Last Sunday, I decided to forgo bridge and Bacchus and instead conduct a day-long session on event management at Pune’s Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communications (SIMC).
One thing led to another, and the students wanted to discuss their annual event, Fest-O-Comm – and the biggest problem confronting them.
The Symbiosis credibility and reputation ensures that the most successful professionals from the fields of media and communication are always willing – calendars permitting – to visit the campus to deliver lectures, be on panels, and so on.
The problem is, Symbiosis has an auditorium that seats 650, and SIMC has only 150 students (both seniors and juniors put together). How does one fill up the auditorium so that, say, a Piyush Pandey or a Rajdeep Sardesai is not offended by empty seats?
SIMC invites colleges from across the country to take part in the fest and, yet, it is an uphill task to get the audi filled to the brim.
And the students are a worried and despondent lot – and I hope I’m able to find a viable solution to what is surely a vexatious problem.
And I think about all the seminars and symposia and talks I’ve attended in the past few years. And I am reminded of the poor attendance at a Santosh Desai review of the year gone by when hardly anyone who was anyone was there; of seminar rooms at FICCI Frames attended by audiences in single digits; of a Subhas Ghosal Foundation lecture delivered by Javed Akhtar given a miss by industry stalwarts.
Does nobody want to learn anymore?
One thing led to another, and the students wanted to discuss their annual event, Fest-O-Comm – and the biggest problem confronting them.
The Symbiosis credibility and reputation ensures that the most successful professionals from the fields of media and communication are always willing – calendars permitting – to visit the campus to deliver lectures, be on panels, and so on.
The problem is, Symbiosis has an auditorium that seats 650, and SIMC has only 150 students (both seniors and juniors put together). How does one fill up the auditorium so that, say, a Piyush Pandey or a Rajdeep Sardesai is not offended by empty seats?
SIMC invites colleges from across the country to take part in the fest and, yet, it is an uphill task to get the audi filled to the brim.
And the students are a worried and despondent lot – and I hope I’m able to find a viable solution to what is surely a vexatious problem.
And I think about all the seminars and symposia and talks I’ve attended in the past few years. And I am reminded of the poor attendance at a Santosh Desai review of the year gone by when hardly anyone who was anyone was there; of seminar rooms at FICCI Frames attended by audiences in single digits; of a Subhas Ghosal Foundation lecture delivered by Javed Akhtar given a miss by industry stalwarts.
Does nobody want to learn anymore?
3 comments:
there's a law college next door. Lot's of people there will be really interested... really!
i completely agree. as a student who has spent significant time in poona, i have seen a certain casualness on the part of simc when it came to inviting other colleges. there are a lot of students - especially those in their final years of study who would love a peek a new career option. and filling up seats with enthusiastic youngsters is never a bad idea.
Can non-college goers attend these seminars...i wud love too...is there an entry fees,passes etc...they need to promote the fest so that students interested wud be aware of the dates and passes etc...
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