It was a hot afternoon in early August when I received a message from a fellow Indonesian alumni also graduated from a Midwest university. His message was short but very inviting: hey bro, let’s do a Midwest Thanksgiving. I thought, why not? After all, this would be a great follow-up event after May’s Midwest Gathering.
Jemmy from Wisconsin (left), Henry from Michigan (right).
We had been having this discussion about the Indonesian BIG 10 Alumni for quite some time. The original idea was pretty simple: forming an alumni alliance whose school they graduated from were members of the BIG 10 Conference. Those 14 schools include: Indiana University, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, Rutgers University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Iowa, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The early team started to reach out to as many alumni association and even individual alumni from those 14 schools to co-host this event. We managed to get alumni from 4 schools to sit together, that is Indiana, Wisconsin, Purdue and Michigan. Slightly different from May’s Midwest Gathering, this event was aimed to accommodate a wider age group. That means,
we worked hard to tailor the events to be suitable for everyone.
A few meetings later, we decided to host this event on November 25, 2017. We chose ReWork Kuningan as the venue, which happened to be owned by one of the Wisconsin alumni, Vanessa Hendriadi Li. The location offers a strategic location as well as creativity-infused space, which is perfect for our event. The location was arranged by Jemmy (Wisconsin). Online registration system was handled by Henry (Michigan). Olivia (Indiana) helped with arranging the pies and cakes to help build the Thanksgiving ambience. Feilica (Indiana) and Hendy (Michigan) worked on the moderation
and games creation for the event. Hans (Wisconsin), Ijen (Wisconsin) and Yoelin (Minnesota) handled the physical registration process during the start of the event. As of myself, I did some video shooting, which you can enjoy by clicking the link below.
We had to start a bit late to wait for the crowd to gather, after all it’s a Saturday afternoon, all is good. People started to come and registered. A lot of joy and laughter were heard.
Everybody seemed to have fun. Jemmy started the event by explaining the background of this BIG 10 alumni event. Next came the game session where we did the “Telekata” game where everybody was split into different teams grouped by colors. The moderator then gave a term to leaders of each team. Each leader then had to pass through the term/word to the next person in line and so on. The last person on the team got to move forward and tell to audience what the word/term was.
The Indonesia Hoosiers
Next came Artha (Wisconsin) who gave a nice presentation about her passion in ocean diving. She also raised the awareness to us about the importance of working hand-in-hand to clean the surface of the ocean from trash. Henry from Michigan also came forward to shed some light on personal medication and how giving thanks on a daily basis can benefit us as a person. This came really nice in-line with Thanksgiving.
After all, everybody had a good time. People got to meet old friends or even made new ones. We all had the chance to expand our network beyond our own alma mater. This is one of the real reasons why the Indonesian BIG 10 Alumni was formed in the first place: together we are stronger.
We look forward to having you in our next BIG 10 event! Happy Thanksgiving!
Yohanes Mangitung
Kelley School of Business class of 2004
Feilica Chandradinata
Kelley School of Business class of 2004