Behind the Scenes, Organizing the SZABIST Media Festival

 


Every year, SZABIST Media Festival comes with a bang glittering lights, celebrity appearances, provocative panels, and a campus charged with energy. Nobody sees, however, the chaos, the late-night coffee binges, and mini-meltdowns that occur behind closed doors to create those three flawless days. Putting this festival together is creating a full-length movie when our storyline keeps changing, our actors don't turn up sometimes, and our crew members are half asleep, half wired with adrenalin and yet we manage.

Preparations start a month ahead, although emotionally it might as well be a lifetime. The moment the festival gets announced, teams are created with fancy names design, logistics, marketing, content, media but behind those glorious names are students juggling assignments, classes, and festival work like a bunch of circus acrobatics. You'd think having teams would smooth out stuff. No chance. What it means is we now have multiple groups of people pointing fingers at each other for stuff going wrong. The design team blames the logistics team for being slow. Logistics blames marketing for being too loud. Marketing blames everyone else for being lazy. And yet, mysteriously, everyone shows up. Well, almost everyone.

One of my absolute favorite aspects about coordinating is the internal drama. There are always those two individuals who argue in every meeting. Somebody perpetually forgets to show up for a presentation. Somebody else says they will create a poster by Friday and brings it by next Thursday. WhatsApp groups reach from 0 to 99+ unread messages within 10 minutes. Feelings are charged. At times, we almost sound like we're operating a soap opera rather than a festival. But beneath all that shouting in anger and eye-rolling, we do care. We care a lot, in fact.

The poor souls in our marketing team likely age five years in the process. They are tasked with tracking down sponsors equipped with pitch decks, borrowed confidence, and emails beginning with "Hope this finds you well." They chase sponsors like they're collecting Pokémon. Sometimes sponsors ghost. Sometimes sponsors laugh. But when one says yes after a long while, the group chat lit up like during Eid
. It's little victories like those that keep us afloat.

At the same time, the design crew are experiencing panic themselves over Canva files and “urgent revisions.” They make all the pretty stuff banners, backdrops, Instagram posts, invites. They sound artistic, but trust me, nothing is more anxiety-provoking than receiving a message at midnight stating, “The logo is pixelated, sort out by 8 a.m.” And yet they do it all beautifully, with a diplomatically appropriate level of passive-aggression in group chat.

Logistics are the backbone of the festival. They're responsible for ensuring the mics are functional, the lights don't fall down, and the stage doesn't suddenly collapse during a performance. They're the ones who handle vendors who ignore orders, last-minute schedule changes, and a general anxiety attack when a projector disappears five minutes prior to a screening. They're, however, the behind-the-scenes heroes. Without them, literally speaking, the show can't proceed.

And then there's the actual festival. Those three magnificent days where chaos magically turns into wonder. The halls are festooned, people are abuzz, and everything seems. near effortless. No one notices the late nights, the breakdowns, or the 50 tabs open on our laptops at 3 a.m. Which is fine. For once the stage darkens and the first performance begins, it's all worthwhile. Hosting SZABIST Media Festival feels like enduring a glorious catastrophe. You learn more from it than any lecture ever taught you how to work together, how to handle a crisis, leadership, patience, and how to smile while quietly going crazy. It's exhausting, maddening, hilarious, and hands down one of the highlights of college life. Do we do it again? Absolutely. Do we grumble through it from start to finish? Absolutely.