Kiran's Reunion Check-in

When a batch-mate walks up to the counter, I see only their status and their notes, not the four hundred other messages from the group.

Who this is for

Kiran Deshmukh, 1998 mechanical batch, keeps the alumni desk for an engineering college in Nagpur. Two hundred and forty names on the list, one folding table at the hall gate, and a nephew helping with badges. On reunion evening the queue starts at six, and Kiran has about fifteen seconds per person before the next one is standing there listening to everything.

How the job is done today

Everything lives in a WhatsApp group of 240 people. One says he is coming with wife and son. Another shifts from Saturday to Sunday. A third sends a voice note asking for jain food. Kiran copies the useful ones into a notebook, then types them into an Excel sheet at night, and by then the group has moved on to old hostel photos. At the counter the notebook is open at the wrong page, so Kiran scrolls the chat with one thumb while a classmate stands there waiting to be recognised, and then just asks him again what he had already written three weeks ago.

The screens, in order

1. The batch list — This is where Kiran puts in the 240 names once, with branch, phone, town and whatever is already known about each one.
2. Paste the group — This is how messages get out of WhatsApp and into the site: Kiran selects messages in the chat and pastes the copied text into a big box, or drops in the exported chat file, or uploads screenshots, and the site reads each line and files it as a dated note under the right name.
3. Waiting to be filed — This holds every line the site could not confidently match to a person, so Kiran can point each one at the right name or throw it away.
4. The counter — One search box, three letters of a name, and nothing else on the screen, meant to be used with a classmate standing on the other side of the table.
5. One batch-mate — Everything known about the person in front of Kiran, and a single button to mark them arrived with the number of people who walked in with them.
6. Still to come — The list of who said yes and has not reached yet, for the point in the evening when Kiran needs to know whether to hold the dinner announcement.

What it keeps track of

• Batch-mates — name, branch, phone, town they are coming from, coming or not coming or unsure, how many guests, veg or non-veg or jain, notes filed against them, arrived or not
• Messages that came in — the text as it was written, who sent it, when it was sent, which batch-mate it was filed under, or still waiting to be filed
• Arrivals — which batch-mate, what time they walked in, how many people came with them, anything Kiran typed at the counter

The one decision that matters

When the site reads a pasted line and cannot tell which batch-mate it belongs to, does it make its best guess and file it anyway, or does it refuse and hold the line aside? Guessing gives Kiran a fuller page for every person. Holding aside leaves gaps. It should hold aside. At the counter, a wrong note is far worse than a missing one, because Kiran reads it out loud to a man standing two feet away and tells him his wife is coming when she is not. A gap makes Kiran ask a question. A wrong guess makes Kiran look like he was not paying attention for six months. The held pile gets cleared in the quiet hour before the gate opens.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out collecting the reunion fee, printing badges, seating charts and any way of replying back to the group from the site. Every one of those adds a step at the table, and the table is the whole problem. Kiran collects money by UPI on his own phone the way he already does, and writes names on badges with a marker. The first version has to earn its place by making one search faster than scrolling the chat.

How you would know it worked

On reunion evening a classmate Kiran has not seen in twenty years walks up, Kiran types three letters, and says his name, his table, his jain thali and that his daughter is coming at eight, without asking him a single question. And the queue behind him never grows past two people.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I look after the check-in desk for our 1998 batch reunion in Nagpur and I am drowning in our WhatsApp group. Build me a website where I keep 240 batch-mates with branch, phone, town, whether they are coming, how many guests they bring and what they eat. Give me a big box where I paste messages copied straight out of the group chat, or upload the exported chat file, or upload screenshots of it, and the site reads each line and files it as a dated note under the right person. If it cannot tell who a line is about, it must not guess, it should keep that line in a separate pile for me to assign myself. Then on reunion night I want one search box where I type a few letters of a name and see only that person, their notes, and one button to mark them arrived with how many people walked in with them.