The big event - Hyperfest

Hey guys,

So last week was probably the most hectic I've experienced so far. I worked the whole week straight to help ensure everything was prepared for Hyperfest which was held last Sunday (28th Aug).

The event
Hyperfest 2011 was a massive success! We sold out presale and had large cues on Sunday morning for tickets on the door. The time and effort needed for Hyperfest and the made me consider much larger festivals such as Big Day Out and Soundwave and the amount of organisation that would go into them. My area in particular, the Silent Disco, went off without a hitch! As the manager of the area it was my responsiblity to ensure that every aspect of the Silent Disco ran smoothly. For it's first year, the Silent Disco was incredibly popular and patrons were lining up to grab a pair of headphones and join in the fun all day long. One major highlight of course were the bands. I didn't get a chance to watch many of them, but I did get to meet Children Collide which was quite a 'starstruck' moment for me :)
After the event had wrapped up at around 8pm, I had to rush to the production office and prepare a media release ready for Monday morning. Even though I was incredibly worn out from such a long day and week, I managed to draft something up covering the newsworthy angles of the festival. Finally, after a 1.30am finish time I was ready for about 2 days of sleep. With all the hard work and effort we (the Hyper Team) all put in to the event, I felt so proud to see the patrons, volunteers and staff have such a great day...it all seemed so worth it! I felt a real sense of achievement and I will definitely be continuing working with the Hyper team on next year's festival.

Post event antics
Today was my first day back in the office after HyperFest and some important developments had occured over the days while I was away.
Firstly, the impact of social media had become especially important to monitor, post Hyperfest. Some posts from unhappy patrons were clear constructive criticism that we are happy to take on board, however, some posts contained vulger language and were extremely offensive. Therefore we were faced with the ethical dilemma of deleting posts from the HyperFest Facebook page. After considering that Facebook users obviously do have freedom of speech, it was decided that reporting them would be most appropriate. There was also a negative Facebook group about the event which put a slight dampener on all the hard work and effort that goes into Hyperfest which is run solely by volunteers, but it is evident that you cannot please everyone. On the whole however, social media was also a great platform for support from many of the patrons who attended Hyperfest on the day. They defended the event on Facebook and voiced what a great opportunity it gave the underage demographic to see high quality live music at such a low cost. These positive comments about the festival gave Hyperfest greater credibility that outweighed the negativity from some punters.

Today was also spent collecting some media about the event for evaluation. Overall we received some great reviews from media outlets who attended the event on the day, which also reassured us that our hard work had paid off.

For my last few days working with Hyper, I'll be learning some essential skills for event management and especially working in the not-for-profit sector. I'll be assisting with the evaluation reports of the festival as well as drafting up funding grants for next year...yes Hyperfest preparation never stops! These will be great skills to learn for future positions.

Hope everyone is enjoying the placements,

Hayley Sutton
14266799