The first real hurdle was choosing a right date and venue. The regional nuances and some political situation, kept tossing the dates, when 5 weeks ago, we finally closed it for 6th Feb 2020. We were fortunate to find a benefactor in the form of the Mr Bengani, Chairman of Ankurhati Gems & Jewellery Welfare Association. His guidance proved helpful in settling things in place.
The chances of seeing success with a post lunch, mid-week, seminar did not appear very high initially, however when you go with the attitude, that even a failure is an opportunity to learn, one tends to emerge victorious only. So setting ourselves a humble goal of inviting at least 35-40 guests, we started the execution phase of our plan. With a slew of meetings and visits on ground by our local representative, Indraneel and full support from the marketing team of Kriishh and Sneha, we saw the efforts blossoming into success. We received expression of interest to attend the technical symposium from over 100 people!
In a short span of time, the marketing collaterals were created, the invites were printed, the seminar presentations were prepared, mock runs were done, tele-calling confirmations were sought, venue and high tea arrangements were put together. Piece by piece everything started falling in place and our champions for the day, guest speakers, Rakesh and Akshay, were by now fully ready to deliver the promise.
While we started with a mix of anxiety and enthusiasm, the final day turned out much better than we thought. The turnout was excellent – in spite of the venue being in one corner of the city, over 85 people attended the event, beating the traffic snarls. The speakers delivered so well that the audience were in rapt attention for the entire duration of over 3 hours. They kept on asking questions, we went on patiently answering and explaining. The seeds of future engagement were deeply sown by now.
