Finally! I get some much needed time to write this. Well, this was planned to release well before – just a week after Alegria ended to be precise, but thanks to the unit tests and a horde of assignments and project stuff that came in my way that it went downhill to finally being published today. Anyways, better late than never right? 😉
This one is gonna be quite different from the previous 08 posts in the #TheAlegriaExperience blog series that you’ve read (or might have skipped) till now. No Question and Answer format because that’d mean answering my own questions. Instead, I’d prefer to go all out and speak out my heart and mind – of all the experiences and memories over the past two years I’ve been a part of team Alegria.
Also, I’m back to writing after a sabbatical of 8 months (yes, I’m a writer) – the longest break I’ve ever taken till date. So this one might not be up to the notch. Let’s see how this one turns up.
-2017-
I still vividly remember the day Aditya Shetty – the first friend I made in Engineering and also, the GSec from PCE Council and Alegria Committee 2017 – told me that I’ve been selected for the Alegria Committee. And the first question I had asked him was: “What! Which committee!?”
“E-publicity!”, dang came his reply.
And I sighed a heap of relief.
The reason being that I had a chance of being in the committee when I was in my second year itself when myfriends Aditya and Abhishek joined the logistics and OC departments respectively. And guess what did I do?
I simply refused.
Reason: I just couldn’t decide where I must be in the committee.
Creativity requires you to be good at painting, drawing and other creative stuff – which is clearly not my field. I rarely got an A in drawing exams during my school days. Logistics requires you to be adept at travelling, carrying goods, bargaining and money. Again, I’m poor in these fields. Publicity requires you to roam around colleges and persuade people for entries, and I’m more than 100% sure that I’d be a super flop in that area too. Also, I was quite rigid about my academics that time and eventually decided against bunking lectures and joining the committee. Something which I instantly regret now. But the fact that I’d have not been comfortable in whichever committee I’d have gone in is another fact which I can’t simply ignore.
I didn’t even know there existed an E-Publicity Committee as such, and when I got to know there exists one, I realised it had just one person on board.
According to Adi, the decision to choose me for the role was unanimous because almost everyone in college knew about my promotion *cough* spamming *cough* skills which comes out prominently during the times when I publish and promote a story on my blog.
Also, I was quite active with my Facebook and Instagram page @quoteworthy_ which gave me an insight on how to manage a channel on social media – like understanding the importance and influence of hashtags, the perfect peak timings and days when to post stuff online, responding to hundreds of DM’s patiently and crying foul every time Facebook or Instagram tweaked their algorithm.
I started off by checking out everything that had been posted the last year pre and during Alegria, the social media competitions being the main area of highlight. I thought of getting some help from the guy who was in my seat the last year, but sadly he was out of town. So, I was on my own. But that feeling resided soon as I met Franav Sir, the man behind this mega-fest Alegria.
At first, I was quite nervous and anxious, measuring my words carefully whenever he was around. But then with each passing interaction, I realised that he was such a cool person in terms of handling things. His calm and composed nature adds to his virtues.
His support and guidance are one of the main reasons which made me come back for the second time, even though it was my final year of engineering.
It was also the year when Promotions Unlimited, a social media promotion based company was started by Lalit Sir, Shiva Sir and Sukhi Paaji – the pillars of Alegria since its very inception. With a dedicated and ever increasing group of members, PU did, in fact make me feel low about my existence and contribution to the social media scene at times. The moment anyone would open Instagram, their feed would be only about Alegria. Spreading the word is one thing, but people mostly started getting a bit irritated by the overflowing repetitive posts on their feed. But the endgame was achieved. Increasing the visibility of the fest on the social platforms. I would be blatantly lying if I said there was no tension between PU and me, but then we realised it’d be better if we join hands and move ahead as a force rather than creating debacles in each other’s path.
But on the inside, I had already decided to one-up against them, although in a gesture of goodwill – with more efforts.
So I decided to introduce some new stuff. Bring something on to the table which will bring in a new lease of life and excitement. It was my vision that there must be a blog for Alegria, which would be the more informal and fun counterpart of the website. It was fun creating a WordPress site from scratch, sometimes sitting in the Logistics Cell, sometimes in the Publicity cell, the extremely introvert side of me trying hard to gel with the other Committee members. The other addition was of an account on wattpad which was frankly an open-ended experiment from my side, the idea being presenting all the news and highlights combined together in the form of a book so that people could get all the info they needed together. I somehow managed to bring in about 150 followers within a week of creating the account, but it was clear that when compared to a social media site like Instagram or Facebook, the hype and reach wattpad created was comparatively low, which was quite expected by me and it did turn out to be the same.
With an added presence on two new platforms, both belonging to the literary genre, and also the new website almost nearing completion, it was decided that it’d be great if we have a committee dedicated to creating content for the brochure, social sites as well as the website. This led to the formation of the first-ever ‘Content Writing Team’ which was guided by the experienced and dedicated Tilby Thomas – who gave me a glimpse of what true commitment and delivering the goods on time means.
The #VisitorsAtSector16 series was another idea of mine for the blog, wherein we give some much-needed info about the artists who are gonna attend Alegria, but it ended up being published on the website.
It was around that time, I was quite inspired and influenced by stalwart video editors and filmmakers Sam Kolder, Rory Kramer and Jordan Taylor which led me to install Adobe Premiere Pro 2015 on my low-end i3 processor laptop. But I was overwhelmed as soon as I opened the software. It was too much to process for an amateur editor like me with an experience of editing just two odd videos – that too on Filmora. Time was an important constraint which I had to consider. So I decided to go ahead with Filmora for time being and start a video series for amping up the hype pre-Alegria. How? The 5 one minute Alegria Throwback Video series – wherein I used the after movies from the previous years and created a montage of specific stars – the DJs, the movie celebs, sports stars, etc. The editing was quite basic but what made it worth watching was the music selection and my favourite sync-to-the-beat editing technique.
The response was fairly positive but I knew in terms of feeling professional, the video didn’t live up much to my own expectations. With each edited video, I realised how native and basic an application Filmora is. At that moment, I didn’t know if I would be a part of the Alegria 2018 team, but I was quite sure that I’d create more videos for Alegria for sure, albeit much better and professional looking ones. Adobe Premiere Pro.
The two social media contests were the Facebook ‘Comment and Win’, Twitter ‘QnA’ which happened every year. Looking at the sheer number of users and the amount of time people nowadays spend on Instagram, I added the ‘Alegria Nostalgia’ contest to the mix. Here, the students would upload their pics from previous Alegria’s with the hashtags #pillaisalegria #alegria2017 and #alegrianostalgia. This not only would strengthen the hashtags, but also makes other people aware of the fest. And since the theme was ‘Kingdom of Games’ I added the YouTube contest wherein the gamer community can display their gameplay skills via their YouTube channels. Both the new contests were shown interest and made successful by the competing students.
Then came the 5 days of Alegria, which will easily qualify for the best days of my life. From picking up Lisa Zimouche to her hotel to the crazy DJ nights, witnessing artists and celebs like Monica Dogra, Shibani Dandekar, Rochelle Rao, Govinda up close, Alegria 2017 was a crazy ride. The last night was truly epic. I remember how tired I was after dancing to the tunes of Nucleya and Lost Stories, and then dancing at my cousin sister’s wedding the next morning – that I decided against dancing any more during the Teri Miko and Quintino concert. But the way she played those dubstep tracks with so much energy, I couldn’t help but dance! The ending was quite emotional with everyone in tears and rounds of hugs, while I stood there transfixed, observing everyone, my mind celebrating 7000 followers on Instagram as the concert ended, thinking about what next, and a plethora of other stuff all looming large. But one thing was sure – it won’t matter if I would or wouldn’t be a part of team Alegria next year, I will contribute nonetheless. Because the amount of stuff I learned during those 2 months was unparalleled. Also, I had many much interesting ideas under my sleeve which if implemented would be worth watching.
-2018-
The year began with a defeat from the PiMSR guys in the Alegria Theme Competition. Our team had tasted victory the very first time we had participated when our theme ‘Wanderlust’ in collab with the PCACS guys was selected. The next year we had pitched ‘Mumbai’ as the theme, but a few days before the presentation we came to know that IIT-Bombay’s fest too had the same theme. Damn. We had one of the best presentations, but we knew what would be the outcome. So we pitched ‘Mumbai’ again this time. But the way PiMSR guys presented it with their cost-effective approach and specific contacts and places to buy stuff from, it was quite right that they won the final battle. We knew that our slides would be considered while planning the installations by the Creatives, so we were happy with the fact that at least our idea got selected. There were some great ideas from some other competitors and I can already see one among them being the next year’s theme.
Last year, one of the main factors which didn’t allow me to broaden my scope was the fact that I was the only one in the ‘committee’ – handling all the social handles at once. So, when Franav Sir and Onkar Sir asked me to form a social team according to my needs and to act as a mentor to them, I was overjoyed. This is what I exactly wanted, a team to improve our online presence and to one-up against someone (get it?). I had seen various social media campaigns during the previous months – for eg. how YouTube FanFest or even VH1 Supersonic used their social handles to promote their events. Another added positive is the fact that a single person can focus on one site which is better than messing up by managing everything at once. So I decided to go ahead with a team of 4, including me. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat would be handled by the others, while I’d look after Twitter, YouTube and the WordPress blog. But the debacle was that I really didn’t have much people to contact with – the primary reason being the fact that I did most of my work last year from home itself. I’d go to the admission cell only if there was some major meeting or to meet the content team at times. But after some soul-searching and via some committee member recommendations, I finally found out the perfect guys for my team. But then due to some misunderstandings and temper issues, I lost one among them – who I thought would be my trump card. Unfortunate. Finding another replacement was tough, but we managed to find Abhishek who handled the MIS last year for Alegria. He had recently sold his two 10k Instagram pages and was en route on his third when we met him. The other two guys were Aditya Nambiar – who was in Publicity last year and Akash Roy – come on, who doesn’t know Akash the photographer from PCE? The team looked formidable and in the very first meeting – I divided the sites among them along with the agenda, on which reaching 10k followers on Instagram – hence getting the swipe up feature was the main thing we were gunning for. The 2 DJ artists were announced in October end itself which was a surprise move from the top authorities, but then we had to stick to our schedule which was focussed heavily on December end and January – main 2 months where hype has to be created.
The contests for content writing, photography and the anchoring team covered November. Then came the revolutionary idea of the ‘Idea Sheet’ which was basically an XL sheet where all the committee members can add their ideas and possible contributions. And the fact that more than 50% of the ideas were related to social media surprised me quite a bit. Some didn’t make much sense, whereas some were great. We shortlisted the ones which were worth executing and will create more hype amongst the students. Two more meetings were held to refine the sheet and one such day was the day of my placement on the 19th of December when LTI had come to the campus. And since there was a 2-hour gap between the first two rounds, I went ahead and attended the meeting for some 15 minutes or so, so that I can get an idea what all new things were added, what all ideas were scrapped. Sounds crazy right? Attending fest meetings between your placement rounds? Believe me, it isn’t. Being in the loop is one important thing when it comes to organizing stuff for a fest as large and famous as Alegria. I was lucky enough to clear all the five rounds and get placed the next day. This was the turning point.
Till that day, placements always ran across my mind. And now that I’ve been placed, there was nothing holding me back. The Alegria Experience Blog Series was launched as planned in the final weeks of December- yes, the one which you’re currently reading – which covered all the committee heads and will tell the world about their experiences at Alegria 2017 in a crisp Q&A format. Another thing which I was working on from November was learning Adobe Premiere Pro. Thanks to YouTube and hours of tutorials, I managed to get hold of the basics of Pr. Like the Alegria Throwback Series last year, I had planned to go ahead with the Alegria Rewind Series this year. The major difference being that it’d not be restricted to just 60 seconds and it would be a compilation of all the best moments from the previous editions of the festival. The first one took me 2 months of editing, in which most of the time went on learning, selecting the best possible footage, editing to the beat, polishing and transitions.
The amount of love the video got made me feel over cloud9. It feels great when people appreciate your efforts. It has grossed over 10.5K views till now on Facebook.
The second video was a shorter version, targeted for Instagram which also received a lot of praise for its footage and music selection along with its conciseness. This one too reached 10K views and was posted on Facebook and Instagram.
There was actually a third video in the offering but I never got to complete it – due to time and lack of enough matching footage, but there’s a high chance I will release it sometime in the future. So stay tuned for further updates 🙂
Another thing which I liked this year when compared to the last year was the coordination between the Graphics, Content and the Social teams. The Content team generates content for the social sites, the Graphics team provides us with the posters and banners to go along with the content and we post it according to the schedule. This process was so smooth this year that I couldn’t help but praise the heads Shubhang, Birjis and Greeshma for looking to the fact that their committee delivers on time.
The Content Team. Can’t thank these guys enough. One of the main reasons this was the best edition of Alegria for me.
The agenda of reaching 10k was made easy thanks to Sidharth Malhotra, Rakul Preet and the cast of Aiyaary with their song shoot at Pillai’s Campus pre-Alegria. In that week, we even crossed 1.5K on Twitter! Akash’s pictures went viral, with Sid and Rakul fan clubs reposting us heavily on Twitter as well as Insta. All the social handles got a great boost during that period. Seeing a live shooting of a Bollywood movie with these famous actors was a different experience altogether. Their equipment with those DJI Phantom drones and RED Camera was enough to get me excited.
From that event we also put our focus back on Snapchat which wasn’t active till then, promoting it via Instagram and Facebook stories, as well as WhatsApp forwards.
Then came another twist in the tale. Abhishek confessed that he couldn’t manage all these stuff, like attending meetings and coming at short notices due to the fact that he lives at Khopoli which is too far. He rarely even attended college. That meant I had to look for another replacement. Thanks to another round of recommendations from the committee, we found him within a few hours. Tejas Nair was the event head of Robot Wars last year and is known for his level of dedication. And in the next one month, I realised what I heard about him is true. And when it comes to slogging how can I not mention Aditya Nambiar? Being the event head of 2 events, assisting another and also handling Facebook is a tough thing to do. Yet he managed to do it without any hiccups. That speaks volumes about this guy’s level of commitment.
The contests these time were all for the DJ nights, because of the late announcement of the last night concert artists. One of them was from the idea sheet. The QR Code Contest which required people to scan the 100 odd QR Codes placed across the campus which will be redirected to the social sites and the website of Alegria. Their name and contact would be stored with the help of a form which comes up after the scan. This would have been impossible without the support of Shrey who built the backend database for the same. The response was overwhelming with over 500 scans in the 5 days the contest was held!
We covered every event held during the 5 days of the fest – Facebook and Insta being the main focus. The response was heartwarming wherein the live audience thanked us for the broadcast.
The lineup of artists was so amazing that I need not even talk about them. Never seen such a star-studded lineup before!
Another idea from my side, inspired by the all-in-one lineup mostly used for festival promotions
The last night of Alegria 2018 was quite the stark opposite of the last year. Smiles and hugs all around. This time I had to control myself from breaking down because I knew this edition would be the last one for me as a Pillaite or even as a student. Working with such a dedicated and hardworking committee who put in their heart and soul to make the fest a grand success is a different feeling altogether. I promise myself that I would continue contributing to Alegria, be it in terms of ideas or even videos. A part of me will stay #Alegrian forever.
From a single person team….
….to a ‘team’, the journey has been pretty wonderful!
The excitement and the emotions attached to this Alegria was quite high for me since this is my last year here at Pillai’s. A big thank you to everyone who made this journey so interesting! Special mention to these guys for making these 2 years the best ones of my life. Memories for a lifetime!
Franav Sir
Onkar Sir
Ranjita Ma’am
Social:
Aditya Nambiar
Tejas Nair
Akash Roy
Abhishek Singh
Content:
Greeshma Valath
Birjis Patel
Aravind Acharya
Akash Vetal
Tilby Thomas
Shubham Khairnar
Shruti Jagdale
OC:
Aditya Shetty
Abhishek Pandey
Shrey Jakhmola
Aishwarya Thorve
Satej Patil
Vignesh Menon
Saish Oak
Harsh Hemant
Website and App:
Shubham Verma
Roshan Singh
Graphics:
Shubhang Rajput
Arif Ahmed
Sooraj Nair
Prateek Gupta
Publicity:
Sumesh Nambiar
Tanya Bhutani
Sapan Agarwal
Saquib Hashmi
Pooja Yadav
Tushita Gupta
Creatives:
Abhijit Prakashan
Rishika Karna
Sujitha Sudevan
Logistics:
Rajesh Desai
Mehul Anchan
This also marks the end of this Alegria Experience Blog series and also the start of my writing this year. If you love stories, do check out my blog at srjsblog.wordpress.com , novels on my wattpad account and micro tales on my verified Mirakee account!
Until next time, cya!
ALEGRIA - The Festival Of Joy 
Reblogged this on theSRJblog and commented:
Back to writing after a sabbatical of 8 months! New stories and posts soon! Stay tuned!
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