The APOGEE Review Meet started at 6:00 PM on April 10, 2021, with the quorum being established as club coordinators, CoStAAns, and representatives from discipline associations confirmed their attendance. The members of ARC present reported the troubles faced during APOGEE and thanked their counterparts.
CLUBS:
Both the Karaoke Club and the APOGEE Hindi Press (AHP) faced minor issues with the creation of posters, in collaboration with ADP. In addition, AHP’s event did not appear in the first list of events, which caused further problems.
The Gaming Club had an issue with the availability of a complete list of the participants’ Discord handles. However, the problem was resolved and Armageddon—their only event—was received well.
DebSoc had a few issues that hampered the publicity of their event, the BITS Pilani Parliamentary Debate. Despite managing to get a good number of participants, even with several other tournaments being held in the same timeframe, they voiced their concerns about being informed late about the exact dates of the fest. The Sponz CoStAAn acknowledged this and added that it would not happen in the upcoming editions.
There was one event planned for the Media Relations Club, Case Study, which was pitched to them by Sponz. However, this event was not conducted because of a sponsor backing out at the last minute. The Sponz CoStAAn took responsibility for this and apologised for the same.
Hindi Activities Society (HAS) was commended for N2O, which stacked up over 1400 registrations and was considered a massive hit by the CoStAAns.They were especially applauded for getting a stand-up comedian of Nishant Suri’s stature.
Poetry Club talked about the registration numbers of their events—Conspiring Minds, Human Books, Poetry Slam, and Urdu Jise Kehte Hain—and the footfall that these events brought. However, voice leaks and room issues plagued their events. At the last moment, it was found that the artists that they were collaborating with did not have access to the GatherTown Platform. Other issues like multiple site crashes, Peter Ngugi’s—one of the performers—time being cut short, and miscommunication with ADP regarding posters caused many difficulties for the club.
Mime Club brought up the issue of losing participants when they shifted their Improv Comedy Challenge to Google Meet due to platform crashes. While Mime Club and the CoStAA had decided that the winner of the Open Mic Challenge would get to open for Nishant Suri at N2O, this did not come to fruition as it was communicated to HAS very late.
ELAS’s issues were about the registration portal, which was accidentally opened earlier than planned, due to which about 50 people ended up registering in advance. ELAS had to call these participants to ensure that they had paid because the portal had not accounted for the registration fee for external students. More hiccups such as delayed posters and wrong pictures being put up for the ELAS events were all put forward.
Music Club’s performance at the Inauguration ceremony was appreciated, but they expressed a desire to have been informed earlier that they would be performing, claiming that they could have done a better job. The Sponz CoStAAn responded by saying that the Music Club coordinator had not been added to the coordinators Whatsapp group, which is why they hadn’t been informed earlier.
The Developer Student Club (DSC) lost participants due to a GatherTown crash, while Robocon complained about delayed posters. Toastmasters claimed that they received the APOGEE website registrations late, leading to problems regarding the same.
THE ACM DEBACLE:
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) was primarily responsible for conducting the International Coding League (ICL) and the Stock Market Simulation (SMS). While the former saw no pitfalls, ACM was not able to conduct the latter due to unforeseen complications in launching the platform. PCr vehemently attributed the inability of ACM to inform them of these failures on time, which led to confusion amongst the participants and became a problem for them. The ACM representative accepted the organisation’s negligence in not testing the platform before APOGEE and pointed out the communication barriers that led to this laxity. When asked about the future of SMS’s platform, the Economics and Finance Association (EFA) claimed to have been in talks with two external parties but were still keen on making the hosting platform in-house because of the learning experience involved in the same. The Department of Controls also had issues with ACM because of its inability to inform Controls about being unable to conduct two out of the four events that it had pitched. This claim was denied by the ACM representative, stating they had informed CoStAA beforehand. At the last moment, the EFA collaborated with a platform sponsor, Stockgro, and managed to pull off a successful SMS.
ASSOCIATIONS:
Civil, Mechanical, Computer Science, Manufacturing, and Chemistry Engineering Associations gave summaries of their responsibilities and events, claiming that they did not face any issues and stated their registration and participation numbers. The Pharmacy Association faced issues relating to the GatherTown platform lagging, and the Biological Association claimed that the turnout could have been increased by allotting the prize money earlier, so that it was available to view on Dare2Compete. Albeit a few difficulties in communication and coordination between the Biological Association and the Physics Association, the Meme Competition, too, was conducted swiftly.
The Mathematics Association, on the other hand, had more than a few problems to air. The Assoc claimed that they had asked a week before APOGEE for a platform to conduct their event, Gambling Mathematics, and that DVM had confirmed that they would not be making such a platform on Day 0 of the fest. DVM countered by saying that they would have been more than happy to build a platform similar to the 2019 version used for this event if they had been given more than a week’s notice because it had taken them about a month to build the 2019 version. DVM further said that the Assoc was not very clear from the beginning whether they wanted the 2019 version, or the new version, which had new rules, questions and patent operations. They claimed that the 2019 version was always up and that this fact had been communicated to the Mathematics Association Coordinator.
CHAPTERS:
Most chapters had a smooth APOGEE. The American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), the Indian Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ISHRAE), the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IICHE), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICHE), and the Association for Computing Machinery-Women (ACMW) presented descriptions of their events, footfall, and registration numbers. Common problems like platform crashes and registration delays were noted without argument.
DEPARTMENTS:
ADP began by talking about their various responsibilities as a department, including media coverage, design and publicity, and the GatherTown platform. Responding to the issue of delayed posters raised by several clubs, ADP attributed this problem to the shifted timeline.
Controls managed the scheduling for 65 events, which included both pre-fest and in-fest events. As too many events were scheduled for APOGEE, some events were shifted as part of the pre-fest. Prize money worth ₹4.5 lakh and more than 100 certificates have already been sent out (as of April 10), and Controls stated that the rest would be sent out by the end of this month. A suggestion was made to combine “Live Projects” with “Project Presentations” for greater outreach and quality participation. This was noted, and further discussion on this topic was promised.
DVM, with the help of ADP, tried to make the GatherTown platform as palpable as possible. They also had the help of Sponz to set up sponsor boards all over the map. DVM also built the main APOGEE website and helped in setting up the registration portals, project portals, campus advisor portals, sponsor videos, and assisted in making coupons on very short notice.
RecNAcc was responsible for handling events on different platforms and the production of merchandise for the fest. They reported that the merchandise production is currently going on (as of April 10). RecNAcc received a sponsorship of 1 lakh from a merchandise vendor, and they hoped that the ongoing sales would also generate a profit, the exact details of which would be revealed later.
Sponz was able to reach out to 2000 companies via various social media channels. Through the signed MoUs, Sponz was able to raise approximately 13 lakh rupees in terms of cash in the budget, with the major sponsors being AutoDesk, GitHub, and Walmart. They reported that 75% of the fest revenue was generated by sponsorship this time. Sponz also conducted various workshops in fields like Mechanical Design, API development, Finance, and Graphic Design.
PEP organised the guest lecture series “Think Again Live”, which included prominent speakers like H. C. Verma, Reinhold Messner, and Vint Cerf. They hosted the Paper Presentation event, which saw 240 registrations, with 103 presentations delivered during APOGEE. This time, PEP collaborated with DExA to organise a new event called the Youth Leaders Summit, which saw school children from 380 schools participate. They also conducted the Entrepreneurship Conclave with the EFA in the first week of April, which saw one of the start-ups sign a million-dollar deal with a Venture Capitalist firm that they met during the Conclave. This further motivated PEP to conduct this Conclave next year as well.
PCr stated that one of the advantages of an online fest was that the participants could attend individual events as per their interest without committing to the whole fest. As a result, the events were publicised independently and saw a lot more participation. APOGEE saw 7,500 external participants with a total headcount of 13,500 participants, including people from the US, Turkey, and Bangladesh.
DEXA ARGUMENT:
The Sponz CoStAAn, Aakash Shankar, questioned DExA about the huge difference in the monetary figures quoted initially and the final revenue generated by AAROHAN. In September 2020, DExA had promised 2.4 lakh of revenue, owing to the success of AAROHAN’s previous editions on campus. However, their evaluation dropped to ₹1–1.2 lakh in February, after which they finally delivered ₹30,000.
DExA was constantly assured of an increase in participation, as compared to previous editions, by its Points of Contact (POCs) in various coaching institutes. However, merely two days before the examination at least 470 students did not register, which alone made for a ₹75,000’s decrease in collections. Nevertheless, Aakash questioned the department’s expertise to gauge whether the POCs were making achievable promises and criticised the lack of communication with the CoStAA as the participation numbers kept dwindling. Despite only 190 registrations by December, the CoStAA was not kept in the loop and there was no decrease in the budgetary allocation for AAROHAN. Aakash highlighted the inconvenience faced with the Professional Shows and certain comedians who came for the fest because of the sudden splicing in budget. The RecNAcc CoStAAn also commented on how an online fest without the food stalls had only two major streams for revenue, namely sponsorships and AAROHAN.
DExA was then questioned on its inability to conduct Mini-Fests by PCr. DExA believed that there was a delay in getting information about the prospect of organising an online fest. However, the CoStAA made it clear that all coordinators were informed about the mode of the fest with no delays. Even after receiving contacts from PCr, DExA did not conduct a single Mini-Fest and did not inform them about their decision to not conduct one in a timely manner. The ADP CoStAAn also established that there were major pitfalls in DExA’s way of handling their responsibilities. The CoStAAns unequivocally stated that DExA’s performance would be judged on the basis of APOGEE 2021 alone.
A motion was raised to put DExA on probation for two years because of various issues faced during the fest. The target proposed by them was ₹2.4 lakh, but they managed to raise only ₹30,000 in the budget. This majorly hampered the budget and reduced the funds that could be allocated for publicity or other artists. In addition to this, DExA reportedly had an ‘unprofessional attitude’, displaying a severe lack of communication with the CoStAAns.
DExA argued that putting any department on probation due to external factors which were not in their control during a pandemic was unfair. They accepted that they did not communicate things properly, but stated that DExA had been profitable for the last four years, with a profit of ₹2 lakh last year. They apologised profusely for the communication gaps and stated that putting DExA on probation would leave future fests in jeopardy as it is the ‘cog in the wheel’ for the fest. They also said that they did not get a chance to prove themselves after being put out of probation after APOGEE 2019, as APOGEE 2020 was cancelled and 2021 was online.
FINAL VOTE:
The session came to an end with a vote to put DExA on probation for two years and to remove PEP out of probation. Two separate polls were conducted for each of these, which resulted in a majority voting for PEP to be removed out of probation owing to the competence displayed by them during this edition of APOGEE. As for DExA, the vote was not in its favour and it was decided by the ARC that DExA will be put on probation for two years.