In the beginning of the year, I sat down with the ChurpChurp team here in Malaysia and talked about what ChurpChurp was going to do this year. Our initiatives in the previous years were to marketing campaigns to sign up more users in ChurpChurp. This year though we felt we had enough users and we wanted to do something different. So the idea for #ChurpOut2012 came about. We thought.. why don’t we have this huge festival thing where social media users from all over Malaysia could come and have fun while also supporting some charities. All I gave was the general direction. The ChurpChurp team did the rest.
They put together an entire event where in the indoor section, we had a bazaar and artists that would draw your caricature . On the outside, fun-fair kind of games that we used to see as kids and of course performance. The date was 13th of October 2012, and it was held at Publika.
The following are pictures I took of the event.
We had many performances throughout the day. Everything from the Malaysian Ukulele Club to Manhand.
One of my favourite performances then was from a band called Half Past 6. Managed to take a video of them here.
The ChurpChurp team or Churpies as we call them worked throughout the entire week. Spending many many late nights too. The night before #ChurpOut2012 the bunch of them stayed till 6AM to prepare for the event and came back again at 9AM to manage the event. For an event that was expecting thousands of people, they knew they needed help so the Nuffies all volunteered to work on Saturdays.
They all took turns to manage game booths, do registration, pack goodie bangs and stuff like that.
I paid a visit to this booth where Angeline our accountant was helping with giving out prizes to the people who won points from the fun fair games they played. Mimi and Rina joined the picture too.
These are the kind of fun fair games that we had.
We had everything from this one where you had to throw rings on some bottles.
to my favourite rodeo.
XPAX was one of the sponsors and they had a booth there that was constantly packed with people. At their booth you could dunk celebrities or anyone who was nominated to be dunked into a big tub of water and ping pong balls.
The people who got dunked would get all wet but they could pick up the ping pong balls which could potentially win them some prizes. Things from a LED TV to a Samsung Galaxy S3. So naturally… lots of people wanted to get dunked… and even more wanted to dunk them.
Also in the XPAX booth was a competition where people could paint their own toy Mini Coopers and the one with the nicest paint job would win a prize.
Here were some of the ones I saw.
Or this cute one.
I managed to catch a picture with Linora who was the host for the day. She was awesome!
In the indoor section of #ChurpOut2012 there was a bazaar.
Shorty and Ringo had a booth where they sold Foruchizu stuff and some of their pre-loved stuff too.
This was how packed their booth was.
There were some other top Nuffnang bloggers there were selling their pre-loved stuff there too. Chuckei had a store.
And Hanis who is now a host of her own TV Show Mad Markets. Catch if on TV if you can!
By the end of the day, they had all sold loads of stuff and Shorty had almost nothing left to sell.
Halfway through the bazaar the Malaysian Ukulele Club set themselves up at a corner and started playing away. Their music is so fun and so damn cute. Makes me want to learn to play the ukuleleif… if only I had some musical talent at all.
At the bazaar Delectable had a store too and I saw them selling this… which I bought instantly.
It’s so cute so I bought it for Ming. But he couldn’t get himself to eat it… because that would be like eating ChurpChurp.
So that everyone is a snippet of what #ChurpOut2012 was like. The real heroes though are the Nuffies and the Churpies who put this really cool event together. It is today my favourite event that we ever put together in the 5 years we started. While it was one of the most fun events we ever had it was also one of the most taxing on our team. So tomorrow the Churpies won’t be coming to work. Instead, we sent the bunch of Churpies on a girl’s day out (since it so happens that the entire ChurpChurp team is female).
On their girls’ day out they will be going for a spa, massage, pedicure, manicure and get their hair washed. All fully paid by the company. We want them to get rested. So tomorrow is a day off for the girls at ChurpChurp… and I hope they have fun because they’ve earned themselves a good rest for the work they put in the past few weeks, not just for #ChurpOut2012 but for everything else too.
One last thing. #ChurpOut2012 wouldn’t have happened if not for our partners. To XPAX, BCARD, Durex, Mister Potato and all the rest, thank you for making this wonderful event possible.
If you guys missed out on this… we might do another one again next year (if the Churpie girls are up for it).. so see you guys then.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space