Revels Behind the Scenes | Outstation Management

This year marks the 60th year of Manipal Institute of Technology. A colossal dream is achieved by everyone working under the banner of the institute over the span of the years. Dr. T.M.A. Pai envisioned a world where the diversity would become the strength and differences would lead to understandings. This has ever since been achieved by the diverse and varied crowd that floods Manipal on an annual basis.

Revels 2017 couldn’t have stood up to the same aim had it not been for the category of Outstation Management. This category is responsible for inviting colleges that span the country. This time around, celebrating the diamond jubilee year anniversary, the category managed to invite and accommodate as many as 3000 participants setting a high bar to match up to. MTTN had the privilege of having a quick chat with the team which comprised Category Heads Abhinav Jain, Akshar Pandey, Ashwyn Kumar, Sohil Sharma and Coordinators Anagha Shevade, Chandramouli Mukherjee, Rahul Dalmia and Vibha Nayak.  

Tell us about your journey so far. What made you choose Outstation Management?

Some of us have been working for OM as volunteers, then organizers and now the Category Heads. The journey has been enriching and fun filled. Our work started when Revels 2016 ended and will end when Revels 2017 ends. We work round the clock to make the fest more vibrant and diverse with participants from all over the country. This year in particular, we wanted to invite and persuade more participants to participate in Revels as it marks the diamond jubilee year of our college and we did it.

We firmly believe that the success of the fest is determined by the number of outstation participants in it.

How did you guys as a team manage such a huge turnout?

The participation doubled this year from 1500 to 3000. We prioritized states that have not been invited and states that have to be invited and kept contacting in the same manner. We developed student based contacts and contacted each and every category of a college to gather participants for each category that Revels holds. Each of our phones has as many as 50 unknown numbers and last month has all been about answering calls and clearing doubts. We noticed that the sports participation was not as much the cultural events participation and wanted to bridge the gap. We targeted sports colleges and had two separate invites for cultural and sports category. Previously, we had just 6-7 teams coming in for the different sports events but this time we have around 20 teams for each sports event. Colleges from north have shown up as well. Few colleges from Jaipur and Gujarat have come in as well. We set a target and we reached the target.

Give us more of an insight into the working of the category.

The core committee knows no day or night while working. We stay overnight and sleep in the same room. On Day 1 of Revels, at 8 am we had a contingent of 600 people to accommodate and register. There was a point when two of us were sleeping on the floor of the room and there was work going on. We tried our best to not wake them up but we had to wake them up at last. This year, we had been provided lesser rooms than we were last time but had greater number of participants. We say this with utmost pride that we were able to manage accommodation for all of them. In due process, we would like to extend our gratitude to Utkarsh Triparthi and Aastha Jain for being cooperative through-out. There was this one time where we got a call from Xventure Category seeking accommodation for few of their participants and we did locate them in our map of hostels. At one point on the first day, as many as 300 people came in together. We had to first make them sit in a room at NLH and register them according to their event timings.  We gave everyone under the roof and the banner of Revels from Outstation Category a roof to live under, be it laborers, workers and also the freezer for the Square ruth people. Not a single person was displaced or relocated.

Tell us few memories that you would carry with you from this experience.

On the day of inauguration we had been working continuously for a day when all of us thought of getting dressed and attending the opening ceremony. We went in slots to get dressed but as soon as we came back, we were flocked with a contingent of 300 people waiting to be registered and accommodated. In due process, we ended up skipping the opening ceremony. Our organizers stayed back with us. Not even once did they crib about attending the ceremony or that of missing it. Infact, we have been told that we received the maximum number of applications during Organizers call. We understand the working of the Core Committee and the pressure under which we are but to watch our Organizers work with the same tenacity and zeal has certainly left us euphoric. During TechTatva we all as CC started interacting and it is during Revels that we bonded over joint pressure and work.

What would be your message to our readers reading your interview?

Participate in college fests. When we attended the events, we were astonished to find more outstation participants than our own college people. We would like the crowd to own up to your college fests and devour in the working of it. The joy that it resonates once accomplished is exhilarating.

Outstation Management has rewritten history with the crowd it managed to pull and the essence of festivity that it could add to the fest. The beauty of the world lies in the diversity of the people. The work of the category has been exemplary and has shaped the fest into a successful one. We at MTTN are extremely grateful for their work and efforts that went into making the fest more magnificent and enthralling for everybody.   

-As said to Shravani Vyakarnam for MTTN

Photograph by: Manan Dhuri

 

Leave a Reply

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.

Up ↑