Its over officially now...BrandScan 2004, the event that saw me go without a bite of food for two complete days is over now...the event that threw quite a few last minute surprises has got its curtains closed...BrandScan 2004 has been such a unforgettable experinece..both from a Business School grad prespective and from my personal prespective...BrandScan is a two day event, and the individual content on each day would depend on the nature of projects that we expect...but one thing is for sure...it would have all components to attract both the youth that is the defining scape of Manipal and the families that throng the Udupi district...this time too it was no exception.. the first day saw two events...Mr.Biker...for those adrenaline pumping Bike stunts....there were in all three rounds...Blind Folded driving, Obstacle Clearance and the last one was the stunt round..I will be putting up all the photos sometime tomorrow or day after...as part of the Event Management Committee, it was an excellent experience...the next event was the Rock Competition. There were 6 bands playing for the competition and it too was a delight to organise..the first day footfall was 2100. It was a day before CAT and the main audience for the rock competition was students...that the footfall was 2100 inspite of this, is a remainder of the popularity of the Event.

The second day ie. yesterday there were three events planned... we had zeroed in on a Painting competition, Adarsh-Dampati and Magic Show, keeping in mind the target segment for the second day...one of the best and biggest market research fest in India by a Indian Business School, BrandScan is truely a master piece of the effort by the TAPMIans. The painting competition that drew 348 entries, the Adarsh-Dampati that gave away Rs.25,000 worth of gifts as prices, the Magic Show that saw the crowd spellbound for two hours....all these had made the footfalls to BrandScan 2004 to be 6,500. This sort of crowd of general public would be unheard of in any Indian Business Schools.

The Drawing competition christined Rang-Birang was a huge hit, with 348 entries and a huge crowd to participate in that. As an organiser I learnt a lot in this one event...to control a crowd of parents when their children are secure even inside a school is a herculian task...virtually none of the parents came out of the class rooms...all the parents just stood at the entrance of the classes and on seeing a parent one child starts crying and this starts off a chain reaction...suddenly all the room is filled with crying children...the next moment all the parents ruch inside the class room and there is utter chaos...this also gives the dimension of trust...how difficult it is to buld trust in people...had they trusted us, they would have left their children in the class and waited outside...now I dont know whether there was lack of trust only in their part, or there was an implied lack of trust in our part too?..... when a single parent raises a concern with a high pitch voice, there are atleast half a dozen other people who havent even thought about it till that moment, who are till that moment completely satisfied with status-quo want that to be changed... is this what is called crowd menatlity?...the individual taking the crowd's behaviour or the crowd taking the first individual's behaviour?...there has to be a bit of learning here..which one comes first...will the same person who raises his voice first in the crowd do so when he is alone and the same crowd which finds it's voice in the first person raising his voice, take that as referrence if he is not a part of that crowd?....

I always beleive in the maxim "All that starts well ends well"... this was true in this case too.. but there are many more things to write... I have resumed my blogging and so in the next few days, there would be lotz of stuff to discuss.....