The story behind Thinkers, Enablers and Doers at TEDxGLIMChennai
A team is more than a collection of people. It is a process of Give and Take.
This is not just the story of a successful TEDx event. It’s the story of a new beginning, of a new community that is devoted to ideas worth spreading.
TEDxGLIMChennai was the first ever TEDx event to be organised by Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai. The event was held on 4th February 2017 and the theme of the event was “Eclectic”, where speakers from diverse backgrounds discussed ground-breaking ideas that could reshape tomorrow’s landscape. An audience of 100 enjoyed the event which featured 6 speakers and 1 performance.
The entire idea of organising a TEDx event panned out when a small group of students in the college decided to start a club to discuss about problems in the local community and find innovative ideas to solve them. That’s when we decided to organise a TEDx event so that we can bring in more ideas from the local community. We had a brainstorming session before we applied for a license to ensure that we have the best of the ideas for the event.
We obtained the license for the TEDx event on 17th September 2016. It was about time a dedicated organising team was formed, and instantly a bunch of TED enthusiasts signed up . We received over 150 applications and shortlisted and interviewed 100 applicants. The entire process took over one week and finally we had an able team of 25 who were ready to pull off the event. We decided to form sub-teams and each member of the team was given responsibility to handle various functions. The entire team also got an opportunity to attend TEDxChennai to experience a TEDx event. This gave the team the much needed boost to organise the event.
The marketing team planned out community building activities for the event. The team installed an “idea wall”— featuring all ideas from the community in the campus. They also made a promo video for the event and a mannequin challenge video. The team was responsible for managing the social media campaign for the event and they ensured that the audience had the best experience. They also organised community building activities around local villages raising awareness about sanitation and cleanliness.
The speaker curation team was responsible for identifying, selecting and training speakers for the event. We decided to have a student speaker contest and out of 30 applicants, the team selected Amitesh Pandey from the PGPM 2016–17 Batch to be the TEDx speaker. The event also featured a faculty speaker Prof. R. L. Shankar who talked about what would happen if machines took over our markets.
The external speakers included Bosskey, Indian film actor, Mehak Sagar, Cofounder of WedMeGood, Mudit Dani, Table Tennis Prodigy and Marta Vanduzer — Snow, Social Worker. We also had a performance by Abhisekh Anand, an animation dancer.
The events team, with perfect coordination with the backstage crew, ensured that light, sound and projection systems worked fine. They also gave the speakers a feel about the event rundown and the experience of the talk even before the actual event. The team toiled all night designing the creative aesthetics and put together an exemplary stage for the next morning.
We had an eclectic audience mainly comprising of students from Great Lakes. Tickets were priced at INR 700. All the audience were given gift bags with goodies.
The finance team and sponsorship team ensured that the event ran smoothly without any financial constraints. The main sponsor for the event was InfoTrellis. This event would not have been possible without the support of Dr. Dr. Bala V Balachandran, Founder, Dean & Chairman, Great Lakes Institute of Management and Dr. Vaidy Jayaraman, Associate Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management.
We had a wonderful time organizing our first TEDx University event! Few members of the team also travelled to Infosys Mysore to attend the TEDxRegionalWorkshop post the event. Currently the team is working on post-production activities. We are hoping to have the next edition of TEDxGLIMChennai soon and also host a few TEDx salon events in future.
You can look at the event pictures at https://www.flickr.com/photos/tedxglimchennai/
Visit our website: www.tedxglimchennai.com
Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/TEDxGLIMChennai
Follow TEDxGLIMChennai on Twitter: twitter.com/TEDxGLIMChennai #TEDxGLIMChennai
If you have organized a TEDx event earlier please help make this article better by sharing ideas that helped you in putting together your event successfully.
If you want to discuss more about TEDx or need help in planning your TEDx feel free to write to me at — bharatsraj@gmail.com.
