an idea of the theme and the scale at which it was going to be organized. The number of events, kind of events, judges, rules everything was left to our discretion. Lo! Till then I was wondering whether I would get to do something for Transcend and here they had given us the entire charge of organizing a set of events from scratch. Now this did seem big!!!

As the work slowly started, the number of members dwindled to 4 because one of the team mates decided that he wouldn’t be able to give the event enough time as he also had his duties for the council team. In the meanwhile Priyanka Negi, the only team member who I hadn’t interacted with ever before and me started meeting up to discuss as to how we should go forward with Ecclesia – in terms of the number of events, rules, kinds of events to be had etc. Before meeting up in the Co-C room for the first time, I had known Priyanka as Preeti’s sister and I “guess” (because not sure :P) that she had probably heard of me as some “blogger”. But many more meetings later, where most of the times despite our incessant calling the other two team mates didn’t turn up (though sometimes they did), we came to know each other much much better. She started calling me Frusto (short for Frustogi – now that’s what many of my friends used to call me at VIT because I easily get frustrated) and also told me about how and why people call her Didi – The DIDI of the college :). The sad part was that for many of the meetings with Co-C also, our whole team wasn’t present.

But the greatest thing which I have gained by working for Transcend ’10 is the fact that I have got a really sweet and simple friend like Priyanka. I guess the biggest problem with me is that It is difficult for me to find people who match with my wavelength or with my thought process many times. After living in the conservative and much more orthodox and simple environs of South India for four years, it was a big change for me when I first came to Pune. People trying to be unnecessarily hep, stylish or showing off when not needed are the biggest turn – offs for me. Obviously all are not like that. But then one has got to take the pain of finding the simple ones out of the huge sea of attitudish ones. The way I can be myself and talk about my life with her without being worried as to what she will think is really nice :).

Over different meetings among ourselves and with the Co-C team we finalized the events – Parchment Power paper presentation and Spar Wars – The ultimate public speaking event consisting of JAM, Extempore and Debate. Ecclesia was the only event in Transcend ’10 to be partly cultural and partly management. A paper presentation competition was organized at Transcend for the first time. But the number of entries (35+) it attracted from the top institutes of the country showed the fact as to how much the top colleges value events at SIBM Pune and Transcend in particular. After some initial problems on finalizing the judges, we managed to finalize them a couple of days before the event. In between all this, Priyanka and me had also worked for an HR Case Study in DOMS IIT M for which if we had been selected, we would have had to go on 30th Jan 2010. In hindsight, both of us were happy that we didn’t get selected because if we had gone, then Ecclesia wouldn’t have been half as successful as it was.

As the day dawned nearer, the excitement was palpable in the air. The paper presentation was the first event of Transcend ’10 at 11am on 5th Feb. Contrary to our expectations we did have a lot of work on the final day to in terms of the audio visual system, buzzer, taking care of the judges etc. The standard of presentations was really good (obviously it would be because they were the top 6 selected) and XLRI with the presentation on “Management Insights from Mythology” emerged as the winners. Spar Wars (An event where there was initial apprehension from the Co-C team as to organizing JAM because they were worried about who would judge) turned out to be a cracker. It was 3 hours of ultimate objection, arguments and interesting speeches. In the end Avinash from Symbiosis Law School and Sanjeev from SIBM Pune emerged as the winners. Spar wars was an on the spot event while Parchment Power was a pre – registered event.

All in all Ecclesia turned out to be a tremendous success and the biggest thing other than the certificates and working in a team and all the blah blah which I gained from this event is finding a friend like Priyanka :).

THREE CHEERS TO TEAM ECCLESIA!!! IT WAS AN EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME 🙂