To fully understand the scope and the scale at which this expo was being organised, I need to describe some stuff in detail. At the risk of boring the reader or sounding extremely egoistic, I might delve into details here and there, but will try to stay on track….
Our team in Dehradun consisted of 3 officers, a senior director and a peon. There would have been 4 of us officers, but as I mentioned before one of us had left us in Feb 2011. To help out with the more menial tasks like correspondence and telephonic confirmations, we had also hired 3 temporary staff. One of them, a girl, had been on the team since Sept 2010. Two of the boys were students of MBA programs. These 3 people were the team which was corresponding with all the invitees, sending mass mails and calling up those who had been mailed. These poor devils were making about 100-150 calls a day. The girl from the trio was also looking after the Exhibitor contact list, generating the database for mass mailings and also generating databases of those visiting and attending vendor development programmes from those who had responded to our deluge of mails and calls.
One of us officers was in charge of selling exhibitor space. The exhibition was being put up in a large ground at Haridwar where hangars were put up. One unit space was a stall 3 mt x 3 mt equalling a total of 9 sq mts. He was calling up companies who had shown interest thanks to our mailers and publicity. It was his job to sell space and keep track of all exhibitors, update the hall layouts, coordinate with the teams from other CII offices who were chipping in and helping out. It was a tough job as something like this had never been organised in Uttarakhand, so companies were sceptical about participation. It was also his job to get sponsors onboard. A really tough job indeed.
Another guy was busy with the regular office work such as accounts, correspondence etc in addition to maintaining track of accounts for the industrial expo in coordination with one team member in Chandigarh. This person was also in charge of getting all requisite permissions and make sure all departments were satisfied like the fire department, the administration, the police (since the Chief Minister was to attend the show). He also checked out accommodation options in Haridwar for the organising team. This meant that the poor fellow was travelling to Haridwar every week.
As for me, I ws coordinating the temp staff. My teams job? To follow up with VIPs and get confirmations so that they could be received at the venue. We had signed up with 2 online trade portals and also put up a website. I had to nag all three constantly to get the listing right, the website accurate and updated, make sure the errors were corrected, if a new sponsor came on board, changes had to be made to the website. Queries being generated from the trade sites had to be followed up. In addition, it was my job to coordinate with the printer for passes, invites, and the most important; the exhibitor catalogue containing the details of all the participating exhibitors.
Besides us there was a whole team working from Chandigarh, Noida, Rajasthan. Exhibition halls, VDP, Media, Visitor Promotion, not to mention the actual erection of the expo infrastructure. A whole lot of work that cannot be mentioned here. Without the team from our other offices, the expo wouldn’t have been possible.
As the actual day arrived, we were all ready and in Haridwar 2 days in advance to oversee the final preparations. Still, everything that could go wrong did. The chief minister decided he wanted to open the expo but could not do it on the first day, so the inaugural function was postponed to the second day of the expo, after much deliberation. On the first day itself, the weather was cloudy and had rained the night before. Morning of the opening day, strong winds tore up and brought down the entry gate to the expo and damaged some halls. The conference halls and some halls started leaking as a result and damage control had to be implemented on overdrive. Some exhibitors did not show up, others showed up asking for a stall even though the whole expo was sold out. The restaurant was unable to cope with the rush on the first day.
The list can go on. But these were all dwarfed by the success of the expo. Despite the 150 plus seating capacity, the conference hall was full for every Vendor Development Programme, with over 700 people from 140 companies attending the 7 workshops spread over three days. The expo saw over 5000 visitors over a span of three days. Again I could quote a long list of similar statistics. But all I would say is that the success of the expo can be measured by the number of queries generated for the next expo and the fact that other state offices are now planning similar events. The fact that the expo was all sold out and then some. Participants had come from all over the country, from Haridwar to Coimbatore.
Well all in all a very successful event and all thanks to team work. I could go on writing about the expo or I could stop here. But then it would be a post event report and not a blog post.
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