A volunteer's insights into GCCD Kolkata

Google Cloud Community Day is a community organized cloud conference with industry experts presenting on cutting-edge topics! Cloud Community Day is powered by a shared belief that when developers come together to exchange ideas, remarkable things can happen.

17 August 2024 marked the 3rd year of Cloud Community Day organized by Google Developer Groups Cloud Kolkata. With the moto and hashtag of #likeneverbefore, the entire team pulled on an extensive, 5-months-in-making event which not only surpassed audience expectations, but also those of our own.

The Extended Events

Unlike before, this year the GCCD event was tailored mostly for professionals, with intermediate to advanced level talks and sessions. To cater to the student community, our team organized the "Extended Events". No other community across the country, had ever pulled off such a feat. Extended events were organized in association with the community partners. Each event had different speakers talking about technologies followed by contests for students to secure tickets to the main event.

In frame : Extended Event in collaboration with GDSC FIEM.

A total of 10 such extended events were hosted before the main event.

Building the Website

As part of the web team, I along with the others and organizers was primarily tasked to create the GDG Cloud Kolkata website and the GCCD 2024 website.
Below is a small visual of the website hosted at https://ccd2024.gdgcloudkol.org/

While it may seem easy, it took us quite a few days to get everything sorted and set up. Coding the amazing design put up by the design team, setting up auth, integrating the APIs were the easy part. Creating and managing contests for each extended event, that were in itself full stack applications, did become tricky at some point of time.

The first extended event was organized on 18th May 2024, in collaboration with GDSC FIEM. Looking back on the commit insights of the GitHub repo, it reminds me of those few days when part of the web team went to sleep at 5 A.M. :D

The tasks of the web team even though peaked in the week of third week of May, continued till the main day in August. From making minor changes to the UI, to adding leaderboards, life as a web team volunteer kept me on my toes!

While the majority of people only had access to pages like extended events, profile, schedule, etc., the team had also built administrative level pages for each community partner and volunteers. Below are screenshots of a few restricted pages, providing a small glimpse of the extensive event-management application we had built.

Volunteer Manager page

This page was developed for community partner organizers to add in their volunteers, who'd be checking in attendees during the event.

Attendee Manager Page

Attendee manager consisted of two user level access. Extended event organizers had a view available to approve/reject applicants. The following screenshots contain dummy data, to maintain privacy of actual attendees

Volunteers selected for the extended events were given only check-in options.

Game Score Entry Page

The game score entry page was exclusively built for the main day contests with access only to select volunteers at the fun zone.

16.08.2024: Team dinner

The entire team was invited to a meet and greet dinner with the speakers and organizers, at the Air and Fire buffet at Axis Mall. All of us had a wonderful time meeting the speakers, and some of the other volunteers for the first time :D

17.08.2024 : Main day

Compared to the extensive hustle of GCCD 2023, us volunteers had a very relaxed day at GCCD 2024, thanks to the organizers planning everything so well!

GCCD Kolkata 2024 has been, so far, one of the most well executed events that I have been a part of. Along with the organizers and speakers, the volunteers also got special recognition on a "Wall of Fame".

Food is one of the great many things we enjoy at conferences. Chai-break provided one of the best vegetarian buffet I've had in some time, and true to their name their tea was just marvelous.

Apart from all the good memories, awesome food and amazing experiences, we did get to take quite a few other things home with us :P

Ending note

Google Cloud Community Day Kolkata 2024, was a perfectly executed event. Months spent working on this, became instantly worth it, the moment we began the event.

From being an attendee in 2022 to an on-ground volunteer in 2023, to becoming a core volunteer in 2024, this journey has also been a testament to my personal growth.

Looking forward to organize and be a part of such great events in the future! Cheers✨