A Memorable Event – The Bali Trail

There have been many memorable moments, but three events stand out in my memories as far as organizing the events are concerned. In chronological order, the first event was “Liscar 96” which was an inter school contest conducted in our school. We had just passed out of school and being the immediate we were part of the organizing committee. It was a big hit, had its own bit of controversy, its share of fun, learning, etc. The way we resolved the winners for the tightly contested dance competition after hectic discussions, the manner in which the girls from Alvernia school protested to us that we were partial, the sight of a contestant and her brother protesting that we had no sense of music after we had announced the winners for the solo music competition, etc are all fresh and are memories that would remain as long as the air flows through my lungs. The second event was the sequence of events, preparation and effort leading to Nexus ’99, the National Level Technical Symposium conducted by our department in my college. This one obviously is the best event that I have been part of. The memories related to this event are so vast that I may have to write a book rather than just blog !!

The third event is of course the Bali Trail (held of June 29th and 30th, 2004) in my organization. This was a quiz event were the contestants would be taken to various places of interest around the globe depending on their answers and choices. The teams are supposed to collect certain clues en route to Bali. The first team to reach Bali and submit the key (based on the clues) would be the winner. In the first week of June, we were approached to do a quiz event with a difference for Baanquet. Though I wanted to do a Rapid fire quiz, during the course of the discussions, our thoughts and ideas were leading to organizing a trail. The idea originated from a discussion about the Carmen game that was popular during the DOS days!

There were two main parts of the trail – (1) Tracking each teams trail and displaying the same on the screen, (2) questions for each stop on the trail. The first part had to be done using power point and being a self-proclaimed expert in power point presentations, I agreed to take that responsibility. But somehow I was not comfortable with this. Certain events during Nexus ’99 had made me decide then not to get involved in such activities in future. This time something kept telling me that I was doing exactly what I wanted to avoid. Many times I just dint want to take this forward and wanted to just give it up and lead the silent life focusing more on work than on other activities. But the efforts, enthusiasm, and nervousness of my quiz partner didn’t allow me to go back. As far as this specific quiz is concerned, lots of credit goes to her as she did a great job that was totally contrary to my expectations. In the days leading to the quiz, she was so nervous that at times it seemed that she dint know what she was doing. Most of the time her expressions spoke more than she could ! But in the finals, she did a marvelous job.

When preparing the PPT, the first thing that struck me was the mainframe screen and the typical computer screens of Hollywood movies. Also of special significance were the screens from Matrix movie in which you would find a black screen with green alphabets falling all around. With the real estate on the screen divided and allocated for specific purposes, it was time to put in the content. But suddenly there was a bombshell. My partner wanted one more branching and all of a sudden the number of presentations that I had to make increased from 16 to 81!! “Man! That is some more work!” I thought to myself. I could feel the fumes coming out of my ear. There were two periods when I had to put in lot of extra effort – first was for preparing the 80 presentations and second was for pumping the trivia in for each place.


A Screen shot from "The Bali Trail"

During the entire course of the preparation I was sure that the presentation could be prepared in advance. But what worried me later was that during the trials, the presentation wasn’t as smooth as expected. I was doing lots of mistakes in swapping, selection, etc. After the trials on the day before the finals, I was a bit worried. Any goof-up on my part would make the entire effort look worthless. Apart from my effort, it would also take up the shine from the questions that had been prepared by my partner by burning the midnight oil. I also had a history baggage wherein all the events that I have been part of weren’t flawless! I was a bit worried and could feel the hairs turn grey with worry!

The finals had surprises in store for me. When the first slide was projected, the screen layout was looking much more beautiful than I had expected. From the experience of previous trials, we had taken some precautions and had modified and fine-tuned the way we wanted to approach and take the contestants through the finals. All through the way, the progress was smooth. Except for a minor blip the entire show went on flawlessly. I also realized that I could have avoided the trivia part. This was because the audience was more involved in the heat and speed of the finals than on the trivia section. Probably a picture of mine would have been a better replacement. I am not sure which of the two people would have liked to ignore the most!!

It definitely was the first time something (event organizing) went on flawlessly and it definitely found its way to being one of the most memorable events that I was part of (as far as organizing was concerned). However Nexus ’99 would still remain the best event that I was part of especially because of the scale of the event and because of the efforts that we had put and because of the amount of learning that I was subjecting myself to ! The next question that obviously comes to my mind is … “Will I do it again, if opportunity knocks once more?” Probably not! Probably never!

Exceptions should not get generalized!