Frat party rocks YIH study room
27 09 2007Nabeel Khalid | nabeel.khalid@nus.edu.sg
The Ridge News
A NUSSU Publication
Sept. 24, 2007
There was no pin-drop silence or studying at the study area of Yusof Ishak House.
The study room was transformed into a club last Friday night - complete with DJs, rocking music and booze – for the Garag3 Frat Party.
Having fun at the Garag3 Frat Party
(Photo: Nabeel Khalid)
The party was organized by Singapore Entrepreneur 27 (E27) and Garag3, and sponsored by the National University of Singapore Enterprise.
Bjorn Lee from E27 explained the motive of holding such a party.
“Entrepreneurship isn’t all about all the classes that you go to, Lee said.
“You have got to make sure people understand what it really is about.”
Lee explained that the point of entrepreneurship is to break old business models. He said his party teaches people to “break the NUS frontiers”.
“It is about challenging yourself, challenging set conventions, and we thought that one of the main conventions that we could break is regarding the NUS culture,” he said.
“The fact [is] that you are not allowed to have fun on campus, you are not allowed to hold parties. People [only] go outside to hold bashes. It’s like a taboo,” he elaborated.
Another objective of the party was to use online payment services to drive ticket sales.
“[The] thing is, Singapore doesn’t have an e-commerce culture”, said Lee. He hoped to start the process of changing that with this party.
Organizer Bjorn Lee, also a graduate of NUS Business School in 2006
(Photo: Nabeel Khalid)
Online promotions, including Facebook were used intensively and proved to be effective. Almost everyone from NUS who is on Facebook received the invite.
The bouncers for the party were from St. James Power Station. When asked about the party, one of them said, “It’s nothing compared to what we had to deal with.”
Many expected the place to be jam-packed and hence never showed up.
“What is the point of a dance floor if there will be no place to move around?” said Usman Mahar, a first-year arts and social sciences student who decided he should not go to the party.
Second-year arts and social sciences student Snigdha Kumar, thought the party was good because “there was an ample amount of free booze and the music was pretty good too.”
But she thought there were more guys than girls.
“It was decent though it could have been more balanced,” she said about the turnout.
When asked if such events should be held in the future, her response was, “Yeah, definitely!”
Human train in the study room
(Photo: Nabeel Khalid)
[...] Frat party rocks YIH study room [...]
[...] Our party last week was covered by The Ridge Online. Here’s the article: http://ridgeonline.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/frat-party-rocks-yih-study-room/ [...]
What is the point of a dance floor if there is too much place to move around? :D
Party are meant to be packed. Too bad I wasn’t free that night. Sigh.
The ‘frat party’ came as a surprise to me. It’s definitely not part of the NUS culture in my opinion which may be why Lee initiated it. Thumbs up!
And the fact that some people didn’t show up cuz it might be packed??? If you have ever been to a ’spacious’ party, you were either bored or at some parliamentary gig.
I think NUS should have more of such parties but the YIH Study Room?? Another venue might be helpful next time. Maybe an outdoorsy, on-the-rolling-fields kinda party. Not Heidi. More Oktoberfest.
Great party, you guys have initiated sth great!
I personally loved it, although the turn out wasn’t as expected. haha, enjoyed the nite drinking & dancing with fren. =p
thanks for the comments. actually it was neither too packed or too unpacked. as one of the party organizers, i must say that it wasn’t easy to estimate the numbers.
there were many factors at play:
1) short marketing cycle,
2) not sure whether nus peeps would actually trek over to party
3) we’re not a big club or faculty in NUS.
i used to do parties at zouk, sentosa and whatever when I was in NUSSU. but it was always relatively easy because we had big teams. my nussu bizcom party in yr 1 a long long time ago was super successful. we filled zouk. sold 1.2k tickets. but we had a team of 100+ people selling tickets, lots of games, sponsorships and whatsover.
but this time round, the garag3 was done with a small crack team of <10 people. if we add the marketing people it was like maybe 20+. that’s about all.
we choose study room because the venue was beautiful. it was cavernous like a club could be. and we arranged the room based on estimated crowd sizes. because we had pre-sale online ticketing, we could see how the crowd was responding to marketing and that helped us greatly in budgeting the drinks and the overall experience.
actually at the peak of the party, the dance floor was packed just right without contravening all the fire safety rules we had to adhere to. the bar floor was also jammed up and for those who were there, it was indeed a great social experience.
if you’re interested to find out more, do chat/email me. maybe we could form a team to bring about a bigger better Garag3 Party :) thanks!
btw, the party pics are up!: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14411541@N06/sets/72157602226740247/
Judging from the pictures, the party was definitely packed.. We nicely managed to hit a high number of people while balancing the fire safety regulations.. =)
Check out the coverage by ActiveChannel..
http://www.activechannel.tv/thescoop/
Hey, here are some more pictures - in case anyone wants them:
http://nus.facebook.com/album.php?aid=22878&l=84846&id=504835925