Hi everyone,
My name is Yik Ming Wong; I am from Hong Kong, China. This is my first blog. I found my placement at the end of March, so I join in a little later than most of you. At the moment, I have been an intern for cbsplus for 18 days. Being one of the communication team members, my responsibilities include launching newsletters, creating and promoting upcoming events. Although my colleagues except manager and supervisor are students, but we all work together as a team and as professional in the real working situation.
The latest event that launched promotes the first newsletter, and we had a barbeque session opposite the guild office. However, the result was not as successful as expected.
We were supposed to release newsletter every two weeks, and the ex-communication team member told us that it is an easy job. Therefore we took it easy for the first one, and got it done in only a short time. However, Curtin University had been stricter towards the promotion guideline this year, and our newsletter did not meet the guidelines for more than twice. We re-do and wait for marketing department’s approval before proceeding to printing. Unfortunately, our poster designed for the event was rejected due to guidelines issue, and had to postpone the event date up to 3 times. The final event date was confirmed to be on 21st April 2011, but it turned out to be very quiet as it was the last day before Easter Break.
During the event’s planning, I created the CBS burger [Cheese Beef Salad burger]. This recipe was created in order to differentiate from the other events held on campus, that serves hotdog with bread. However, the CBS burger did not work as there are food guidelines in university that we need to follow, as well as risk assessment and location selection. We had to make hotdog with bread after that, and popcorn was sold during the event for some differentiation.
I spent a lot of time and effort on poster designs, creating newsletters, food preparation and location selection and organizing. Things didn’t turn out as expected due to lack of understanding on the importance of guidelines and permissions. However, I learned that all the paper works, preparation and guidelines are as important as in the real working situation.
2 comments:
Hi Yik Ming Wong,
It sounds like you put in a lot of effort for the event. Events don't always go smoothly and you will learn how to improve on things throughout your PR career.
During my internship in February, I was responsible for writing the media release for an event that was being held in Wellington, New Zealand. Qantas was introducing three new Boeing 737 aircraft to fly our Trans-Tasman route and each plane would be named after great explorers. I was given their names and was to research about each of them and add their biography to the release. I spent a lot of time on it and after I felt that I had perfected the release it was passed by a number of managers. It wasn't until hours before the release was to be sent out that one of our executives noticed a very big mistake.
Through my research I didn't notice that not all three explorers were not from New Zealand, even though that is what I had written. From this I learnt not to approach a task with paralleled vision or never assume!
I hope you are enjoying your work experience!
Courtney
Interesting Read Yik Ming Wong!
It's really disapointing that your idea didn't go ahead! I like the burger idea, very creative!!
It's disapointing that your idea didn't go ahead, but a learning curve nonetheless! I guess a constraint of working within such a large organisation like Curtin is that there are tough regimes and policies in place to ensure they aren't liable for the thousands of people who visit the campus everyday.
I learnt a similar lesson that when planning events time is a critical factor, you should always leave as much time as possible for problems to occur so they don't have a significant impact on the overall event. But I guess that is why we are doing work experience, to learn and improve from our mistakes!
Hope it all goes well for you!
Chantelle :)
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