Post by Nikhil Sheth on Feb 26, 2014 10:38:45 GMT 5.5
I'd like to flip the famous Spiderman quote, and apply it to here:
When you give someone a role of great responsibility, you must give them great power with it.
Regarding registrations : The people tasked with handling registrations, must have executive control over when to close registrations, whom to say no to, etc. If there are lapses, complain after the event has passed. But what happened here, was that the team handling registrations had to keep waiting for the final word from others who weren't handling registrations. The registrations as a result remained open well after the commonly agreed deadline. It was the incessant rain that saved our asses at LSUC 2013, by making over 100 people cancel at the last minute. The fact that things worked out in the end, doesn't justify anything.
What happened because of this: Because the lists kept getting updated, there wasn't ample time to collate everything, organize the registrations (we had to unite families because we'd forced each person to register separately, and at one point sorted all entries on basis of name or something!), follow up properly, get the required info finalized, etc. That got pushed off to the end. The registrations team was also the local ground-level team. So ground-level operations also got pushed off to the end. While the pre-decided things were carried out swiftly because they were pre-decided, we lost golden opportunities to think creatively and do something innovative. That also rippled into issues during the event.
Then, regarding Accommodation : When a person was assigned with accommodation responsibilities, first because of the above, they got the data they needed very very late. Then, when they were assigning accommodations, there was direct interference from one of the senior organizers, and that had a very negative, unexpected consequence all the way at the end of the event. I'll elaborate this further in another thread.
The situation of saddling people with full responsibilities but no power, should be avoided. And seniors have to really work hard on training themselves not to meddle with the juniors they've assigned responsibility to, especially right at the peak organizing times. With great responsibility assigned, comes a need for great power also to be assigned away in full faith.
When you give someone a role of great responsibility, you must give them great power with it.
Regarding registrations : The people tasked with handling registrations, must have executive control over when to close registrations, whom to say no to, etc. If there are lapses, complain after the event has passed. But what happened here, was that the team handling registrations had to keep waiting for the final word from others who weren't handling registrations. The registrations as a result remained open well after the commonly agreed deadline. It was the incessant rain that saved our asses at LSUC 2013, by making over 100 people cancel at the last minute. The fact that things worked out in the end, doesn't justify anything.
What happened because of this: Because the lists kept getting updated, there wasn't ample time to collate everything, organize the registrations (we had to unite families because we'd forced each person to register separately, and at one point sorted all entries on basis of name or something!), follow up properly, get the required info finalized, etc. That got pushed off to the end. The registrations team was also the local ground-level team. So ground-level operations also got pushed off to the end. While the pre-decided things were carried out swiftly because they were pre-decided, we lost golden opportunities to think creatively and do something innovative. That also rippled into issues during the event.
Then, regarding Accommodation : When a person was assigned with accommodation responsibilities, first because of the above, they got the data they needed very very late. Then, when they were assigning accommodations, there was direct interference from one of the senior organizers, and that had a very negative, unexpected consequence all the way at the end of the event. I'll elaborate this further in another thread.
The situation of saddling people with full responsibilities but no power, should be avoided. And seniors have to really work hard on training themselves not to meddle with the juniors they've assigned responsibility to, especially right at the peak organizing times. With great responsibility assigned, comes a need for great power also to be assigned away in full faith.
