An Insight Into Events...

Hey Everyone,

Well the past few posts have been farewell/completion posts and this makes me a little jealous to be honest... It's not that i'm not enjoying my placement (I definately am), I just can't see myself getting eveything finished this semester and i'm FREAKING OUT!!! Whilst I am happy my placement period is short but intense, it gives me little time for anything else. That said, let's move on...

So this weekend just gone Therapy Focus had a stall at Telethon as part of the beneficiaries expo. We were provided with one of around 25 small stalls located in the foyer of the Perth Convention Exhibiton Centre where Telethon was beiong held. I had to help layout and decorate the stall, making sure it was eye-catching and interesting, but also highly informative at the same time. I organised the printing of several Therapy Focus publications, creation of 'show bags' and ofcourse coordinated the Sunny Sunflower mascot and volunteers. Set up on Friday was relatively painless (apart from a run-in with the loading bay staff) and I was quite proud of how colourful and fun our stall looked compared to most of the other beneficiaries' stalls.

I unfortunatley could not attend Saturday, but was informed eveything ran smoothly. On Sunday I arrived at 9am on the dot to find two of the company's speech pathologists that had volunteered blowing up several balloons for the surprisingly fast-growing crowd. I took over this job, allowing them to talk to kids and parennts about Therapy Focus' services. Once the Sunny mascot volunteeer arrived at 10:30am I got a promo bag together and accompanied Sunny around the Kids Carnival, much to the sheer delight (and in some cases terror) of hundreds of children. This was great fun, though we had to have several breaks as Sunny was getting very sweaty. After Sunny left at 2:30pm, I went back to stall, where the new set of volunteers were not as efficient as the first set. I proceeded to tidy, refill and rearrange the stall then helped give out balloons and talk to interested parents.

Whilst the Telethon stall was a seemingly small event, it was a great oppurtunity for me to realy get a look into the amount of organisation and forward thinking needed for any event to e successful. Mostly I was pretty correct in the estimation of amounts of materials, but I still found it unbelievable that in the space of two days we gave out 1,500 balloons, and in the last hour had some very disappointed children, not recieving a balloon. I learnt that it's better to over estimate than under estimate. I also learnt the power of promotional goods. I always thought they were a tad pointless, but after walking through the kids carnival and the bus port at the end of the day, seeing the number of Therapy Focus canvas tote bags around was unbelievable. And the great thing about these bags is the way the get re-used - free publicity! I also learnt that communication and organisation is definately the key. You have to be unbelievably thorough when writing even checklists and in compiling event kits, something as simple as overlooking a pair of scissors or underestimating the number of pamphlets can ruin the success of an event. Be overprepared!

Telethon was really fun and a good experience which has now better prepared me for my work with Therapy Focus' bigger events such as the Book Launch coming up in a week's time and the Symphony of Sunfowers.

Well I'm about 7 days into my placement and am approaching another seriously hectic week! The next time I blog i'll tell you all about the book launch.

Until next time fellow 393's...

Tessa