This article is part of a series of manifesto reviews of the elected representatives of the elected and nominated members of the Department Council
This year’s Department Conference was unprecedented in terms of the number of abstracts received as well as the scale of its publicity and funding. Several of the initiatives and plans undertaken would not have been possible single-handedly, and the two Conference Secretaries credit the support they got from each other as a major reason for being able to pull it off.
Their applications start with an analysis of the problems faced by the Conference Secretary last year. Changes in the structure of the team include splitting the Academic Affairs team into two verticals, namely the Concept Note and the Events team. This was done keeping in mind the very varied responsibilities of the two verticals. The Concept Note team ended up comprising of around 12 members, owing to the large number of abstracts they received. Another change in the structure is regarding the Design and Social media teams. The previous year, The Design and the Social media teams were clubbed together. This year, they separated Design and added Social Media to the Publicity team. This was done for logistical reasons, and they offloaded a lot of the work done by the Design team, putting them in charge of the creative side, while making sure the other work was done by the media and publicity team. Publicity and sponsorship are two areas that were repeatedly a problem. Although paid promotion was suggested, they did not have the kind of funds initially. The association and collaboration with the International Justice Mission (IJM) was a huge achievement, and also helped them deliver in terms of publicity and branding. Another structural change in the team was that this year, the Sponsorship and Finance team had two heads, one for Sponsorship and the other for Finance, which helped to avoid a lot of the finance problems the previous year’s team faced. Due to the efforts of Nithin, they were able to get funds from the Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research (IC&SR), which the conference has previously not had access to.
Another area that they identified as potentially causing problems was last-minute cancellations on the speaker list. They were able to reach out to different people and come up with a proper mechanism if such situations arose, and also had a waiting-list mechanism for presenters that cancelled. This helped initially, towards the end of December, as they were able to get new presenters when the selected ones cancelled. But this wasn’t particularly helpful when three presenters cancelled a day before the conference and one didn’t turn up, without any notice of absence. These situations cannot be foreseen, so that remains one issue that the mechanism cannot solve.
The team faced some problems sticking to the proposed timeline because of the unexpected number (~750) of abstracts they received. This is the reason why by December, they were a week behind the planned timeline. While they were able to catch up by the month’s end, they do regret not devising alternative ways to avoid the lag. The abstracts had to go through multiple rounds of filtering by the review committee, which consisted of 12 members including the Conference Secretaries themselves. The review committee also saw the enthusiastic participation of the PhD Scholars, more so than in the previous years, which the secretaries hope can continue in the future. PhD Scholars bring a higher level of knowledge of research methods, concepts and theories, although their rigid schedules makes it difficult for them to participate. The secretaries mentioned that this is an area that needs to be worked on. In terms of sponsorship and team structure, they were able to stick to their plan (the collaboration with IJM was in place by the end of November).
Of the proposed new initiatives, the introduction of a YouTube channel was struck down, keeping in mind that the attendance of the Conference itself would be affected, and that many of the speakers weren’t comfortable with the idea. Another proposed initiative was the Workshop component. The large number of abstracts they received made it difficult to complete the 2-3 round review and selection process according to the timeline, and hence they decided to cancel the event, though they had made some arrangements for it. One of their deepest regrets is not being able to go through with a popular event for the theme release. They had planned on inviting a movie director or documentary filmmaker for a movie screening, but it did not work out. They did not have the time to plan and implement it properly due to the myriad other things that they had going on. They stress on the importance of such an event as a crowd-puller for the Conference, and hope that the future team might have better luck with it.
The team was extremely successful in increasing publicity for the conference, as evidenced by the large pool of abstracts they received – nearly four times the average number of abstracts received over the past few years. The proposed blog intended for publicising the conference was cancelled, and they decided to use the DoHSS IITM page (since it hits more traffic, and is more easily accessible) for the same purpose. In terms of publicity and drawing an audience, they believe they were able to do well with the colleges in and around Chennai, but were disappointed with the turnout by the department students. They believe that this brings out an important need to reconceptualize the event, as most junior undergraduate students don’t understand the discussions and papers in the conference. Something smaller in scale like a round table conference with a limited set of presenters might help, while also keeping in mind that the conference is very useful for senior undergraduates.
They were able to stick with the proposed budget well. They had their spreadsheets being filled in properly and so were in the loop regarding how much each and every thing required would cost. They believe they were able to manage the budget well because they had a good notion of how much they were allowed to spend, and so had calculated the risks of spending in advance and then using it up from the budget later on.
While speaking about areas in which the Conference could be improved, they noted that it is not as beneficial to students within the Department. They feel that the format of the Conference can be tweaked, with the support of PhD Scholars and PG students, to make it more inclusive and engaging. Some of the ideas include, converting it into a two day event with a round-table conference, poster presentations, allocation of a day for PhD scholars and for everybody else, and so on. In the past couple of years, this format has been implemented, but they have faced problems of participation as well. They also believe that there is a large avenue in terms of organisations like IJM and companies in the social sector the Department could associate with for better funding, branding and opportunities.
This edition of the Conference was a huge success in terms of the number of international applicants as well. There were applications from Nepal, South Africa, Singapore and England. They also had good representation from the North East. This could be because of the way the team had structured the theme and the concept note as well as the efforts of the publicity team who relentlessly sent emails to a wide range of universities in an attempt to popularise the event.
On the whole, the Conference Secretaries were able to deliver on several of their proposed initiative and were able to make the Conference a memorable event for all those who participated. Article 19 would like to wish the future team the best of luck, and hopes that they will be able to make this event an even grander success!
Article by N. J. Sadhana and Meghna M
Poster by Sanjana Acharya
Article 19 