This year, September has officially ushered in the festival season in India with Krishna Janmashtami. The notice board in a majority of apartment complexes will display the following major festivals:
- Ganesh Chaturthi on September 17
- Navratri from Oct 13 to 22
- Diwali on Nov 11
- Christmas on Dec 25
- And, of course, the much awaited New Year’s Eve on Dec 31!
It is time to get into a frenzy of planning, shopping for new clothes, watching for the latest fashion trends, looking for the best deals and making the most of it to get the items on your wish list. Some of you will receive the much-awaited festival bonus at work. It is also time to look forward to family get-togethers, maybe sprucing up your home and weekend trips with friends. In short, a hectic schedule over the next three months that promises to be fun.
If you live in an apartment complex, you’ll be starting to gear up to enjoy these festivals with great pomp and fervor and with the added bonus of school vacation, getting into the full swing of good times. As the excitement mounts, plans are made, lists drawn up, shopping schedules coordinated and recipes exchanged. Everyone is united in wanting to make this festival season the best ever.
One of the greatest things about apartment living is the diverse community, almost like a mini-India and the celebrations just multiply with the shared happiness, not to mention the delicious food, fun and frolic.
While the residents are busy getting ready to celebrate, what can the apartment management committee do to make the experience better? And also how can they make their own lives easier and make the festival planning process participative, interactive and of course, stress-free. Stress has no place when it comes to celebrations! All efficient management committees across India uses ADDA for their planning.
Some of the ways, you as a part of the management committee, can leverage ADDA to efficiently manage your long list of festival planning activities are:
1) Creating list of activities
You know what they say – when you fail to plan, you plan to fail! Create an agenda that includes events, programs, contests and other get-togethers. Are you planning to organise a fun fair? Will you be having a garage sale before the festival so people can begin with clutter-free homes? Will you organise cultural programs? Put these suggestions together and circulate the list. No, you do not have to send someone around with a circular.
How ADDA can help:
- All it takes is a few clicks and you can put up the activities in your ADDA Notice Board. Don’t forget to assign event dates to the activities so that all the planned events appear in your ADDA’s Event Calendar. These planned events can be viewed by residents anywhere, anytime and from any device.
- Use the SMS feature to keep residents updated about the latest happenings.
2) Create an instant poll
While planning you often wonder if your planned events will attract enough crowd or whether you are making the right choice with respect to date/venue/vendor, etc. Wouldn’t it be great if you could capture all your fellow resident’s opinion on the go?
How ADDA can help:
- Online Polls help you to check all resident’s opinion for taking important decisions. Polls also help to ensure participation. This poll can be tweaked to include owners only, committee members only and so on. No need to worry about an email overload.
3) Start conversations
Once you have the poll results, and taken important decisions you might want to discuss certain points with fellow residents/neighbours for more ideas and solutions. After all, two or more heads are always better than one.
How ADDA can help:
- Start a discussion thread in Conversations. Residents can access the discussions and participate from any device anywhere.
4) Form Task forces and allocate responsibilities
Responsibilities may include, depending on your unique functioning
- Cleaning and housekeeping around the apartment complex
- Managing parking especially during Diwali
- Restricted area designation and rules to keep children and pets safe
- Waste segregation and collection supervision (festivals do tend to generate more than usual)
- Tracking visitors and vendors and having a system in place to monitor them, since you’ll have more people coming and going during this time
Forming relevant groups and distributing work among them makes implementation of plans easy and organised with each group handling a particular item. It also promotes interaction among residents.
How ADDA can help:
- Use the Group feature; form groups and add relevant members to the groups. These members can have their own conversations and seamlessly work towards fulfillment of their goals.
5) Meetings, meetings, meetings
Once the dates are decided and put up on event calendar, you should start working on what needs to be done, when it is due and who should do it. For such planning you would need to:
- Set up meetings to discuss progress
- Budgeting for purchases
- Deciding on contributions from residents
- Organising caterers and decorators
- Hiring extra staff
Add all the other frills that make the festival a grand success.
How ADDA can help:
- Through ADDA you can create meetings. ADDA would send automatic Email and SMS reminders to participants before the meeting. During the meeting you can capture all your notes at the same place. After the meeting is over, with another couple of clicks you can send over the meeting notes to all attendees.
- Residents can pay their contributions online right through ADDA. ADDA is the easiest way to make any apartment related payments.
6) Make a handy list of important contact numbers
A list of all contacts including utility services (plumber, electrician), emergency numbers (ambulance, fire, electricity, water, telephone, cable, pharmacies, diagnostic labs), and taxi services are usually displayed in a prominent place in your Apartment. But then you need to note down those numbers or go to where the list is displayed in case you need a number.
How ADDA can help:
The same list can be put up on ADDA for apartment residents to access from anywhere, anytime, through mobile or web. During festivals like Diwali, if you have doctors and other medical professionals in the building, you can also include their numbers with their permission and highlight them. You can also list trusted vendors who can help with preparations for festivals in your ADDA Vendor directory. If there are new residents, this will be a great way to acclimatize them quickly and let them settle in to enjoy the festival season.
7) Gear up to send out individualized greetings to the residents.
A close community is all about communication and participation. How about a greeting card-making contest for the children, encouraging them with a reward? Use these for relevant occasions.
How ADDA can help:
- Upload the photos in your ADDA gallery and spread the word about community activities. Residents can also create their own albums in your ADDA.
8) Shopping
No festival season is complete without shopping. And who else would give you tips about great shopping options nearby other than your neighbours! The best part of community living is benefiting from shared knowledge and experience.
How ADDA can help:
- Initiate a Conversation where members can share special shopping tips, deals and precautions. If a resident had a great experience or an unpleasant one, let everyone know.
Above all, create an atmosphere of festivity and make this year the most memorable ever!
If you are not a part of your apartment’s ADDA yet, then join now! It’s Easy! Visit www.apartmentadda.com, or download the app from here, search for your apartment and join!
If your Apartment complex / housing society is still not online on ADDA, you can create one absolutely free on www.apartmentadda.com.
ADDA is the essential app for every apartment resident!
– By Vidya Sury
She loves being an apartment dweller and showing her diabetes who’s boss. Follow her @vidyasury