Technical events and conferences are not new to me. It is one of my to do always attending or participating. I am experiencing a good journey so far like
Being an attendee in events and then volunteering event virtually later speaking in events as a speaker. Now?
Wish to volunteer in one of the physical events and continue to do.
When you dream of something looking for an opportunity then obviously opportunity will knock on the door. This is where opportunity knocks on my door.
While submitting CFP for KCD Bengaluru connected with Aravind Puteru on some questions about CFP submission. He ask me one day "Did you apply to volunteer at KCD Blr?" I said no but would like to do it. He said will come back to me. After a few days, he added me to the WhatsApp group for KCD Bengaluru volunteers. And the journey started.
We met in the second week of April 2023 in person first time to discuss KCD Bengaluru 2023. There I met first time all gems of the KCD Bengaluru team. I will proudly call them gems because they were really like gems. How we find out gems from stones Similarly team was like that. This is my personal opinion about being part of a team. Let me introduce the KCD Bengaluru team.
Pillars of KCD Bengaluru
Neependra Khare - Dhoni of our team
Kiran Mova - Cool-minded and an important pillar of the team
Aravind Putrevu - Coach and expert of our team ( experienced person in managing and organising many events )
Prithvi Raj - Brain behind our CFP selection and Mr India of our team.
Rachna Anuj - Most experienced and Vocal member of the team. Caring person in the team. She will take care of everyone.
Vishwas Narayan - Most energetic and ready to do any work person of the team.
Shashank Girish - Coolest and up-to-the-point person in the team.
Parthiv Menon & Tuneer Saha - Power packed and youngest pillar of our team
Namya LG - In Age she is younger than me but in maturity experienced and I learned a lot from her
Vandana Verma - Community and strict member of our team.
and me
After this first meeting, we continued our discussion and finalisation over WhatsApp. Everyone got assigned - each workshop to each of us as a host to manage. KCD Bengaluru was planned in two parts one is an online workshop on multiple topics and the second is physical two days event. Each Saturday one workshop was planned for half a day. It was accomplished very well.
Days are getting closer to event day.
We all met again the second-time full team was not there but discussed on responsibilities for each of us on the event day. Same place and same time 😅
finalised our roles. I and Vishwas got the role of managing two days of social media. As part of this, we need to keep social media accounts as hot as every single minute by posting event updates. Me and Vishwas made a plan for Responsibility. He will write content and keep it ready content for post and he will be in Hall A. I will be in hall B and posting on social media twitter and Linkedin will be my work. I was excited and same time feel pressurise to keep that standard and rhyme. Social media handling I did earlier for ACD India 2022 but that was a virtual event. So the expectation will be different than the virtual one from the in-person event.
Cool!! All set our swags arrived, practice for the marathon was completed, and the last check-in for the venue are completed. This time our full team was there in person.
2nd June 2023
First day of KCD Bengaluru 2023.
The whole team was present at 8 am. Everyone was nervous and excited at the same time. You know we got almost 850+ registrations. This is my reaction when you got more than expected. Now it's time to keep the expectations of those 850+ people.
Registration booth started flooding to get badges and goodies.
Kiran & Prithvi addressed the audience about how the CFP process started, and how we decided on the final list of speakers. Now I understand how difficult the process of CFP selection is and how tough decisions have to make. Kudos to you both 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Kubernetes community days in Bengaluru started with a superb beatboxing performance.
Next was kicking off the keynotes by Nabarun Pal and Nikhita Raghunath
Then we started hall A & hall B with other speakers as per plan. Detailed blogs already written by many of us can find in the reference section.
The sponsorship booth was super crowded and attendee was participating in their contest to win prizes.
We were on top of sharing all updates on social media. Do you believe I was managing social media on my mobile phone? Creating videos, editing videos, capturing photos and posting updates everything was done on a mobile phone. My fingers were working like a treadmill speed while typing and posting and another end Vishwas on keeping content ready not only for the general post but for sketch notes too. I trouble him a lot to get updates 😂 but he is all rounder along visiting booths, recording some video footage, and talking to people able to give content on time. Only you can manage Vishwas. Kudos to your energy and passion 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻. The whole team's energy was superb throughout the day.
Shabana Jahangeer was MC for Hall A - Kudos to her energy and passion towards her work and for trying all possible ways to keep the audience engaged. She gave me a task to record her video while hosting the event.
Hall B MCs were our experienced members Prithvi and Vandana. I still remember how Vandana followed tight timelines and rules for the event. Her announcement before the speaker join the stage was keeping the audience engaged. Timely start and timely end of every talk. This is why I called her a strict member of our team.
Shashank was handling the speaker lounge and speakers' requirements. Smiles on the speaker's face were telling them he did an amazing job. Kudos to Shashank.
Neependra and Aravind were taking care of the whole event. Looking out for every execution and making sure functions smoothly. Even if in the rush of events Aravind gave feedback on one of the tweets. Appreciate both of them for their work 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
One of the critical work of the event was managed by Namya, Prathiv and Tuneer managing the registration desk, distributing goodies and audience management. Being a newbie but they all did great work. Thanks and Kudos to all of them 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
We planned one Deckhatlon booth for the activity but due busyness of the event we couldn't participate they come on time and left before the event ended. 😭
End of the day my finger was paining like hell. But still, my energy level was the same. Because the next day we have to keep expectations.
One of the surprises of the event and attractions of the event was live sketching notes by Silly Strokes both Tanvi did an amazing job. Kudos to them 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This is how our first day concluded with an amazing start and end. In this whole rush we didn't forget to take a team picture. We wanted to capture every moment on camera.
3rd June
The day started with a 5K marathon though couldn't get much participation but that's not important. It Important was to execute and have fun in the early morning before the event started. That we accomplished in this.
The main theme of the second day was traditional attire which we announced on the last day so that attendees will also join us to celebrate KCD Bengaluru 2023 traditionally. One week before we decided on colour and what kind of attire we will wear so that our team look more confident. Like other planned things this was also well planned.
The day started with the above 👆🏻iconic photo taken by Aravind
9 Lessons from k8s in Enterprise by Vishal Biyani was truly amazing, relatable and insightful
Similar like the first day we divided into hall A and hall B for respective talks.
All talks were a mixture of experienced, beginner and advanced.
The second day was an important day for me. The person who I looked at and started my open source and community journey was in India for JsConf. We had multiple times virtual talk but never get a chance to meet in person him. On the last day, I called him but due to his being busy in JsConf, he didn't answer on that time. but late at night he called me back and said Avinash tomorrow we will surely meet by any chance. I was on hope. You know I was planning to meet him after event day but fortunately, he came to KCD Bengaluru to meet me and many other folks like me who follow him and are inspired by him. One person is Santosh Yadav. We had a good discussion and he appreciated my work and what I am doing. It feels good when your mentor is happy means you are on the right track. Along with volunteering experience at KCD Bengaluru and I got this another valuable word which will keep my fire ignited. In this event, the second day was a little relaxing for me and I got the chance to meet many community folks, old and current colleague
This is how we ended the second day of KCD Bengaluru 2023.
Heyyyy!!! wait... this is not ending something interesting happened at the end of KCD Bengaluru 2023 2nd day.
Live music performance by Engineer for the engineers
This is one of the other surprises planned by the KCD Bengaluru team. Everyone was tapping their foot and singing songs while the performance was running.
Concluding event
This is how KCD Bengaluru 2023 event concluded with a happy ending but this is not ending this is the actual start do more like this.
Social media impact
Takeaway
Learning, Learning and more learning. Because learning is never ending process.
How to organise such big events
What are challenges
How to manage responsibilities
Many more
One of my dreams I can wish to organise such an event in upcoming future. Long way to go and so much to learn from many people.
Thank you for reading Journey. Hope this helps you and excites you to become a volunteer in any future events and gain a similar experience.
