A GCT Meetup in Seattle

I am in Seattle for a business trip (Epicor Encounter event). As I was travelling to Seattle, I just asked myself, “Why not host a GCT meetup in the city?” This is something I’ve not done before, and I thought it would be good to experiment and see how many people turn up or how many GCT folks actually live in the Seattle area. Would it be easy to pull off? Will people come? What if no one comes? These were also questions running through my mind. However, we wanted to give it a shot. When we decided to do this, I just told myself, “Even if 5 or 10 people turn up for this, it would be good.” We immediately created an invite with Saturday, September 12, 2026, as the meet-up date (4 pm to 6 pm), and posted it on LinkedIn in the college alumni group. This helped spread the word. I reached out to my friend Prem Ramanathan, and he helped narrow down the meetup location. We chose a picnic shelter at Tibbetts Valley Park (965 12th Ave NW, Issaquah, WA 98027) as our meet-up location.

We had a little over 30 registrations, and about 30 people came to the meetup. This was a meetup across different batches, and many of us did not know each other. It was awesome to greet each other for the first time. I think we had folks who passed out from the 1979 batch to the 2010 batch. We also had Professor Dr. Lakshmi Prabha, Former Principal of GCT, Coimbatore, join us for the meetup. It so happened that she was in Seattle, and we were thankful and glad that she could join us.

Thanks, Prem Ramanathan (‘01), for all your help organising this and the food. Thanks, Vijay Chandrasekhar (VC), for your leadership and assistance with setting up the event page, posting this on our LinkedIn alumni group, and spreading the word. We met many people we didn’t know who lived in Seattle. Lots of smiles. :-). We also had ‘I didn’t know that you are an alumnus/alumna of GCT!’ moments. Thanks to the team who coordinated this effort (sending calendar invites, emailing, WhatsApp group, etc.). @~Malini Ravanan (’28), @~Jaidev (’28), @~Sandhiya (’25), @~Kayalvizhi (’25), @~Yasholekha (’23), @~Pavithra Lakshmikanthan (’23) and @~Sakthi (’22). Thanks, Srija Santhanam, for your leadership, for staying on top of this, and for coordinating.

8 of us from the 2001 batch showed up 🙂 We got a group pic.

With Balamurali Ananthan (one year my senior in college) – We also did our Master’s together.

Dr. Lakshmi Prabha – Former Principal of GCT, Coimbatore and also an alumna (joined us)

Random Pics

Random Pics

School and college alumni communities can do a lot of good. This one was a great example. Really glad we got to host this. Though we had originally planned the meet-up from 4 pm to 6 pm, a lot of us hung out till about 7 pm. In many ways, it was refreshing to meet folks with the GCT connection.

Let’s build the GCT community together and stay in touch. Small world.

Thank you

Karthik Chidambaram