I want to share with you my experience of event planning and have your opinions on the issue. The idea of "organising" an event triggers a feeling of excitement and ideas overflow in your mind.... "The perfect location would be like that, the theme xxx would perfectly match the concept, the decoration should be xxx colour and so on..."As communication students, all of us have done at least once through our studies, an event plan, fact sheet , check list and all other stuff that need to be done to render a perfect event. We also know that we have to attach importance to details, as with a single detail missing, the whole event can go wrong. That is what we have learnt and it is quite an "easy" task to gather ideas on a piece of paper when you are very inspired and creative.
However, when faced to the real life, it is another matter. I agree that the feeling of excitement is the same, but this time you are being tested for your capacities and your creative skills and sometimes the success of an event depends on you. The problem is that, in contrary to an assignment where it is you and yourself who gather information, create the event and give rise to it, in the company, you are a kind of subordinate who give ideas to others and sometimes you fear that your ideas are not good and would not be accepted. Sometimes, when it is an annual event or one which has already been organised before, it is difficult to change the concept and create the event you would like.
During my internship, I had the opportunity to follow 2 big events, one was the "IBL Challenge Cup" and the other the launching of a DVD on Children's rights. These were two great experience while differing in the way they are organised. Since the first event is an annual one, the event plan , check list and so on are already done and only some modifications have to be made. The process is therefore simplified and less time consuming. For the second one, which was a brand new event, I was very impatient to put in practice what I have learnt during my studies. My PR manager challenged me by letting me do the event plan and checklist myself. I must admit that we were a bit in a rush since the event was about to happen in 2 weeks time! This is where the time management skill is testes and special attention have to paid to dates in the event plan. A lot do do in a very short time! Besides working on the event plan I had to at the same time call the interested parties, that is, caterers, the venue, the decorator and so on and book them. The main issue I had was with the availability of these parties, sometimes they are not free. The logistics part of the task sometimes pose problems as well, for example you intend to receive 100 guests and only 80 seats are available, this is where alternative solutions have to quickly think about.
What is your opinion about event organisation? Do you find it as exciting as you thought it was? Or is it a complex task?
4 comments:
Hi Martine,
During my internship, I was left on my own with regards to event organisation. This was due to the fact that My Director had a business trip. It was my first event organization and I must say that it was exciting and complex. I reckon our PR modules help us a lot in dealing with those kinds of issues since in PR, you need to be prepared. As a professional, you need to adopt a proactive approach. Therefore, despite the complexity of the tasks that I was assigned, I manage to make the event successful.
Danitza
I have always wanted to do event organising and planning.
During my placement I assisted in the planning of the Mundaring Truffle Festival and I have to say although very complicated I enjoyed thinking about new and exciting ways to do things.
Maybe I still think event planning is better then it is because my placement ended before the festival actually took a place and I didnt experience the real stress of running an event.
I think event planning is one of the most exiting and challenging tasks in public relations. During my placement I had a chance to plan and organize Earth Hour event. I worked hard to mobilize the guests and went to the extent of meeting up with Ministers.
The sad part about it is that i had to leave my country a day before the event took place but i was told it was magnificent. The knowledge that i got from class helped me a lot during that time.
Hi Martin
Event organization is such an explicit field to work on. It helps you to explore,meet new people, see places, at in that process you get to exercise your strategical decision making. Due to the fact that I used to have passion of organizing events before, I only thought its all about drafting few things in a scrap of a paper and executing your plans, but after my internship I found event organization exiting and complex at the same time. I realized that from all the modules I did before in PR, each had a role to play in my training. But despite all the challenges I have encountered in your training as an event organizer, but at the end of the day you gain a lot.
Golebaone
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