"Chak De India, Hilla De Bihar" : Atul Kumar , IIM- A , Sainik School , an NRI

It was beyond our expectations and was like a dream run for three days. Many of us felt like shouting "Chak De India, Hilla De Bihar" all the days. Yes the pressure was as high as it gets during Penalty Stroke in World Cup Hockey/Football but our wonderful team scored home on most attempts and blocked any occasional attempts to break the event Before the event , we had pitched the event as kumbh mela for Science & Technology but also had unexpressed anxieties/worries of flood, quake, power failure, chaos, attendance, fracas amongst students, flight cancellations, technical failures etc etc. which we kept buried within our hearts :-) Good news is that none of that happened. No natural or man-made calamities. One of the media channels made an un-successful attempt and are being taken care of. What went well - For all 3 days the SK Memorial Hall was packed (people had to stand outside on most days since seating capacity was limited to 2000 - Overall attendance would have crossed 5000+ by a margin across the three days- It is easy to get 3500+ students at venue but difficult to hold them inside auditorium .. most of the speakers/talks/papers did that successfully most of the time - On a very short notice, local entrepreneurs were gathered and they put up a great show by putting Stalls/Exhibitions besides the students stalls - Very wide and diverse range of speakers- Bio-Nano-Agri-Entrepreneurship-Energy-Water etc etc etc (details to follow) - Volunteers team did a class act of managing such a large gathering inside the hall, at the display stalls and lunch arena - very very smooth (better than WEF, Davos or many Nasscom/Tie meets in terms of organization) - All technical/logistics challenges were managed impromptu by one/few of the volunteers- Decent Media Coverage by Hindi and English daily (details will be updated soon on blogs)- Guests from abroad and rest of India gave a THUMBS UP ... formal feedback will be collected & shared later- Some side dinners and informal breaks was leveraged to the hilt by students/professors to network with each other- Special thanks to Sanjay from Dubai, Abhishek from Bahrain and many others from various cities in India who could make it- For me personally the DANCE Party organized at Ghar-Aangan by Deepali, Manish and team was world class (12 hours and Rs 25000) What didn't go wellAllow us to celebrate the party for now and we will do post-mortem later :-) and share with all. For many of us the REAL EVENT began on 25th. Bihar 2.0 was born and had a healthy delivery. We need to make sure that we give good nourishment and care and this baby will shine again, light up our bulbs and shine like a thousands suns in sky. Collaboration or Collaborative Competition was the mantra of the event . Students, Professors and Principals of AN College, JD Women's, Magadh Mahila, Science College, PWC, NIT,BIT, RPSIT and many other collges worked together. It was such a treat watching the :Principals of various colleges working as team members and not show any EGOs at all. We will send detailed reports of various volunteer teams from various colleges later. All of them made us proud but allow me to make a special mention of Magadh Mahila (specially BCA students), PWC (specially science/bca students), AN College (especially MBA and Environment Students). Will mention others later It was also a delight to see, Dept of Science & Tech team working like team members with various student and professor teams. Thanks to Ajay Thakur jee from DST and his team who allowed us the freedom and luxary to move in-out of his office like a hostel dorm ;) and having tolerated us. DST also were also able to get sponsors to organize dinner at Chanakya and Maurya, a musical program. DST were also able to leverage BIT Mesra/Patna branch for event logistics and they did a great job Some of the smartest folks that myself had chance to work with were, Smriti,Pankaj,Akhil, Niharika,Richa,Aparna,Amit,Deepali,Manish,Ravi. Am sure there were many more and will send a detailed report later. Am sure Ramraj, Ravi,Ram and others would like to mention more. Chandan's absence was missed due to his taking ill and personal situation but his contributions in creative department were with us and Dr Ravi Chandra more than made up for him. He led the team of volunteers admirably and was our "command centre" at DST. We will issue a formal press release later. Folks like Vivek, Mayank, Sweta, Vishwajit,Saroj,Samir,Bibhuti,Ajay Jee, A2Z, Mukhiyajee, Santosh and many other e-Biharis and Friends of Bihar. You were missed.We will also share videos, pics etc etc also soon. Hold you breaths. The party is still on and give us some time. We have some meeting at various colleges, some informal lunch, dinner etc. The bus trip to Pawapuri, Ragir etc on 25th was also fun. It was so much fun that some of the volunteers started crying while separating to give each other the "baarati feeling". We also had our share of adventures like "emergency doctor visits", "flight cancellations" etc but all of those crisis were leveraged to showcase our crisis management and "hospitality". Guests were hungry to visit again. Details later. CheersAtulMedia & PRScientific Foresight 2007