CPFL Closing Ceremonies


We officially closed the Conscient Premier Football League on Wednesday, March 2nd. Here is a link to an article about the event: It was an extraordinary experience for me. The top 10 highlights include:

1. Creating the opportunity for 3000 people to watch a professional football match

2. Creating the opportunity for the CPFL participants to meet players from Churchill Brothers, Indian Arrows, ADO Den Haag FC and the HFA U-16 team
3. Seeing the excitement levels on the kids and parents faces when they came onto the field and were in the middle of all the action

4. Having Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Sachin Pilot, attend the event and participate in the awards ceremony

5. Serving as MC for the entire event

6. Having many of my friends from Delhi and a friend from the US see the event live

7. Having the new Japanese Chairman of Dentsu India, Seiichiro Hayata, attend the event and get a chance to see what our Dentsu Sports team has been actively working on

8. Learning many new operational tools from school administrators who I now believe are some of the best in the business

9. The fulfilling feeling after the event was finished

10. Seeing a dream turn into a reality

Now everything didn’t go according to plan. Actually, I’ve never MC’ed a more chaotic event and there were so many times when I just wanted to crawl underneath the podium and wait for the event to end. However, one thing that I’ve learned in this country is that there is so much beauty in chaos and you have to keep on going no matter how challenging the situation gets. Which is exactly what we all did and we completed the event on time and ensured ever child was safe and met a professional player.

There is so much to take away from this experience and, even as I write this, I’m getting excited to start planning and executing the next event so I can put into practice what I’ve learned. Of all the key learnings though, the most important one is to never lose focus of the purpose of the event. In this case, it was all about the creating a unique footballing experience for the CPFL participant and I must say that we did that extremely well.

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