I had 20 minutes to get ready for the night which started the evening of a little frazzled on my behalf- but as the VIP’s slowly arrived for their special pre-drinks in the silent auction area overlooking the bell tower from the PCEC- everything seemed to slow down.
From 6-7.30 I was on the door greeting the guests and designating them to their correct table number and afterwards I moved up the stairs to the start of a golden walkway. The golden walkway carried you to a French Riviera themed photo opportunity past a live mannequin sitting in the middle of a table offering drinks to the passing guests.
After the photo opportunity the guests follow the golden carpet again to the right through a black curtain into the silent auction area where they find that the golden carpet is actually the train of another live mannequin.
Once the doors opened at 7.30 for the main event the guests are transported into a Golden Garden of Eden as they walk through the ballroom.
The quick run through of the evening-
Big Bass Heart beat- dancers fight their way from the shadows as Jade McRae sings “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera
MC (Kymba Cahill from 94.5) greets the guests- explains the significance of the themeing of the evening.
Speech from CEO Amanda Wheeler- speech from the heart and head, ran over time- just a little bit too long.
Speech from Ros Worthington- from the heart, asks for pledges, gives publicity for 14000km walk that two survivors are undertaking for their son that committed suicide. Lights go down and each guest has a candle that they light and everyone has a moment’s silence.
The formalities are punctuated with clips from ‘survivors’ and has the whole audience rivoted. (The most interesting thing I found was that the way the team had put the evening together it was not depressing or dark- more ‘looking for the light’)
After formalities the live auction is run- the silent auction are is closed off and the brochures collected.
The Black moment of the night was what is now known as RaffleGate- I was told to RUN to get the raffle tickets as according to the schedule the Governor was on stage and ready the pull the winners out of the raffle bucket. When I reached the room the Fundrasising coordinator was already in the room trying to get the bucket but the lady in charge was not letting that happen. I can’t remember the exact conversation but the general gist was that the lady was going to report the Events Manager to the Licensing and Gaming authority as she was acting ‘illegal’. This argument was overexcited as the Manager had just run in and grabbed the bucket without realising, the lady in charge of the raffle tickets was bullying the staff and abusing the volunteers as everyone was panicked to get the raffle tickets on stage as the MC was already stalling with the Governor on stage. Finally the matter was ‘solved’ by the CEO coming out of the event to calm the lady down.
This was not something that i had expected to see on the night as everything else was running 100% as it should. I taught me that relations in the workplace can be nasty (I had not seen anything but niceness at Lifeline in the duration of my placement) and that workplace bullying is a serious issue- and it was quite scary to see the extent to which some people go to in order to show their dominance over others. I was a bystander on the night who received some flying shrapnel but many of the other girls got worse that I did.
The raffle tickets eventually got put together and the Governor was asked back up on the stage.
As the raffle was the last matter of the night- Stratosfunk followed and led the guests to the end of the event.
Throughout this event I learnt that something will go wrong and I learnt a valuable lesson in workplace bullying. The evening was wonderful to see as it showed off 3 months of work that I had done to help make the night look as fabulous as it was.
VISIT LIFELINE WA ON FACEBOOK TO SEE PHOTOS OF THE EVENING.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lifeline-WA/142814429118128
Amber Carton
Bentley Campus
13956659
4 comments:
I actually enjoyed reading through this posting. Many thanks.
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What a great post, Amber. Thank you very much for the first hand insight into how three months of hard work come together in a fantastic night. Well done.
I hope you got a well deserved sleep in the following morning! :-)
Hi Amber, what an interesting blog - I really enjoyed reading about your experience with Lifeline and the 'behind the scenes' sort of incidents that can come within the PR role. It sounds like your hard work over 3 months paid off though and that you must have learnt an incredible amount to do with event management and planning. Thank you for sharing such an insightful experience :)
I have read a couple of your blogs and it sounds like you are having a lot of fun. I just want to congratulate you on being so professional when talking about the "workplace bully". It would be so easy for you to say just as nasty things in this blog about her, just as she did on the night and yet you remained professional and simply commented on how sad it is that workplace bullying still remains a threat in the workforce. I think it is great to see, and if more people worried about remaining pleasant, professional and easy to work with, there might be less bullying and better work may come from those that can work well together.
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