DyLac's DOMAIN: HOMECOMING: TEN FIRSTS

Our high school grand alumni homecoming (GAH) hosting chore as silver jubilarians was 5 months ago. After almost a year of preparation, we can now breathe a sigh of relief and claim that we have homecoming preparation experience on our belts. Not wanting to regress from the norm, we had the usual female hosts, entertainers, lechon baka, audio-video presentations and the LED screen.

We have to hand it to our big brothers in batch 88 as they set a number of standards which were actually hard to topple but made us actually do better and work harder. They were the first to use LED screen, an efficient parking management, de kalidad na lights & sound and 80s rock band the Dawn (need I say more?).

In the spirit of healthy competition, this is how I summarize the top 10 homecoming highlights of our batch:

Website.

The GAH’s url is www.dbtarlac89.com. It contains live blog, what's new, videos and pictures, sponsor, registration. As of this writing, it is still up and will be until December this year unless we decide to burn P500 a year for sentimental reasons and keep the site. This amateur-ly done website was completed in under 2 weeks at 20% of the originally budgeted cost.

Data Base Management system.

So this is actually legacy material. I actually think we were not only the first to delivery this in our hometown school but the first country-wide. While it was donated by an alumnus related to me, he could have donated it during his batch homecoming but as fate has it, it was donated during our time.

On line registration.

As a supplement to the dbase management system, we offered an on line registration process. Though it was “fake” in a way because the web registration and the dbase management system was not linked, a work around was put in place and a registrant will not know that the process is “auto-manual.” In addition, a prize was given daily to online registrants. The beauty of this is you avoid the long lines on homecoming day because you’re already pre-registered.

Video Avatar.

We had a Homecoming Survival guide image file which was actually a summary of tips and reminders when attending the homecoming such as not instigating a beer bath, parking, registration, et al. As a supplement, we included a text-to-speech program where an avatar was verbalizing the homecoming survival guide. I couldn’t say it was effective but the technology was there, simple to do and just could not pass on the opportunity to use it and claim to be the first to use the technology.

Social Media team.

We hired a “social media team” composed of 5 techy individuals with photography skills, journal writing skills and part of a university school paper. It was a very young team (youngest was 18 and oldest was about 25) who had the right skills and experience and led by an able leader who was the university school paper editor-in-chief. I am happy with their output. The handled the live blog via blogger, social media updates through facebook & twitter. All this at 1/3 the cost if we hired professionals.

Short video.

The audio video presentation was created by a company owned by our batchmate. So that really helped make the output something to be proud and at a very reasonable cost. The video entitled “The Promise” was like a short story matched with the homecoming program. The main characters were selected batchmates and the “mastermind” was no less that our beloved principal during our time. One of the alumni association officials said and I quote “the best AVP so far.” Pls. click here to watch the video.

Personalized Misalette.

Having been educated in a private Catholic school, it was just fitting to start the homecoming with a Eucharistic celebration. We left no stones unturned and this included the mass preparation i.e. collectors, readers, a line up of salesian priests and our priest batchmate, a choir and most especially, a personalized misalette.

High School Uniform.

One of the best ideas that cropped up during the brainstorming session was to wear the high school uniform. The last time I wore that uniform was a quarter of a century ago and I didn’t mind wearing it again on our special day. We probably would wear that again 25 yrs. from now if I will still be alive by then.

Highest recorded batch attendees.

Our database contains around 150 students from our batch. Given that 84 attended the homecoming means 56% of our batchmates were present. To think that 26% (around 39 persons) are based abroad and almost 20% are either missing in action or gone to eternal life. In the 2013 homecoming, the host batch had 51 batchmates who attended their homecoming while we had 52 attendees.

Regulated beer.

Unfortunately, despite the top nine above mentioned firsts by our batch, we might be remembered as the first batch who offered regulated beer. Our batchmates agreed and with the blessing of the school officials and the alumni association, that we will limit the booze to 3 per homecoming attendee. I really hope I am wrong and we be judged on the homecoming’s overall result.