Speed cubing is a globally recognised sport that is practised by millions of people from all over the world. I have always been fascinated by the sport as I believe it requires one to be very mentally active and coordinated to solve the cube swiftly. Recently one of my friends decided to host a speed cubing tournament in Surat where people from all across surat could come and compete. This was an official event attended by a World cubing organization member where people could come to attempt breaking world records. Since it was such a big event, he needed volunteers that could help him run it, so I decided to be a part of the event as I had already organized such an event once which made me well versed with the rules and regulations. Unlike last time though, this time I was an official judge and a runner at the event. This was new to me as I hadn’t done this before, because of this I faced several challenges in this experience and learned many things by the end. My learnings are presented below in the form of learning outcomes. - 

LO2 – There were several challenges that I faced while organizing this event as there was a lot of work that had to be done for this event to work. Initially we had to get the idea approved by our mentors but that wasn’t even the hard part. When it came to the actual event, we had many things to do like finding a venue, finding sponsors, designing and printing posters,etc. All of this in a time crunch. Even though we faced many challenges, we were able to make it work.

LO5 – I used collaboration skills throughout this experience as none of it would have been possible without the help of all the volunteers and organizers. We had a very limited amount of time to prepare for this event and a lot of work had to be done within it to make this event possible. I learned the value of collaboration skills in getting the most amount of work done even with a tight time constraint. Also by using collaboration skills I was able to work on this event while also managing my studies and schedule as we were able to divide the work which meant lesser load on everybody.

LO1 – Since this was a really big project involving many other people, I had to identify my own strengths and areas to improve as that would help me do my best for the project. I was able to do this effectively and understood that I would be a good fit to be a runner in this project whereas other people in my group became judges and scramblers. Dividing the roles this way gave everyone an ideal situation making it a win-win. 

LO3 – As I said before, My teammates and I had to work on this project simultaneously alongside our normal lives which included  school hours, tuitions, homework, etc hence we had to initiate a plan to make sure we do not waste our time. This was a task for us since we had to accommodate everyone’s schedule  and requirements to make sure everyone was comfortable with the plan. We also had to allocate tasks to each day that we met, for example finding a location for the event. 

Overall this was a great first experience that I gained regarding the work that goes into organizing an event. The knowledge that I have gained from this experience will help me in the future when more such opportunities come by.