Excel In The Making…
“ And now we will be talking about….”
Well, I knew concentrating in class would be of no help. My mind was wandering off. Excel 2018 was about to begin and there was so much that was needed to be done. (Oops! Ex- excel core, sorry for skipping this :P)
And that’s when my knight in shining armour, Pranav, the chairman of Excel 2018 barged into the classroom, asking for me. I was thrilled to get out of class. Nithul Krishna, whom we all lovingly call the Media Simham accompanied us to the rugged corner, right in front of room no 211.
“Excel in the making”
“Yes?”
“We need to release an article soon. Excel 2018 is going to be bigger than ever and everyone needs to know how it is.”
“Yes, sir. Consider it done”
To my surprise, I was asked to get back into class. Pranav was very particular that way, making sure he didn’t have to run around for duty leaves after everything.
And that’s how it began. The birth of a novel idea to write a blog post about “Excel”
It is true how MEC works in two seasons — Before Excel and After Excel.
This meant a lot of work and therefore I sought Chandni Nair’ s help. She in-turn forwarded it to Jinjil Abhiram, who went after Shemrin and Anand Raj to get it done. Also, Special thanks to Ashwanth NM for the cover image!
What you are now going to read is the amalgamation of thoughts, ideas, notions and feelings of numerous peolple united in their efforts towards achieving a common goal — which is in fact what EXCEL has always been about.
Brace yourself. It’s going to be a pretty long read but I assure you, my team, has only shown you a very teeny-tiny glimpse!
The past few weeks have been exhilarating.
Excel 2018, the annual techno- managerial of Govt. Model Engineering College, Thrikkakara was celebrated with much gusto and zeal.
Held over a period of 3 days, the reason why Excel gets all the love that it rightly deserves can be attributed to the work that ensues months before the arrival of the festival.
First up is Prince Mathew (a.k.a the Prince Charming of MEC) who was all in admiration for the heart throb of MEC — EXCEL! even before he joined the college. The stories of Excel days that his cousins narrated to him in fact made him personify EXCEL as the girl whom he direly wanted to date! One year down, and he saw himself getting acquainted well with his dream girl since he got to be a part of the website making process for a pre event! Then by third year he totally fell in love with Excel and went on to head the CS Tech department.
Being members of the Excel content writing team, we have had the enriching experience of closely associating with different departments that work in tandem to realise Excel in all its grandeur. It was then we decided to go ahead and meet up with the 21 core members affiliated with various departments of Excel. Hence began our conversations that went on for the whole day. Experiences were shared, insights provided and excitement neighed high. The article creating process began with General Tech head Rohith Pradeep’s voice message. What started as a mere formality went on to cover the subtler emotional aspects that lent gravitas to what Excel stands for. Rohit heaped praises on the different teams he collaborated with as a part of Excel prep. His voice broke into an inflection from the steady monotone, as he emphasised the team support he had managing the various departments.
“First years, though barely into the atmospheric specifics of the college, worked with inspiring enthusiasm, and ambience work for both non tech and tech events were perfected with zest”. Hearing this, Ameen, the guy heading the Ambience department popped up to shout just one thing; Pwolichu da makkale! Well… to the uninitiated, that one word of exclamation entirely encapsulates the efforts of all the people involved within the constructs of Excel.
Haritha Paul, the Social Initiatives head proceeded to speak,“MEC has different wings like Thanal, and NSS that do their own bit of contributing towards the society, so for Excel, our department, the social initiatives wanted to incorporate technology in all our endeavours. Harness it to the best of our abilities, and provide conclusive solutions to address the persistent issues and concerns in society. Making a change? Yes, with technology at the behest. Plans were made, most succeeding to make the impact we wanted to bring about”.
IBeTo, innovations for a better tomorrow, a social initiative programme in connection with Excel, was successfully held. It showcased the exhibition, and presentation of brilliant projects, and was an opportunity for students to mingle with erudite members from the industry.
Excel, this year introduced some new events. Heard of Plogging? Picking up waste while you jog. Spot on!, a blogging and vlogging competition sponsored by the award winning Youth Ki Awaaz. Excel managed to not only get us interested but had us thoroughly enjoy these events.
MECMUN’s second edition was also hosted in association with EXCEL 2018 with the motto, ‘Forum for a Change’!
In the words of Amrin Kareem, the head of Talks Department, “Our preparation for Excel 2018 started a year back, when we core members met up in the auditorium, and decided to write our dreams onto chits, and then read them out. Dreams of all kinds, no matter how impossible they seemed. Everything that we 4th years wanted to see eventuate for Excel 2018. Now I look back at it, I see that a lot of unrealisable ones have been successfully realised, and we take pride in that.”
A Global Tech summit, as a part of Excel 2018 celebrations was planned. Funds for the event were in consideration with the CM of Kerala, and education minister, taking an interest in the event. CEO of Tesla motors, Elon Musk, was supposed to make a half an hour web cam appearance for the event. All was going good… but something ominous was lurking in the near future.
AND THEN THE FLOODS HAPPENED…
The state was battered by rains and the losses amounted to millions. Lives disrupted. Diseases suppurating. MEC was a relief camp. Students and staff of MEC persevered, to provide support, help salvage whatever possible, and housed hundreds of people for a few days in the college premises.
The college and the hostels were converted into makeshift homes, supplies were collected, sorted, packaged, and distributed to various camps and the students were there at all times to see to the needs of one and all. While MEC was busy lending a helping hand to the ones in need, the plans and preparations for Excel 2018 were temporarily sidelined. Funds and time of every MECian was focussed on rehabilitating the victims.
NO EXCEL!!!???
Owing to the somber happenings of the dreadful floods, plans were being made to shelve Excel all together. The tides were turned against us, the cards had been badly dealt, but it was not in us MECians to easily forgo, and forget our beloved Excel.
The Bounce Backs
‘Small sacrifices had to be made’, says Fabin, our General Secretary. The Global Summit event had to be scaled down to what came to be known as Emerge 2018. But we didn’t let that affect the splendour of the event. With eminent speakers, and a passionate audience, Emerge was one of the few success tales that brought Excel back on track.
Several workshops and conferences were held over the past few months. Juliana Biju, the head of the same recounts memories of networking with people from different streams. She reminisces one particular moment from the happenings of the event, Emerge, where the bot Saaya was confronted with a quirky question!
The Lone Wolves
What started as a quick group with M.G. Krishnan and Navneeth Parameswaran and Nikita Mallya to get the design, content and online media publicity going, went on to become our own thing. “The Lone Wolves”, a name befitting each of its constituent department heads, was a place where they would inspect, question, correct and pester one other.
Although hesitant at first, Navneeth then opened up to fill our chat with a dozen messages. “It was great working for Excel”, he says. “After I was announced to be the Design Core, my phone never stopped ringing”, he chuckles. He specially mentions how Amrin Kareem sacrificed a lot, giving Navneeth space to breathe owing to the ever increasing work load. But that’s how it is. Excel has always been a group event. Everyone working together towards a common goal.
Which is why, you could never come to the end of it. Posters would come in one after the other and that’s where M.G. Krishnan comes into the picture.
Keeping everyone on their toes, M.G. Krishnan made sure -
DESIGN + CONTENT + ONLINE MEDIA = Best EXCEL Ever!!!
Potpourri of Goodwill
Rakesh Krishnan R, the zealous Joint Secretary of Excel is all for the Marketing and Publicity team headed by The Vargheses (Joe and Kevin)! “Though it may seem ironical, it’s startling to know of how the Marketing team rose like a Phoenix, with quite a good count of marketing deals even after a dreadful deluge! Hurrah to these two prime teams for being the backbones of Excel 2018. “The need for mustering a large enough number of participants for the fest also cannot be underestimated.”
Rohan Roy, the PC guy for the Workshops and Conferences department was running behind all the important delegates during the three days of Excel.
The food festival would not have been possible if it weren’t for Aseef Mohammed and his brilliant efforts in guiding his team. Excel had a plethora of exciting non tech events this year, thanks to Mohamed Dhanish and his exemplary financial budgeting skills. He was fierce but he sure was good at heart.
Nithul, the Media Relations Team Manager was super, excited with the relevance of Excel-
“I wish to see Excel right at the top, as good, or even better than a fest conducted by an IIT or an NIT. And I do believe, we are on the right course”.
No content is left unturned when it is covered by the very content team that is writing the content for this very content. Nikita Mallya , head of content excel 2018, believes that everything is incomplete without content. Most of us content writers, are mere ghost writers”.
Boasting a team of 40 odd individuals, it gives us great pleasure, to read our contributions broadcasted by means of a poster and its content descriptions. The readers may not know who wrote what, but it is still a humanising and a grounding feeling to read a line of a write up and sneak a smile at recognising your contributions.
So to bring an end to the ghost writing series mentioned earlier, the college has come up with an Online Magazine on Medium, named Paperkin, that serves interesting articles to its readers. Paperkin, EXCEL 2018’s Official Media Partner, is all about handcrafted fun.
Excel is the culmination of joint efforts of spanning across the years 1,2,3 & 4.. The tradition has it that the first years take up the ambience work, second years take up management, third years, implementation of various extravaganzas and fourth years orchestrate the whole of the three day event with all fervour!
Ronith, the market manager for Excel wrote us this wonderfully fleshed out message with regard to the “labour that goes behind the events”. In his exact words, “Patti Pani, simplified as working like a dog, was what it was all about in the beginning of his B.Tech life here in MEC.” Slowly, but interestingly enough, he and his fellow batchmates began to enjoy it. He relates to Excel as, “from the students, to the students, for the students feeling.”
The three days of Excel were all in the hands of the event management heads: Ahmed Shamil and Saud Mohammed Hyder who are essentially the Management Gods. If you were able to experience Excel in all of its glory- its all because of these two people and their giant team backing them up.
Navin Mohan or NaMo is the brains behind the Excel website. The web team have put up a splendid display visually appealing to the eyes and internally robust and strong code base nevertheless.
I cannot physically list out all the co-ordinators whose efforts and hard work you witnessed during excel. The list is too long.
But to all the juniors — Guys, you were just freaking amazing!
And to all the fourth years — YESSSSSS! WE DID IT!
To the ex- mecians, hope we managed to exceed your expectations and take Excel to greater heights just as you wished for. We thank you for your love, guidance and everything in between.
There is immense satisfaction, and euphoria in abundance to finally witness it all come together on the days of Excel. It is sort of a bittersweet moment. #Pattipanis will be missed, the countdown towards excel will be missed, legitimately cutting classes would be missed. Pulling out all nighters for a cause not involving exams will be missed. But we will be back every year. For Excel isn’t simply an event. It’s a journey, that never ends. We may graduate, get into jobs… become X-MECians. .
We all came together to Bridge the Realms.
This post doesn’t begin to even cover the whole essence behind Excel. And for that, I beg your forgiveness.
Excel isn’t yours or mine.
Excel has and will always be OURS.
