My experience with the emergence of an event

Chennai, Jan. 24, 2020

“What has your experience been, so far?”

When my volunteer team that organised SaaSBOOMi 2020 went around answering that question over dinner, my mind was racing with thoughts, grappling with multiple ideas and opinions, and struggling to articulate them vocally. Even though I did manage to hastily string together a series of words that made sense (I hope) when it was my turn to speak, I knew I hadn’t really cracked the precise sentiment cooking in my head.

Translating words from your inner private language into the outer common tongue will forever be the toughest human act to exist—don’t fight me on this.

And the best way to kickstart the translation process, for me personally, is to sit down and meet a blank screen and a blinking cursor. And that’s exactly what I did.

“What has my experience been, so far?”

Honestly, I didn’t really expect much when I signed up to be a volunteer back in 2019 for the first SaaSBOOMi edition. You could say that I simply went with the flow, and jumped in because I had never done something like that before and was excited to be a part of a new, budding initiative.

I stuck to my core discipline - crafting sentences, and didn’t really make an effort to get my hands dirty with “running the show”. I stayed at the backstage and was comfortable doing so.

This year for the 2020 edition, however, something changed. And boy, am I glad it did.

This time around, I found myself in a completely different space—both inside my head, and out. Over the initial three months, I was actively interacting with the team, genuinely working to develop a kinship with them, willingly taking up tasks that didn’t have much to do with words (*gulp*), and openly immersing myself to become a part of the whole. But that was only half the battle won, as all of the work during then was exclusively online.

Come the fourth month, as soon as I set foot in the venue on the day of the event, that familiar social anxiety readily set in. I’d only been familiar with my teammates as handles on my WhatsApp screen for months, and I wasn’t sure about how I was going to hold it together for the next two days, and work up close and personal with them without suffering serial meltdowns. And forget my team, what about the 500 other strangers who were also going to be around?! One ticket for the Reticent Rollercoaster, please!

But to my surprise, it turned out to be not just effortless, but downright enjoyable. I found my virtual familiarity with my team gracefully bleed into real life, and only this time, their smiles and warmth were that much more personal and palpable.

And soon enough, I realised that it wasn’t just my team. I started to receive that contagious energy from every single person at the venue, founders, investors, volunteers alike.

I eased into the synergy, and found myself organically blend in with the collective. And I’m certain that everyone else around felt the same way too, antisocial or otherwise.

It was as if a bubble had been formed, brimming with enthusiasm and positivity, shielding us from the world outside.

It was magical, to say the least.

For two days, I witnessed people from multiple walks of life, bringing diverse schools of thought, driven by the common motive of building each other up, all getting together to create one big beautiful amalgamation.

I witnessed shared ideas, lessons, laughs, and hugs, all acting as brilliant brushstrokes to reveal one breathtaking painting.

I witnessed threads of camaraderie, care, and conviction, all weaving together to form one magnificent SaaS fabric shimmering in the Chennai sun.

Researchers call this wonderful phenomenon in nature as “Emergence”.

It’s about how individually unpredictable and disoriented ants somehow join forces to build ant-body bridges and temperature-regulated underground nests. Or how flocks of birds or schools of fish seem to move in unison and perfect harmony creating complex formations in the skies and seas. Intricate frost patterns made by water molecules, elaborate decisions made by neurons, even traffic jams made by speeding cars on highways—this theory explores the fascinating ways in which the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Magical, indeed.

And I got to be one of those threads, birds, or water molecules, if you will, that came together in Chennai this January, to produce one spectacular work of art. And that’s how I’d like to define my experience at SaaSBOOMi 2020, which I’m deeply humbled and grateful for.