Where The Adventure Begins | My First Day
The Night Before
Picture this, it’s the night before and I am preparing for my first internship within the public relations industry. I am both extremely excited and extremely nervous, as I wonder what my first day of work will involve. Usually, when starting a new position, I will take the time to research the company, review their annual reports and familiarise myself with the type of business that they are. However, the company I am working for (Venture South) is a new subsidiary of the Mader Group and is yet to be launched. Therefore, there was little to no information online! which only made this position even more exciting and mysterious.
Nevertheless, preparation is key and while I may not necessarily have been able to learn more about the business. I could make sure that I was prepared for anything they threw at me. Firstly, I downloaded a coffee record app (of course) in case my duties would involve doing the coffee rounds for the office. Secondly, I packed the essentials, which included; Panadol, a to-do list, notepads, stationery and a can-do attitude. Lastly, I ironed my outfit the night before so that I wouldn’t need to worry about it in the morning.
My First Day
The First Day was extremely exciting and busy! My manager took me around the office and introduced me to several staff members, showed me the office facilities and took me to my desk. It was here that I learned about a software called Citrix, which is essentially a server that all staff connect to and access applications/documents from.
The first day was very productive and I was surprised to learn just how hands on this internship was going to be. You often hear the intern is going to be given the work other people don’t want to do or be running around doing the coffee orders. However, the good news was that this wasn’t the case and that there would be a lot to learn from this position.
My first project was to create the website using a software called Squarespace. While, I was familiar with using software, such as Wix and WordPress. I had actually never had the opportunity to use Squarespace and soon realised that it was very very different to other softwares, such as Wix. in the beginning it took me a little while to get used to how the software functioned, but by the end of the day I had my first full draft (w00!) and we had produced an overall concept of what the brand was going to look like. The most exciting part about this and the project was that the brand doesn’t exist! Essentially I would be in charge of bringing the brand alive and creating its image.
I have to say the thought of creating a website in a day at first was daunting. All I could think was I need to write copy, find out about the products, create the booking systems, get the contact details and then I had to breathe! I created a to-do list and broke down step by step what needed to be done. Before I knew it, task after task was being completed and I quickly learned how important it is to break down your tasks.
The first few days have been extremely productive and I am excited about the future projects that I will be working on. I look forward to writing my next blog and updating you all on what I have been doing.
Kieran 🙂
No matter how big or small an organisation: Preparation is key for a successful event
Hi everyone and welcome to my second blog post!
Today I’m going to be discussing the importance of preparation and documentation for successful event execution, and also the importance of review and reflection. As we have previously learnt in PR Techniques, events take time, energy and exceptional organisational skills to ensure they run smoothly and those who attend are satisfied.
The Stirling Lions Soccer Club recently hosted The Comedy Lounge (see more here: https://www.comedylounge.com.au) for a night full of eating, drinking and laughing with a mix of the funniest stand-ups from Australia and around the world!
On the day of the event, I was required to come to the club a bit earlier to help set up tables, the stage and a ticket station area where door sales would be occurring, so that it was all ready to go for the evening.
Tables all set up
I returned to the club at about 6pm to help with last minute preparation before guests started arriving at 6:30pm. As the club is local and primarily a volunteer-run organisation, it can understandably be a bit difficult to cover ALL bases of event preparation if there aren’t a lot of helping hands! As a result, I did notice some gaps and areas to be addressed and improved upon. I was responsible for being at the door handling the cash box and ticket sales with another volunteer, and as guests were coming in, we realised that it was hard to determine which guests already had a ticket and what table number they were on. Some people would walk in saying, “Oh, we are on _______’s table, they’ve already paid for a table of 10” or “_______ has our tickets”. There was no specific list of table numbers and guest names that we could follow, so we had to allocate tables on the spot – it was just a bit unorganised! Despite this little hiccup, the night was such a great success. My stomach was hurting from laughing so much! I went around and took photos of the comedians and the guests which were uploaded to the club’s Facebook page. This small amount of media coverage was important for the club as it showcased the type of community events they hold, the family-friendly culture they have and also raised awareness about the club for people who may want to become members for next year’s season. Although I was a bit hesitant, I did raise my suggestions on how to better prepare for club events in the future with the vice president and president of the club and they took my advice on board which was a relief! Hopefully we can implement this for the trophy presentation night event coming up.
Among other recent tasks over the weekend, I was required to again, write a speech to announce over the loud speaker from the media room before the 21st round of the NPL WA which was Stirling Lions vs Floreat Athena. In this speech, there was actually a lot more to say compared to the first one I touched on about in my first blog post. I additionally had to thank some special guests for attending the game including a local minister and ward members, go into a lot more depth about a sponsorship offer and raise awareness about a raffle and the upcoming trophy presentation night – not to forget announcing the player numbers and names again – I thought I was going to run out of breath!
Stirling Lions vs Floreat Athena
Pre-game announcing from the media room
Keep your eyes peeled for more of my blog posts!
Breanna
Thank goodness for label makers
On Friday, I ended my internship journey with the Women in Mining WA (WIMWA) conference. The event structure and running was very similar to my last event (Pharmacy Guild Forum) but it was way different in terms of execution. And it was a whole lot bigger.
WIMWA conference at the Crown Perth
Again, registrations were the biggest task of the day. But this time I moved up the ranks and was given a different responsibility: recording and making lanyards for name changes or new attendees.
A major difference with the WIMWA event was the number of registration changes. Most attendees were registered as part of a group through their companies or schools. In your experience of group events or outings – maybe you went to a quiz night, dinner or concert – how many times have there been changes in who’s going? You’ve probably experienced it a few times with people bailing, switches and late additions.
Usually if the numbers are around about the same it doesn’t matter. But for a corporate event you might want to create or maintain databases, conduct an evaluation and contact in attendees for feedback or to market future events. For this you need attendee’s details.
Tea and coffee set up for morning tea
In registrations, we needed everyone’s names and companies for their lanyards. Lanyards make it easier to address, distinguish and create a more personalised experience for event attendees – who doesn’t love seeing their name on something. With a theatre and Casino, function rooms, hotels and restaurants Crown is an especially busy place and lanyards are very helpful for identification.
With 20 minutes allocated for registrations and about 800 attendees, you can imagine the length of lines for registrations. A lot of people were swapping in for someone else to attend the event.This is understandable and often can’t be helped – some people are sick, some are away. But when you have huge numbers of people to register in a short window of time, stress levels go through the roof.
Name changes and new registrations required a two part process:
- Check and add the name to the spreadsheet
- Print the name and company on a label and make a lanyard
This process while tedious was necessary for identification, attendee satisfaction, reporting and evaluation. But it meant we were down two people to help with the registrations. Doing a name change or new lanyard also took over double the time of a normal registration. The label maker was a saving grace – neatly handwriting the names and companies would have been a nightmare.
I think the allocation of responsibilities contributed to this issue. WIMWA took the registrations while my placement organisation made the lanyards and handled registrations on the day. Name changes were sent to WIMWA and then forwarded to us. However, lots of changes weren’t confirmed and dealt with until the day.
For more efficient registrations, I would recommend to:
- Put one organisation in charge
- Enact a policy where name change requests are required 1-2 days prior to the event
AND INVEST IN A LABEL MAKER!!!