OCC meet - suggestions

[Bala (Cogzidel)]

Hello Friends,

I attended today's OCC meeting at PlanetYum Food Court in Besant Nagar. It was good to see a reasonable crowd of OCC members. Discussions were quite useful with fun mixtures.

Regarding the venue, somehow I didn't like the place as it was too noisy and unable to hear what people spoke about.

Suggestions for improvement:

a) If any of the members have a conference room in their office which could accommodate about 40 people, they can come forward and offer. Unfortunately, I don't have such a facility, otherwise I would have volunteered myself to offer this to OCC members.

b) Secondly, the purpose of this meeting is to network with each other. Instead of members themselves catching up with other after the meeting is over, it would be better if the organisers can make it as one of the agenda to exchange business cards with each other. This would avoid people missing to get connected with other members (of course, late comers will suffer).

Well, I know OCC is meant more of friendly and unconferencing model, but still it would be better if my suggestions are looked in to.

Pls correct me if I'm wrong.

Regards
Bala
CFO, www.cogzidel.in

[Abhijeet Vijayakar]

I have a suggestion about the meetup reminders. I think they should be sent at least one day in advance, preferably two. I currently get the meetup reminder the same day as the meeting. Since the meetup is on Sunday I'm checking my email infrequently and often don't read the reminder email till it's too late.

If the meetup reminder email is sent the previous Friday, when most people are checking email regularly from work, that will help in making time on Sunday to attend. Just a thought.

[Bala (Cogzidel)]

I appreciate your suggestion, Abhijeet.

Yes, if advance information is given, that would help to avoid last minute hurry-burry.

Regards
Bala
CFO, www.cogzidel.in

[Balaji Viswanathan]

I'm wondering if there should be a facebook group for this. I'm right now not in Chennai and will move there in Nov. But, for me having the event and other details in facebook will be better than shifting across multiple networks and missing meeting requests.

Also, is there any place I could see the meeting agenda and minutes online?

[Suresh Sambandam]

I agree.

Sid,

We need to get around talking about some very simple structure for running the Chennai OCC. May be you, Vaidy and few others who are part of the core / regular group can meet to talk about this - Not more than 10 people. I would be interested to attend this meeting, if there is one!

Suresh

[Sorav Jain]

Agree with Abhijeet,

We need to start replicating mails a day prior to meet with a follow up SMS on the day of meeting.

+

We should create a fan page on the facebook for replication of messages through fan profiles..

[Siddharta Govindaraj]

What happened this time was that the IIT room we normally meet at was taken up due to Shaastra so it was not available for the meetup. We had to have it on the beach as there wasn't another suitable venue to accommodate 50+ people without prior notice. We should be back at IIT from next month.

[Suresh Sambandam]

Sid,

There is more to this thread than just the space related issue we had this week. In fact I left little early and not sure how Syed managed the Planet M - Manager.

We have to talk about a possible structure and a way to make sure that whatever is being shared is not lost and available for the other members in this forum who didn't make it. Any many more such things...

Suresh

[Guru pandian C]

I absolutely agree with bala's comments on the venue of the discussions, i've been privy to a few meetings in bangalore and they happen in CCD(Cafe coffee days) or similar joint, where decibel levels are low. We could work out on a few places b4 deciding on one.

A few pointers from my side

1. We could close in on a theme for every month's meeting (could we re-look it to a fortnightly event?) and have an agenda built around it - many a times I find the theme of the meeting is drastically reduced to intros & card exchanges. We need to scale much beyond that!!

2. The challenge would be make ourselves(OCC) a more active, objective oriented team.

I welcome praises & criticisms.

regards

Guru
Associate partner
Welkyn

[Sorav Jain]

I certainly agree to guru.. The meeting should have a structure. Probably a talk by some expert followed by discussions of issues and concerns related to entrepreneurs and definitely networking as the end element. Probably a theme meeting would be great idea to throw a limelight on what's the discussion all about in advance.

About the place: Besant Nagar was not the right destination because of the noise and moving crowd around. Everybody were asked to pay 100 bucks, though thats reasonable we should give lot of startup restaurants a shot as it allows them to grow and serves our purpose too.

Just a suggestion :)

Regards

Sorav Jain

[Navnith Narasimha]

Would love to see some structure. Agree with Bala on this one - but the visiting card thing.... maybe too much. It's an open network forum - lets keep it that way.
We could possibly look at the Anna University or the MMA or like Sourav suggested - an upcomming restraunt - though too much change would be detrimental.... People should know where to get to.
We would need a consistent crown to get a notable speaker - I could help here... what kind of subjects would you all like some focus on...?
Look forward to seeing you all the next meet.

Sid... All said and done... great of you to start this network.

Regards
Navnith.