Thank you Bengaluru

The best remedy for all kinds of worries is a bit of goodwill. Organizing
awards can be a nerve racking experience, especially if you are doing it for the
first time in any city. Our annual awards are celebrating a decade of their
existence and while in all other regions, viz North, East and West, the cities
and sometimes the venues have remained unchanged, in South India in the last
three years we have started rotating the host city to be able to cover all the
three bustling metros.

So the first year that I joined the publication we went o Hyderabad to hold
the annual awards night, that was also a first for us. While the twin cities
boasts of a bustling business center and the partners have supported us in all
our ventures, their presence at the awards night has not been very regular. Back
then of course I did not know such things and the number of people who turned up
was nothing less than impressive. Also since that was the first year and a
learning process, I guess the pressure on me was minimum. Anyways all that
changed the next year when we went back to our good old faithful center,
Chennai. The city and its channel partners have been most loyal to The DQ Week
and I am always amazed by the amazing goodwill that I feel when interacting with
any partner there. I still have fond memories of the wonderful home cooked meal
that I partook of at Nitesh Bhandari's residence on my maiden visit to the city.

And irrespective of the city that we are in, the Chennai contingent always
makes it a point to show up in full strength to support us. Thank you guys, your
gestures mean a whole lot to the team.

Shivangi Yadav

Against a backdrop of such goodwill you would understand why some of us were
reasonably skeptical when we decided to hold the awards night not in our
favorite Chennai but in Bengaluru. Don't get me wrong, there have been many
partners in the city who have supported us in whatever we had done in the past,
but an awards night is a different ballgame altogether. So imagine how nervous I
got when first a few days before the awards, serial blasts rocked the city and
on the day of our debut in the city, clouds gathered and threatened to play
spoilsport.

At the appointed time however, channel partners from all corners of the city
and South India came in to make our day special. By the end of the evening, the
grinning faces of colleagues said the story that we all were hoping to write.

But it would not have been possible without the unflinching support that was
provided by the Association of Information Technology (AIT). I would
particularly like to thank Mr Jayessh Mehta and Mr Sridhar who worked round the
clock to ensure that we had a winner on our hands.

Thank you Bengaluru, your goodwill is really appreciated.

shivangiy@cybermedia.co.in