National Meet (CW Forums) at Mumbai on 19-20/Dec/09 (details at post 96 - pg10)

Guys,

It's a very complicated situation than we (Pankaj, Binoy and I) had thought. I don't know who coined the idea of a National Meet but it fascinated me a lot. The excitement went overboard and we all have been discussing/planning it. But when I dig deep into it from a practical point of view, I am somehow apprehensive. I am afraid the meet is going to be regional one, no matter what. If we do it in Mumbai, we all Mumbaikars, Gujarati bhai, a few Hyderabadis will join it. In case of Delhi, entire North India will make it, probably. I don't see lots of people travelling over 1000 kms to attend the meet, of course there will be exceptions.

I am not sure:

• About the feasibility of a national meet for an online forum like ours covering the entire India.
• Whether it's the right time to do it or we should wait for some more time when we all know each other really well (regionally) and feel inspired to meet the other counterparts. We have seen failure (partial) of both Mumbai and Delhi meets and I am afraid the national meet may have similar fate.

Doing it in Mumbai or Delhi is secondary. Whether we should do it or not is the first hurdle.

I am not against meets, in fact I will try my level best to be there in every official meets in every part of India now onwards but I think we should debate this National Meet thingy and reach to some conclusions. If we decide not to go ahead with a national meet, we can plan out our regional meets, maybe something like:

• A regional meet every two/three months. When I say region, I mean North, West and South.
• Meet has to be a well planned event (banter-lunch/dinner, off-roading, drives, go-karting, ICE show-offs, attending OT events etc.
• Rules/regulations for meets e.g. a fixed meet calendar. Even if nobody turns up, certain people will meet on the decided day etc.

Update: It's not a debate anymore. Guys with positive attitude have turned the debate into a confirmed event. Read full meet details here or read page 10/post 96 onwards in this thread itself.

Ban My view is as under.

If you remember the time i initieted the first meet in thred, today I see lot many things happaning. We already had Feroz meeting Pankaj in Bhavnagr(2 people), then Ahmedabad(4 people), Then Mumbai(12 people), Delhi(6 to 7 peple I dont remember the count sorry friends), but certainly there is a progress. There were time inbetween when few meet attempt failed but ultimatly it was madeup & i consider it as sucess irrespective of  no of people participated. Please remember all these people travlled JUST TO MEET fellow members & there was no other excitement(excpet Food for me atleast ). This shows commitment & interest of few members which is spreading rapidly. Many after going thru the various meet thread has felt LEFT OUT & have shown there keenness to attend the next one possible.

There has to be a start to achive success. I am sure once you organise a national meet with some excitement few moer will feel left out & these nos will certainly increase in time to come.

I would say KAL KARE SO AAJ KAR....

Let us take these meet beyond just meeting people & ad some excitement to it. Just for an example at the age of 40 now I never thought of even discussing off roading but we did manage to share thougghts with Kartik during our Mumbai meet. Now this is certrainly a platform for me to even expect an opportunity doing so or atleast view some one doing it but in any case be part of it. which in my day to day life i never be able to even think of. This is just one example , there can be many more....

Ban what you are thinking is absolutly right but i think at certain point & level few things are destined...& this has to be achived to take carewale to next level...

 Ohh by the time i was typing my post i saw a fantastic firewrok which is evident of people enthusiasam to meet each other... so on a right note this is a good sign Ban

What I am trying to do with the new thread is to bring everybody on one conclusion. It's very easy for me to host the National Meet in Mumbai. Being a centre point and having CW office in Mumbai, it makes more sense. In fact, we all mods had agreed upon it and I was supposed to announce it. But when I saw Delhi guys' excitement, I was forced to relook at it. I am not thinking Mumbai or Delhi, I am thinking best interest of most of the people.

Banwari - Here's my take -

You, Pankaj and Binoy are the cement of Carwale Forums. Any meet that excludes you three loses a substantial amount of appeal. Unfortunately all of you three are in the west and south zones. That leaves the North and East zones without any 'star' in them.

So all zonal 'official' meets should have a commitment fron at least one of you to attend, without which it will boil down to what we faced last month - massive cancellations, as the meet starts looking less attractive.

We should put some effort into what structure it should have, because breaking ice is not always easy. And a full programme is easy to understand and harder to ignore!

Quarterly meets is too ambitious a target, as this stuff saps a lot of energy for canvassing and organizing on local level. Let us have biannual meets as a target, or stagger the zonal meets and a possible national meet such that they are 4 months apart, spanning a year. In that case, conveniently the national meet becomes an annual affair.

I think CarWale should initiate and sponsor some automobile engineering students for their final year projects, with some forum members serving as project guides or otherwise involved in the projects. These projects can then be targetted to be presented in the meets, giving ready fodder for thought and discussions. it will also help boost CarWale profile, when these projects get discussed in local papers and electronic media.

I remember some time ago M.S. Ramaiah College of Engg. B'lore worked on some crappy FE improvement project, and it was not only covered by national but international electronic media and the college received mileage totally disproportionate to their efforts.

Will put in more ideas later as the thought develops.

bans,

You may want to consider three regional meets, possibly mumbai, delhi, bangalore instead of a single meet. The core team from cw would travel to the three locations and each location would be given a budget and the task of organising for their region. This would be a first step.

Once the above is implemented successfully and cw has further expanded its reach and scale, we can look at doing a central national meet and have the ability to pull in more people from all regions.

just my $0.02

Thank you Bans...

Coming to Arun i guess he is very apt...

Having a national meet in one go is a Dream that can shatter because of less people showing up...[numbers are in few hundreds]

Three region idea is good and by doing that you can actually compare each zones performance...

Besides when you visit each zone you can have your vote and see which one had a nice theme,overall set up...and can use the same for the national meet later on...

Basically each zone will try to be the best in order to have their theme/title applied in the national meet...

I think this idea needs more implimentations...probably a dedicated tab in carwale site..."Events''

didnt see krishna's post before I wrote mine. I guess we are saying similar things. Krishna ofcourse is already well into the planning stage.....lol. But yeah you have some really good ideas. Getting media coverage, sponsorships etc would certainly enhance the reach and recognition for cw.

Can we first define the meet??? Whether Zonal or National.. WHich means the content of the meet.

Like we once met here in Mumbai once , but now to meet again you need some amount of content & certainly some participation. otherwise its like few friends meeting regulerly & having fun(Nothing wrong in that though).

in any case I still vote to goahead with National meet once as a starting point. as i would say we have had few Zonal meet. he event structure can be discussed at length , but i belive it will certainly take some time to shape up.

May be Carwale can appoint 2 Zonal Mods from each Zone, to share responsiblity not only for meet but many other issues, like SPonsering a Student etc etc.. from the region.. The idea of Zonal Mod is only to increse participation & sharing/giving responsiblity. The tenure of Zonal mods to be restricted to 1 or 2 years.. Just a thought..

Ban...I second Sathish and also think that a national meet should happen. Its almost more than a year am in this forum and I know guys who are here still way back. And considering the age of our forum, I strongly feel that a national meet should happen. Specially after attending the Mumbai meet I am now more enthu about this one.

I know its going to be a very tough job to organize this and the biggest hurdle would be to ensure maximum participation, but having looked upon the enthu the members have for meets, I guess if we together take this responsibility and we all come together, we would be able to overcome this hurdle.

Krishna's and Arun's idea are also good and are really practical, however I would say that at this moment we need a national meet to strengthen the bond between all of us. Its the high time we use our energy for a national meet.

Regarding events or suggestion or place, I guess there are lot of options but would be logical discussing only once we finalize the meet. In my opinion it would be preferable to organize it in Mumbai for the reasons mentioned by you. Its quite apt and acceptable.

I would urge all the carwale members, new or old to participate and vote for this meet.

Why dont you guys plan to conduct a meet at each metro on same day! This would be one of its kind, I mean people meeting at same time across all cities for the ocassion! something like carwale day