Prashant already covered most of the points, some more to add to it.
JAINA convention 2005 – Our first convention. It was a very well managed event, the volunteers have done an outstanding job. When i went on Thursday evening to the convention centre for the orientation, i kept wondering how chaotic next day would be given that total of 200 sessions were going to be held in the next 3 days. So far 2900 ppl had registered and the final count declared on Sunday was abt 3500. When we reached for the Bhangra Aerobics session on Saturday morning, it seemed little bit chaotic as people were confused which room to go to. Well most of them did not carry the maps and it was hard for the volunteers to remember which session was held where. But then everyone got a hint that without maps it would be hard. Btw Prashant is thinking of adding Bhangra aerobics for our next camping trip 🙂
There were all kinds of topics – religious, professional, family, cooking, fitness, meditation etc. Sometime it was hard to decide which sesison to attend. Rakeshbhai Zaveri seemed to be the most popular spirtual scholar, mostly because it was his first time in USA. All other scholars have visited USA n times before.
Although we did not get a chance to use Childcare option – met some of the kids on sunday eve and they seemed to be very happy about it. They had face painting done by clown, games, drawing, movies to watch etc. While on childcare our Jr kutchvalley members(who attended the convention) – Jash, Kevali and Kairavi were great throughout the convention. Don’t recollect any of them troubling much. We could attend most of the sessions that we had thought about.
Everyone was very punctual about time – be it food, sessions or cultural events. The first day’s inaugaration ceremony took longer than expected but otherwise most of the things were on time.
I would definitely love to attend it again .