Inducing Reactive Experience For The Community — Devfest Baroda story
Communities are about the people and what they are made to experience within to impact and influence. It's about the set of people who together trail out to be the changemakers. This quarter of the year, I was lucky enough to experience serious events by Google in several cities of India where I had never been to. Of the long duelist, Baroda was one of the city.
In Dry State, People are ‘Tech’ High
I landed at Baroda Airport with a divine feeling of being in Bhutan on a day-long trip. Calm airport, no loud announcements, it was truly divine feeling. This myth landed me in ruin until one of the organizers of Devfest Baroda explained: “Visit in the morning, you will realize how small airport we have which produces rush”.
Being from the land of liquor, I couldn’t resist asking this same damn question which I ask every person that I land here, “How can the majority of you all even live without Drinks in Gujarat?” — the curious me asked the driver while getting picked from the Baroda airport. “We find the way to drink in toughest times or goto cities that make you drink” — he said with a mild laugh and I could easily correlate as 23.40 Ahmedabad flight to Goa is typically full except for the Navratri days. The conversations went for a bit across several topics including technology not until I realized, even though this was a different city but the ‘People & their conversations make this city beautiful’
I’ve been having a special connect with Gujarat ever since I first spoke in 2012. Over the years the community growth has been phenomenal. It was my first time in Baroda and I was looking forward to the event even more.
(Seamless 3x) Factor
After organizing several conferences including Nitrodroid, Droidsync in India, besides the Devfest’s since 2012, One thing that never took time to realize that organizing an event is not a 1-day or a 2-day menu but a ‘Journey that needs seamless experience’. I was honored to have seen Google Developer Group Baroda’s journey since its germination but what impressed me the most was the vision and aim keeps them boosted.
To make the event seamless, the 3x seamless activities are so clinical.
- The Pre-event preps,
- The ground & offline support during the event
- Post-event
‘Ting’ as I receive an email from one of the organizers, Sneh Pandya setting the entire onboard experience seamlessly. A clear email with all the details and ‘expectations’ set right. The email didn't leave any open ends of the communication. A to-the-point email with all the details, just how a speaker would expect.
Here are some of the pointers event organizers can embrace from the above email if you are organizing events in your city:
- Great introduction about the event and things to expect
- Things to look forward to and when ( e.g the agenda)
- The asks from the speaker, like the profile, social media handles, etc.
- Team contact details in case of reaching out, besides just one single contact
Showing no half-hearted efforts, another email with my speaker promotion image along with the branding kit for the presentation was sent in detail. Each detailing of the speakers was encapsulated to ensure it reached to right audience.
One of the noted points to add, speakers were connected well before the event, helped to get acquaintance of them way before the event date.
Right from the Hotel checking, to Event experience was seamless. One to One mapping to ensure speakers are not left alone in the huddle. The active social media team was absolutely in sync for sharing the right content on social media using social media handles. While the social media team was engaged, the ground staff hooked themselves firmly to ensure there is no glitch in other offline aspects including food management, speaker set up and other relevant. The young and dynamic team showing their triumph in maturity and ownership.
This was no different post-event, the organizers reached out to the speakers and audiences with the contents such as Photos and Videos duly tagged with information worth reading. Thus delivering the 3x Seamless factor.
People Desire to Contribute, Show them ‘Love’
“Sir, We have come from a village which is a 2-hour journey from Baroda, we don’t see such events in our village hence we had to travel to get experience” — shares one of the delegates of the event. Shows the passion for learning when organizers put up such a show. After a few mins of conversations, I witnessed that there were a few more who traveled a few miles to attend the conference and they really loved how their day was glued to experiencing meetings with the organizers, attendees, and the speakers. Some asked questions on how to get ‘first time’ on stage, asked about startups and how to trust ownself to build one and many more fears they had around the world of startups.
Over 6 hours of conversations coupled over lunch and a few coffee breaks, experienced the hunger to learn and contribute. Some of them shared how they would go back and contribute to their local areas to build a small community of tech. Amazing to see how such events bring together people with varied interests for contributing to impact. Show them, love. Embrace them to learn.
If Content is King, Distribution Is Queen
Event success is not just defined by what you do before and during the event, but how you quadruple the impact beyond the four walls of discussion.
Its all about what the people beyond the walls reach out to understand the event and the content to correlate if they can benefit from it. Exactly where the Distribution comes in handy. Thankfully GDG Baroda team has this handled extremely professionally. What can be the proof than the video below:
Actively promoting the event photos, the speaker content across all the key social media pages keeps the content rolling. Great job team.
It was MEMEBlowing
For the first time, I experienced this MEME-attack ( good way) while on the stage. Thank you all for the tweets and the media shared. Here are some of the snippets:
And did I mention that the audience was live to create these memes for every key point I made?
I Love you[all] 3000
Awesome team, building the awesomeness — what a delightful experience it was to speak and be part of the GDG Baroda Devfest 2019. Surely engraved into my life experiences.
![The [Seamless 3X] team of Devfest Baroda — let us call them the wolfpack. Thanks for all the love, support, and ‘family’ trea](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*EuTeEw2cfhabLSuZBurRBQ.jpeg)
When you meet the fellow speakers ( & friends) is always a great time. The same was the experience at Devfest Baroda 2019. Thank you all for the love, feedback and follow up post events. Your love is heartwarming.
![Thank you Dron & GDG Baroda Team [ Photo Credit: GDG Baroda Facebook Page]](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1272/format:webp/1*lf9hhu07EkOvF0M5PaStXg.jpeg)
…and soon Dron Gets off the stage, this follows:
People make the event beautiful and so true. So true in my entire 48 hours spent in Baroda. Thank you.
Never underestimate the power of a Dramatic Entrance— says Kung Fu Panda and here we are with our dramatic pose in 2013 at a Google Summit in Hyderabad. The person spearheading the activities in GDG Baroda and the sweetest souls. Your and your team’s hospitality left me spellbound. It made me feel home, away from home. Thank you, Rahul, for this memory. GDG Devfest of Baroda has truly been special for me to be part of.
Missed being part of the Navratri dance but nevertheless, taking back memories of Great Organizing, Great people and Great food back to Goa. Love you 3000 Baroda, see you soon. It was wonderful to be part of the event.
Before I sign off from this post, here is the presentation:
Follow the group here to know more about their events in the future and to contribute: https://www.facebook.com/GDGBaroda/
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