“Slush Asia brings together people with big dreams and determination in Tokyo. Originally from Finland, Slush has grown to become one of the world’s largest startup events and has made a second home in Asia. The goal of the event is to light the same entrepreneurial fire in Asian youth as Slush has done in the Nordics through talks by experienced entrepreneurs and a pitching competition.” –SLUSH ASIA
April 24, 2015 was a beginning for me to start thinking seriously about taking my passions and ideas. It developed in me the entrepreneur spirit. Met a lot of startup company’s CEOs, investors, partners and many smart and willing students working as volunteers to make the event a huge success!
I participated in the event as a volunteer, but it also gave me an opportunity to witness the event as a normal participant.So i have mainly two major points of view that i want to talk about. One is the volunteer point of view and the other as an attendee.
As a volunteer, it was my first experience to be a part of the event as big where 3000 people were involved. The number of volunteers topped at 300 volunteers. Me being responsible for the keynote concierge, i was able to see most of the keynote speeches and the final pitching contest as well. I will share my experiences as an attendee in an upcoming blog.
One thing that i want to point out here is that the Slush organizers first thought about having the event in Japan in December 2014, and made it possible to plan and hold the event in a mere time span of 4 months. It is completely awesome and appreciable. This is something that i feel is completely incredible, and is what differentiates these people from the rest. When there is an idea, they act upon it, and make it a success! This kind of mindset is strongly lacking in the Japanese community, who tend to over-think and over-plan, creating restrictions for themselves.
About working in SLUSH, although the hierarchy was very well defined within the organization, it was never a problem to contact even the most distinct and senior members. It gave me a vision about how to work in an association so that members on all levels feel comfortable, and still the hierarchy is maintained.Special emphasis was given on the importance of “event day volunteers”, that we would be the people who will be in direct touch with the attendees. That means that we would be creating and maintaining the image of SLUSH. Proper guidelines were made, for each level of volunteers and how would they respond to situations and emergencies. I would say, it was extremely well planned.
On the negative side, i was pretty disappointed on the training day, a week before the event. Most of the things were not planned and decided, and there was no special (even normal) information that came to us. At that time i was left with an impression of unpreparedness. It was only after the event was successfully finished, i realized that the information was not transferred to us to reduce confusion, and information only necessary for us to act was made available to us. In-fact very wise. 🙂
The overall experience was very fruitful and amazing. There was a lot to learn working there as a volunteer. On of the biggest benefits was to work with Finnish people and mentality of organizing events. Very different from what i had been working with. Inspired!
My experiences as a attendee is coming soon in the next blog!!
ARCDD 