Behind the scenes

Organising an intercollegiate festival of a magnitude as that of Verve is no easy task. There are various things to be taken care of - li...

Organising an intercollegiate festival of a magnitude as that of Verve is no easy task. There are various things to be taken care of 8211; like planning of events, arranging for colleges to participate, sponsorship, deciding the venue, adequate manpower required to run the show 8211; the list goes on and on.

Pepsi-Verve 8217;99 which was held on January 24, 25 and 26 proved to be the largest intercollegiate in the country, what with a participation of 144 colleges and around 50,000 students attending it!

For the young crusaders of the Express Youth Forum EYF, Verve is one of their major annual projects which they take up as a challenge, and seen by the enormity of the event, they sure do a great job every year!

Since the first Verve which was held four years ago, there has been an addition of 30 colleges on an average every year. Commenting on possible improvements that can be made from the organiser8217;s point of view, Anand Kumbhojkar, president EYF Deccan branch, said, 8220;We analyse our performance in earlier Verves and make any necessary changes and improvements. Like, this year we included workshops in our schedule. We invited professionals from various fields and held four workshops over the three days.8221;

Another modification in the events was Verve-Dict wherein participants were required to prepare a newsletter based on Pepsi-Verve 8217;99. In this way, the organisers got a feedback from the participants, that too in the written form.

But how do these youngsters go about managing 18 events plus one Informals event? Says Vishal Sharma, president EYF Central and Camp, 8220;The real success lies in the planning phase. We held our first meeting in July where a rough format was drafted and delegation of few jobs was done. Our real brainstorming session began in September and from December 21 onwards, we had daily meetings.8221;

Out of the 100-odd members, all between the age group of 16-28, 36 permanent members were chosen as event managers. The forum also received a strong backing from 12 ex-members, which included past president Amol Patil, who is now in USA, who hosted a website on Verve and Sandeep, another ex-member in the US, who sent the questions for Ken-U the quiz through e-mail.

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The crusaders also received full support from Dr Vishwanath Karad and all the staff members of MIT college the venue for Bajaj-Verve 8217;98 and Pepsi-Verve 8217;99. Says Anand, 8220;We received our major assistance from The Indian Express who played a parental role in helping us realise this dream. And we believe we have lived up to the expectations of the sponsors, participants and the judges.8221; Vishal adds, 8220;In fact, the response from the judges was so good that some of the participants of Kshitij, the one-act play competition, were selected for an audition of Sai Paranjpe8217;s TV serial by one our judges, Meera Ranade.8221;

8220;It is the love and dedication of this united team of enthusiastic and intelligent boys and girls, who have hardly any professional expertise in event management, that has made Pepsi-Verve 8217;99 possible. We only provided them with a platform, but it was solely their motivation which led to the huge success,8221; asserts Rajesh Rane, chairman EYF and branch manager The Indian Express, congratulating the crusaders.

With another edition of another successful Verve getting over just two weeks back, collegians are now looking forward to the fifth Verve in the next millennium.