HyperFest week 3!

Hey fellow bloggers!

Thought I'd update everyone on my time with the Hyperfest team!
So we're less than 3 weeks out from the event and we're at that stage now that Tiff (Event Manager) refers to as "the calm before the storm". Everything seems well prepared and under control so we're ready for anything that suddenly goes wrong (hopefully it's smooth sailing!)

As I continue my work experience with the Hyper Team, I'm gaining some invaluable experience in areas including event management, social media marketing, media liaison and so many more PR techniques.

SILENT DISCO

In particular the event management aspect of Hyperfest is very interesting to me, especially as it involves the music industry. One of my key responsibilities this year is the running of Hyperfest's first ever Silent Disco. For those who might not know, a Silent Disco is a stage where the audience are given headphones when entering and have the choice of two channels to listen and dance to. Two lives DJs are playing at a time and they are basically 'versing' each other for the audiences' choice. When other festival patrons walk past it's as if the audience is dancing to silence, hence 'Silent Disco'. The Silent Disco has high popularity at other festivals held in Australia, so I'm hoping the audience has a great time at the HyperFest Silent Disco!

As the organiser for the stage, my responsibilities are (in short): to develop the programme and set times, find the DJs, promoting the DJ callout, source the equipment for the stage and ensure the smooth running of the sets on the day. As HyperFest encourages the participation of young people, we are running a 'Silent Disco DJ callout' at the moment, which is an opportunity for novice, up-and-coming DJ to showcase their talents to a live audience. I have also organised some guest DJs who have a relatively good following in Perth as well as some DJs from Force Entertainment (a key partner with HyperFest).

This particular responsiblity is a great opportunity for me to build my event management skills and I'm really enjoying it!

MEETINGS

This week I've been lucky enough to attend some really interesting meetings involving HyperFest and also involving City of Swan Youth Service as a whole.

I am beginning to understand the scope of just how much an Event Manager must take into consideration when hosting an event, especially one such as HyperFest (around 4000 attendance). We met with the Environmental Health team to discuss some general logisitics about the event....it's not all about finding the bands and organising the program!! Aspects of the event such as the site (Midland Railways Workshops), toilets, food stalls (meeting standards), lighting, emergency exits, were discussed and addressed by the team. In the back of my mind I knew these sorts of issues would pop up, but I guess I almost got caught up in the excitement of the festival and was reminded that you must cover all your bases in event management.

Another meeting that I attended which was a change from the event, but very interesting, involved the 'COSYnet' (City of Swan Youth Services) web portal. Myself along with another intern from a youth services organisation were asked for our opinions on the general direction that COSY were heading with their website and social media engagement. I am by no means an expert on social media or website design, however, as I am not far off the age group COSY are wanting to target and am a user of social media and the web, I found myself offering some opinions that they were quite keen to hear. I found it very interesting to see the ideas that had been developed and am looking forward to the final product. The meeting was a great learning experience.

This week has been a busy one but also very exciting! I'm thoroughly enjoying my time with the Hyper team and the level of freedom and responsibility I have been given. It'll be great to see everyone's hard work all come together on the day!

Hope everyone is enjoying their placements!

Hayley Sutton
14266799