DAY 2 of the Youth Conference in Sydney!

Hi fellow bloggers, I’m here to tell you about Day 2 of the AYAC Youth Conference in Sydney that I was running with my team at Loaded Communications!

DAY 2

This day started at 6am where we woke and were down at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre at 7am to start preparing for day two of the conference.

I met with the presenters that were in the Youth Development stream speaking in my conference room. Some presenters had alterations to their PowerPoint Presentations in which required me to upload these promptly to the system and ensure they were able to run on the conference room computers.

Again, late arrivals pushed back the planned opening time of 9am and we started at 9.15am, but managed to make up the lost time as the planned performance had been cancelled. By morning tea, we were back on the regular time schedule!

As this was a “Youth Conference”, I quite enjoyed listening to the presenters and found their topics of discussion relevant and interesting.

It was a fantastic networking event for Loaded Communications – being a Perth-based PR and Marketing company, this gave Loaded some exposure in Sydney and we received many compliments on the successful management of the event and event future propositions to work with other company’s on their events. From a strategic networking side of things, it would be useful, if allowed by AYAC to have Loaded Communication promotion on display at the registration desk, as we were only identifiable by the Loaded Communications logo on our shirts. As networking is such a HUGE factor in PR and Communication businesses, it was great to see a little Perth PR company get their face out in the big city of Sydney!

Communication between the Loaded team Damian, Paul, Holly and I was limited between the four rooms as we were separated by different rooms and only had phones for communication. As we each had to manage our presenters, question and answer time, and ensure this matched with all four rooms and all presenters, it was difficult to be using our phones whilst trying to organise the presenters and management of each of our conference rooms. Communication between the Loaded team was something Loaded Communications noted as something to look into next time we manage an event.

Coincidently, when one person’s room ran overtime, all four rooms were pushed back and the timing of morning tea and the following presentations were pushed back. This caused a little confusion when attendee’s were following the program times and expected certain presenters and with the time delay, the presenters were not who they expected. For future events, some sort of pager or texting system where we each could communicate whether our conference room was running on time or not would be suitable to ensure consistent timing.

A planned finish of 3pm was only delayed 15 minutes and Day 2 of the conference was finished by 3.15pm.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our day of work was far from over……….For the next few hours, we jumped right into organising the event occurring that night – The AYAC Conference Dinner:

This dinner had guests already registered to attend and those who registered during Monday and Tuesday of the AYAC Conference. As the guest list was not finalised to literally the moment before the dinner began at 7pm - this involved many last minute details being updated and changed. The name tags for guests who had registered for the dinner at the last minute were being printed on site at the registration desk (by me!) for the dinner as guests were arriving. This was a stressful time as we had to keep note of who were the new guests registering that moment and those who had already registered in previous days.

The Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre were catering for the AYAC Conference dinner and even though we had specifically noted entrée was not to be served until after the first speaker…the Convention Centre staff started serving entrée before the main speaker had introduced the evening and announced the plans for the dinner!! Not only was this completely rude, as the first speaker was still introducing the evening and waiters were bringing out entrée’s to certain tables.

This was a huge mistake by the catering company, and as some guests had already been given their entrée, it was a decision by Loaded to continue giving guests entrée to prevent half the guests having their meal and the rest left waiting.

Despite this initial mistake by the catering staff, the rest of the conference dinner was a huge success and the dining room overlooked the beautiful Darling Harbour in Sydney (What a view!).

- Lisa Butcher

Bentley

13964270