Jaina convention 2005 was held in Santa Clara Convention Center during July 1 – July 4. At the outset, I was not very sure how the convention will be. But now after its over, I am glad that I attended. It was our first Jaina convention.
It was mostly well organized. Kudos to JCNC and volunteers. Santa Clara convention has top class facilities and that helped too.
Though I could not attend many religious discourses, there were other things that helped made up for it. There were a few really good speakers (Rakesh bhai). There were so many parallel tracks going on in various languages. Amazing job by the organizers.
The dandiya raas night on Fri was awesome. Good to hear some different music than the standard GCA garba music. Satellite group from Mumbai did a good job of playing the right music. The Hall was humongous.
They had Bhangra aerobics early morning (Sat, Sun, Mon) at 6.30am. 45 mins of Bhangra aerobics left us in perfect shape for the awesome breakfast that was laid out in the dinner hall. (No guilty feeling as someone said). Food was great throughtout the event. (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snacks). It felt like a big grand wedding. :-). Since here we dont get to attend that many weddings it was all the more exciting. It was just nice to meet people and mingle among friends.
Sat night was the cultural competition and that went off well with some good performances. Anuradha Paudwal/Manhar Uddhas night on Sunday was good too though we had to leave halfway.
The Kojain gettogether did not go as well as anticipated. But hopefully next time a different format will be used. Good to meet the out of town kutchis though and put images to some names.
Only criticism I would have is that volunteers were not very baby friendly. Though the main hall was so huge they had issues allowing the stroller in. Anyway with such a big event such things will happen. But overall the 109$ for registration (we registered quite early) was “full paisa vasool”.