Bangalore Meetup was a Hit!
So despite the fact that there were a million meetups in Bangalore on Saturday -- including one with CHETAN BHAGAT.. grrr! :) -- the Bangalore meetup happened. Small and sweet with 6 fans, it was a super hit and everyone stayed for over 3 hours talking cricket.
As told to me by Shashank (the awesome coordinator of the meetup)
It was fun. Prashant (Chief Blogger) shared stories about his interaction with Rahul Dravid and the other players during IPL. Vinayak shared stories about watching the matches from different countries. I shared stories about covering cricket news. A lot of people wanted to come but exams and other meetups got in the way. Bharath (another Fanatic Fan) is psyched to help out with the next meetup. We'll probably have it in December during the India Sri Lanka match - it'll be nice to watch a live match together. We had some great ideas at the meetup - we really need to work on increasing the fan base. Get about 15 people in each of the cities - Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi, Chennai... these will be easy because of number of people... By Jan/Feb we should have about 100 in all. That's a good start. Some of the fans who showed up (recently moved to Bangalore from Pune) thought this meetup was organized by RCB. We explained it was by the fans. So increasing the fan base is a must. We want to be a sea of red at RCB matches - with about 200 people dressed in red. That'll be nice.
My inputs based on that and FB buzz:
-- yes 6 people is small. but still a good solid number. it's hard to start right off the bat with 50 fans. Starting small has helped us figure out importance of time & location and has given us confidence that YES, it is possible and fun to meet complete strangers when the only thing you have in common is your favorite IPL team. It's also off-season & exam week. Yes we need to build the numbers - but we're not doing BAD which is important.
-- Great idea to have a meetup during a live match. Will try to organize next Mumbai meetup on the 28th of November (in Dadar/Andheri) during the afternoon so we can all watch the match together.
-- Will really push for the discounts. It's taking a while because we're trying to put the infrastructure in place so that it'll run forever (at least all of Jan-May = pre and during IPL3)
-- 200 people dressed in red - YES YES YES! RCB would love this!!
-- Meetups organized by fans - you have RCB's full blessing and support (and soon prizes & discounts most probably). But yes, these meetups should really be Fan-organized. a.) Shows you that fans can do ANYTHING they put their efforts to. b.) You guys know best what you want. You have RCB management's support through me: i can pass on messages back and forth and help things get started.
Let's try to get the meetup attendees to get some blog posts up for all to read, shall we :P
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Tania@RCB and Shruti@RCB are the community managers of the Fan Club. They cover site updates, upcoming contests and what's going on in the Fan Club in the Blog. They are also available to answer queries and help out the fans with the site.
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thanks
we are in the process of organizing a meet in Bahrain which shd be ard Dec end as its holiday time from next week.Could you send me ur contact ids as mails to nidhi@rcb.com have bounced.
Regd. communication on the site - we now have comments, comment notification, discussion forum with email notification and private messaging. What are we still missing out on? if it's mass activity, that will come with the pre-IPL3 bug.
Hey Cookie, nice to see you back here. This is Raghu, aka Observer during IPL2! Nice to see the IPL2 fans resurfacing one by one - hopefully by IPL3, they should all be back. Pity they are hiding at a time when they could have done "something very different" to make the IPL3 fan-experience even more engaging.
Let me list out some of the IPL2 names that are missing now as active participants on this sit:
M P M, San, KS, Jim, niks, achu, Shyam, umi19, Syed, jyothi, AMITH, Sarge, Tanzzz, Kyla, Anjali, eXtReMe EnIgMa, Aarsh, RCBfanforever, Karla, Manjesh, koli, abs, Avis, dhinu, Rocky, Ajai, Chitzs, Shreyu, krisshjumbo, SONIA KAPOR, Ash, Amit, Rill, Praps, Sandy, SuGow, wish, Inferno, muski, Dinesh, livin, simba, reddy, nagie, Kiran, Sudha, li, Vishu, Vary, NANI, Tarun, chummi, kkiran82, Lester, neel, Manu, Dev, MIKE, great fan, santhosh, sachin, Maddy, camms, razr, sk8erboi, venu, Raghavan, Sneha, Sunny, Lucky, imu, bpratheesh, KK, Ditchi, Ravi, TANYA, gauthi, Prasanna, Guru, naveenrao, arunraikar, Bins, simba, Harry, poles, chandra, KV, Rishav, nikki, niks, Jammy, G1, Maani, andy, abhi, Gautham, JIMMY, Eddie, chiruvijay, ape, asd, Ranju, mayu, Vickyr, bharath, Deepu, Priyesh, Ram, Siba, Pradee,stroogle, David, poojitha, RG, Ashish, So, saurabh, Rohi, satz, wrongun, jai, modi,
The above is an impressive list of fans who actively participatd in the discussion forum during IPL2 (thanks to the emails the site was sending on every comment! and my bad housekeeping(?!) of not deleting them!!
Where are these guys and gals and why are they not participating?? Many would have changed their mail ids - which highlights the importance of using SMS as the way to stay in touch!
This is the BIG challenge for Nidhi and her team!! Lots of work for you ma'am ... IPL3 isn't far away!
I must tel you, again at the risk of repeating - there was a certain ease of communicating and following in the previous version, which is still missing - although the site looks more colorful and richer than ever before.
This has been a long and painstaking post - I think I've made up for all the lack of commenting the whole week :)
also, share photos with the rest of the fan club! you guys might be the inspiration we all need. 9 fans in bahrain. wow!
I feel sad nidhi that I am not able give more time to the forum. And feel jealous for not being able to join you guys in Bangalore. Anybody happens to be in Shanghai or HongKong. It would be great to meetup and teach some Cricket to our neighbors ;)
the meets happen every couple of weeks in mumbai, bangalore and we're slowly expanding to other cities. will you be down in india anytime soon :)
if not, you should have bahrian meets too! who knows, i can ask RCB management to send over some RCB goodies if you guys actually meet! (half kidding, i'll try to figure something out for our international fans)