Pragyan 08- A dissapointment

Pragyan --The international techno management festival of NIT ,Trichy as always promised to be a great event.Pragyan 07 had been an eye opener to us in many ways --the first major paper presentation event we attended and the first time we did a robot was for pragyan 07.With a sort of an emotional bonding we booked our tickets to pragyan 08......but this time the hype ,the expectations ,the fame that pragyan 07 had created were shattered.When we landed at the gates of NIT Trichy we expected a very similar sight of a hospi desk with smiling girls and active volunteers ,but we were enquired by a lone volunteer who seemed to have come straight from his bed.When asked abt the hospi desk ,he replied,"Today is day zero and we r preparing yet"...these guys are good enough to come up with these terms and not to have organised everything beforehand.Ive been to the worst colleges even without auditoriums but not without a hospi desk for a symposium.
We walked all the way to the Garnet rooms where we were supposed to stay carrying our luggages ,our robots and our project.Images of pragyan 07 with lavish decorations and vans dropping us to our rooms crossed by in my mind.We entered the garnet room with more than 25 beds arranged in some haphazard manner...we never expected this ..we thot we wud be allotted a seperate room for the 300 bucks we paid for the so called 'hospitality'...not that we wanted privacy or that we wanted to be alienated from other participants...the fact was that we wer der in NIT for robotics and paper events for which we needed workspace for preparations.I immeadiatly called up the coordinator and explained our situation quoting our pleasant experiences at pragyan 07..what i got was a rude and cold "that was 07...now this is 08..."...we were already getting a sense of the differences...and next came the worst part....when i asked for our food coupons and ID cards,imagine what i was told that the hospi amount dint include the food...which means we had to buy our food paying money...300 for an overcrowded room excluding food was too much...No where in the site they had mentioned about this stupidity..and ID cards werent ready yet...
And the four days we stayed at NIT ,der wasnt a sign of a symposium crowd at all...we never expected a Pragyan to be like this.....the events though were held professionally without any lag.Our room mates from Banglore made a very good company sharing ideas mutually.
Ive organised techfests in my college though not as large as Pragyan but with good crowd and participation.What I feel is the organisers must be patient and accountable and answering the queries with a smile...this was missing in pragyan 08....and this incident hurt us a lot....it was the final moments of Pragyan and we were waiting at the PR desk for our winner certificates to be delivered .Only one girl seemed to be incharge der and she couldnt obviously handle the queue.She was sweating and seemed to be tense...one of my frinds asked the volunteers there if they could possibly arrange for another person to help us in her work,,,and immeadiatly the event coordinator came up to him and replied very harshly,"shes the only person allotted to this work..shell do it..and she has to..if uve got any complaints write it in the feedback form..and dont say these to me..".....never ever expected such a reply...


and of course " it was 07 and now this is 08"


I dont intend to degrade NIT ....just that the way pragyan 07 was held had created huge expectations...they could have tried better to live up to it...