Every thing we decide, atleast in a friends / college group starts with a “brainwashing session”. Even the same happened here… Students from arts background gave a good hype about this event. Actually I think this is the strongest form of marketing for Kyoorius guys (just kidding). No one from engineering background was ready to go initially due to many reasons. One among it was the cost involved and secondly no one knows about the speakers and bla blaa... But finally due to peer pressure, one by one started signing up. More than the regular conference, students were more interested in the workshops. They paid 500 to 1000 rupees extra for these workshops.
After registering through the website, we got a call (by the next afternoon). The Kyoorius Design Yatra Team (KDY Team) was asking for the registration confirmation and then the regular procedures followed. Later we all got an invoice via email.
The problems started from here.. One student who wanted to attend a workshop signed up for it. But they (KDY Team) said its full. Other student who signed up after this student got that workshop (how do you explain this ! ) This created a lot of disrespect to the KDY Team and few students were even completely irritated by the way the telephone calls have been answered.
Everyone paid through diff means and one student didn’t get the invoice till the last moment. When called, they were like “we will check and respond” kinds. Lots of phone calls / confusions in booking train tickets etc were going on. This student got completely pissed and decided not to attend the event.
I really don’t know how much time will it take to generate an invoice and send it via email. At the max 5 mins? They delayed it for more than 2-3 days… actually you will be surprised to hear when the invoice reached : - ) let me tell it later.
Then the next problem. We (4 students) deposited the money from a single account to their bank account. Then sent the scanned deposit receipt via email as per their request. No reply / acknowledgement from their side. (Fine… I thought they will be busy with their last min arrangements)
After 3 days someone from KDY Team calls and says “4 students haven paid the money yet”. Then again we sent the receipt to the newly mentioned email id. Then after few mins we get another call from a completely new person telling that we haven paid the money and when we mentioned that we just mailed it to kavitanomulwar@tafp.in … he is like… “its ok you please send it again to bharatgosia@tafp.in”. Then again in few mins another call.. “hey you send the receipt details to nehaltantia@tafp.in also”. In between I even asked, “cant you ask your colleague bharatgosia to forward it ?” the reply is like “you please send it as soon as possible, if you want to attend the conference”.
For gods sake.. it’s a single email with a single receipt copy. We explained this to all the people who called us. They are not even in a position to listen to what we were talking.. at last its like.. “its ok sir.. you please send that email again to bharatgosia@tafp.in"
Even that’s ok.. after a day one more new person called and asked the most dumb questions possible. Its like everyone has selected different packages. So the cost to be paid also varies. All that is clearly mentioned in our email. Moreover all these details are available in their invoice itself. The lady asks “Why is that this particular student paid extra?” I mean why will someone pay extra? either she could have referred to the invoice sent to that particular person.. or why all that.. it’s a simple guess. It’s a rounded amount 500 or 1000 extra.. its so obvious that he / she has paid for the workshops.. When I explained her this, she was like “ohhhhhh ok ok ok ok I got it…” I really felt like I am talking to a customer care person who doesn know anything about the product !
What to doooooooo ????? We have paid the money… We followed whatever was instructed to us.
At last we were all set to go.. We also successfully went to Mumbai.. Mumbai welcomed us with a huge rain. Have heard a lot about Mumbai rain.. but for the first time I experienced it.. (no words to explain!) it was pouring literally… that too the funny part was, it rained exactly from morning till afternoon and stopped after that… generally I have seen either it rains all through the day or it will start in the evening and will continue all through the night.. this rain pattern was quite new to me : - )
I stayed in Thane - Ishwari Vakhariya’s house. We got wonderful hospitality. Great food! Something which I can never forget for sure… That too all new varieties… I tasted every single dish with full excitement. Stay in their home was a real awesome experience.
There I met this wonderful gifted girl “Rucha” – Ishwari’s sister. She is doing her applied art in J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai. She has made some wonderful paintings which were soo hard to differentiate from reality. We truly got inspired by her quality of work, the amount of patience and creativity involved in it.. Was a real good inspiration to all of us..
I started from Ishwari’s house in Thane and reached a place called “Mulund Check Naka (west)”, which is the separator of Thane from Mumbai. The Auto Rickshaws which are running in Thane can’t enter the Mumbai premises due to some legal issues. Thus we got to get down and take a new auto (in that heavy rain). So I got down.
I had three options. Either I can take a taxi or auto or bus.
Obviously I didn’t take taxi as I thought it will be beyond my budget. I didn’t take bus because I have to find the nearby bus stand and even if I find it.. it will take time.. I hardly had some 1 hour for the conference to start.
I am almost wet by now : - ) no place to stand in that road. And here comes the real problem.
I chose to take an auto rickshaw. There are some 50-100 auto rickshaws coming in line in that road. There are some 100 people standing on the side of that road trying to stop those autos. Everyone comes nearby and the moment you say where to go, they will node their head and leave the place asap. What non sense ! they were literally treating us like shit.. People (Customers) are standing in the center of the road in that rain and literately begging at them to take in and they just pass by without stopping. I really got shocked to see this incident.
In Chennai when a customer is in need, generally auto guys will try to take it as an advantage and will charge him more. Here its not the case. Certain people were even ready to pay more, but the auto was not stopping. Even I asked many people around on whats happening.. no one had a clue… only few people (who are lucky) will get picked up by an auto. God only knows what was happening there…
Later when I was talking to one of the girl from the conference, even she told getting an auto takes atleast ½ hour in Mumbai. Its not that easy it seems : - )
Whats happening ? We keep hearing about unemployment and poverty.
I am seeing people in trouble and are willing to pay any amount to travel in emergency and no one is there to take them. Its even ok if they don’t take.. but atleast they can tell the reason na.. some 100 auto passed by and I am stopping all the 100 autos and bending down and asking in that heavy rain and they don’t even bother to reply me. I felt really irritated from inside. After half an hour try.. I gave up… I called Ishwari to ask for a suggestion. She suggested me to take a bus. Thus I walked to the nearest bus stand and took a bus.. I think it took another one hour to reach the place in that traffic.
At last I reached some 1/2 hour late as the conference itself started some 1 hour late.
We had Rob Wagemans from Concrete Architectural Associates, Markus Pretnar from 3Deluxe, Jacob van Rijs from MVRDV, Ole Bouman from Netherlands Architecture Institute, Ross Lovegrove, Raphael van Amerongen from Merkx Girod, Arno Twight & Jim Smith from QuA, Hugo Van Den Bos from Koeweiden Postma, Priya Paul from Park Hotels, Willem Woudenberg from Edenspiekermann, Shanoo Bhatia from Eureka Moment Design, Ben Terrett from Really Interesting Group, Rodney Fitch from Fitch, Paul Hughes from LAVA, Michael Wolff from Michael Wolff and Company, Jochem Leegstra from ...,staat, Richard van der Laken from De Designpolitie, Anthony Lopez from Lopez Design, Raphael Grignani from Nokia and Barry Schwarz & Koen Van Ovoorde from Addikt.
When I stepped into the conference hall, Ross Lovegrove was showing his works.. he showed his water bottle design, watch and a stair case in his studio. All his work were almost perfect (99.999%). He loves and achieves this one thing called perfection. Personally I felt his designs to be quite hypothetical. But it had a lot of creativity in it.
I liked Addikt’s work the best… Personality wise.. I liked Michael and Anthony. Michael has this powerful voice and the way he puts his stories were truly amazing.. reminds me of Steve Job’s speech in Stanford.
I liked the ambiance in Renaissance conference hall, Mumbai. The best part is.. when I saw the same work of Addikt in my laptop after coming back, I am not getting that “feel”. Its not just about the big screen and amazing sound.. ambiance really matters… and I liked it there !
My friends had a very bad experience with the event management people regarding workshops.. that spoiled the good feeling that we gained for the past 3 days. It is still to be sorted out.. if it doesn get resolved, I will come up with the next post : - )
This is the most funniest part. The conference is over and we all came back to Ahmedabad. If you remember, one student who got completely pissed off and didn attend the conference... her invoice reached :-)
To conclude.. I will say that a conference like Kyoorius with such amazing speakers can be organized in a much better way. For example proto.in - a startup conference was conducted 10 times better than Kyoorous by a very small team. I am not comparing in terms of quality. I am comparing in terms of organization etc.. and the lack of screening the crowd made the conference a quite unsuccessful one from my point of view. Apart from that, I enjoyed, got inspired and learned a lot from Kyoorous Design Yatra ‘09
A much better view has been shared by one of my most respected friend Mayukhini. Click here to read her view.
Official Website of Kyoorous DesignYatra '09 (Kyoorius Exchange)
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