Miami Region has made a lot of progress this year. Because of the establishment of two temporary charters, Shield AZA and Babka BBG, North Miami has seen much of an increase in members and interest. But in any case, we were not prepared for the turnout we had at our biggest event of the year: Color War Shabbat. 

The focus of this meeting was to host a ton of prospects and we were expecting around 25 people. We bought the powder, the food, and things for services. Once we thought the meeting was finalized, we sent the message in our prospects group chat. After only a day, numerous friends were added to the groupchat, and we ended up having 65 teens in it near the end. We asked who was confirmed to come, and the finalized number? Fifty. 

This was the most people who have ever confirmed for an event in Miami Region this year. We were excited and thought execution would be simple: services, capture the flag, bucket brigade, then close. The original plan also consisted of the colored powder to be thrown during the games. 

Fast forward a week later, The event started 15 minutes before candles were supposed to be lit. As we finished services, everyone was finally there. We had a DJ, opened the meeting, and things were going great. But again, we have NEVER hosted that many people for one event before. 

We tried to speak about AZA, BBG, and BBYO as a whole, but it was hard to keep 50 teens under control all at once. We tried to start the games, but nobody was paying attention. And yes, this was a mixture of little planning and not thinking some stuff through, but we didn’t imagine running an event would be this difficult.

As we moved to the bucket brigade, I noticed that we only had two buckets, and one of them was filled with powder. This was, by all means, not our plan. The powder was supposed to be inside one of the buckets. 

I looked down at the one full of powder, and with 45 minutes left in the event, I told the group that worked on the event to wing it. I called for the teens to gather around and grab as much powder as they wanted to. Once we did that, the whole meeting flipped. Everyone was throwing powder around, smiling, having fun, and it felt like a stress-free event. And for this particular meeting, it was because we went off script. 

That's the beauty of BBYO meetings. Of course you should plan and script each meeting to successfully execute it. And yes, we did not plan as well as we hoped because we weren’t expecting that many prospects. But we made the most out of it by not doing what we intended to. We just winged it. And in the end, it was more successful than what it would be if we kept using our game plan.  

Miami is growing fast. Shield AZA and Babka BBG will be applying for permanent charters very soon, and we know that this event was the gamechanger in that step towards future progress. So, in a sense, I am happy I crumbled up my script.