Day 1 of the AYAC Youth Conference

Hello again PR peeps!

If you have read my previous post, I was excited to announce that I had been offered to work at the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition (AYAC) National Youth Conference in Sydney! Following on from my last post, this was my first day event managing the conference with the team at Loaded Communications!

· Woke at 5am and arrived at Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre at 6am where the conference is being held. Without doubt tired from only a few hours sleep, but my excitement for the event overtook any tiredness and I was ready for a action-packed day!

· We started at the venue by organising the room layout, setting up the iPad registering system and desk, did lighting/sound/audio checks and ensured media/PowerPoint presentations were running correctly.

· We registered attendee’s from 8am – 9am

· The main conference Keynote address: Simon McKeon, was late to the conference and the conference was delayed by 30 minutes on day one (before the conference had even begun!). This is not a good way to start a 3-day conference, however we dealt with the situation with grace and managed to stay on track with our programme.

It just goes to show, that with no matter how much preparation and organisation for events, things CAN and WILL go wrong and what defines a good Event Management or PR Consultancy is one in which can handle the issues efficiently and effectively.

· The conference times from that point were delayed. In an attempt to bring back time, the PR team (Loaded Communications) tried to cut morning tea and lunch breaks a little shorter than normal. However, with the large amount of speakers at the conference programmed for Day 1, this was difficult.

· The first presenters in my lecture room were two young girls from “Project Rockit - Anti-bullying and Youth.” They presented to youth workers and youth members of Australia an alternative approach to teaching school children about bullying and how to manage this in schools across Australia. With a young attitude and connection with youth and an innovative approach, their ideas were well received by the audience.

· Morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea were provided by the Sydney convention and Exhibition Centre in buffet form.

· Although the last presenter was programmed on finishing at 5.15pm, we finished for the day around 5.45pm. 30 minutes late of our planned time, but managed to not lose any extra time since the 1^st-speaker set back, first thing in the morning.

· I had dinner that night with the Loaded Communications team, followed by a de-brief on the days high’s and low’s. This was a fantastic opportunity to brainstorm with my co-workers about what we did right, what ran smoothly, and what improvements can be made to the conference on Tuesday and Wednesday to prevent the same mistakes from reoccurring. This I find is an extremely important process to evaluate the day. It allows us to congratulate each other on our achievements or how we handled certain situations and put into perspective what can be altered to better improve the management of the event.

· After Day One we were all relieved to have got through the huge day!

Day 2 of the AYAC Youth Conference is to follow!

- Lisa Butcher

Bentley

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