Editorial Team @ Vihaya Events
Ten things that separate a fest that runs smoothly from one that survives. These are the failures that repeat every year on every campus — not general advice, but the specific points where student-run events actually come apart.
1. Fix the date against the academic calendar first
Before anything else, check it against internal exams, other departments' fests, and any major festival or long weekend. A brilliant event on a bad date loses half its audience, and the date is the one thing you cannot fix later.
2. Give every task a single named owner
"The publicity team" is not an owner. One person owns publicity and can be asked a direct question. Shared ownership is how a task reaches the final week untouched, with each person assuming someone else had it.
3. Charge something, even if it is small
Free campus events routinely see 30–50% no-show; paid ones are often under 15%. A ₹100 ticket converts a bookmark into a commitment, and it is the difference between catering for a room that fills and one that is half empty. If access is a concern, offer a waiver on request rather than making the whole event free.
4. Set capacity from the room, and let the system enforce it
Capacity is seats minus organisers. Type the true number and let it be enforced at payment. Overselling a lab by three is not a rounding error — it is three people who paid and cannot be seated, and you will be refunding them in front of everyone.
5. Keep the form short
Name, email, phone, college, year. Add a field only if you can say exactly what you will do with the answer. T-shirt size only if you are ordering t-shirts; food preference only if you are serving food — and then it is essential, not optional.
6. Validate the email address
The ticket email is the only channel you have. A one-character typo — gmail.con instead of gmail.com — means someone paid and got nothing, and you find out from a bounce days later, by which point they are at the door with no QR code. Catch it at the form.
7. Promote where your audience already is
Class WhatsApp groups outperform everything else on a campus. Instagram creates awareness; the group message creates registrations. Put a QR code on department noticeboards pointing at the specific event page, not the fest homepage — every extra click loses people.
8. Rehearse the door
The queue is not created by scanning, which is fast. It is created by the one person whose name is spelled differently, or who paid but shows as pending. Put one person on scanning and one on exceptions so the line never stops. Brief them on the three refusals — wrong track, payment pending, already checked in — because volunteers freeze on cases nobody warned them about.
9. Have an offline fallback
Campus wifi fails at the worst possible moment. Print the attendance sheet the night before — the version that excludes unpaid registrations, so the desk is not admitting people who never paid. Charge every scanning device and bring power banks.
10. Write down the numbers for next year
Registrations, actual attendance, no-show rate per track, revenue and cost per track. Twenty minutes of work, and it is the single most valuable thing you can hand the next committee — which is exactly why it almost never gets done. Every year the new team re-guesses numbers the last team already knew.
The three that matter most
If you only act on three: charge something (fixes no-shows), set true capacity (prevents the worst failure), and write down the numbers (compounds every year). The rest is execution; those three change outcomes.
Planning one now? Our full college fest guide covers the same ground on a week-by-week timeline.