A unique and gratifying journey!

On my two last weeks of work I had to work on a very important project with my colleague Fiona Rome which was the arrival of Mrs Vera Baboun, Mayor of Bethlehem to Mauritius. The three things I learned the most from during those two weeks were the Facebook page that I created and managed with my colleagues, attending and assisting during the events and the post event work. Imagine Communication was asked to promote and accompany Mrs Baboun on her journey in Mauritius and this was a frantic but educating and wonderful journey for me.

Promoting the event

After the promotion of the event I never looked at Facebook the same way again! I never realized all the precautions, preparations and planning that were needed for the creation of Facebook page, so when my supervisor asked me to create and manage the page of the event I learnt pretty fast how detailed and tedious a task it was. It was quite a shock to me when my supervisor asked me to create a list of profanities or offending set of words that I thought should be set as restricted words on the page. The Mayor of Bethlehem being the center of the event I had to restrict any words that could be linked to terrorism or anything related to it and also any vulgar language or swear words, so you could imagine how long my list of words was! I also had to set the profanity filter to strong. I then had to carefully plan which cover and profile photo I would use. Finally after publishing the page it was all about creating a plan of each and every posts that I would add throughout the week before the event. The hardest part was managing the posts that were to be added immediately after each and every events. Some of the event started at 6pm and finished at 8pm and it took me one to two hours to get home so how was I to immediately update the Facebook page, but I was lucky to work in a collaborating team of coworkers so we helped each other out. Fiona sent the picture we took during each event to a coworker who immediately posted them to the Facebook page with a brief description. Below is a preview of some of the projects I worked on for the Facebook page:

The event

I also learnt a lot during all the events to which we accompanied Mrs Baboun but most of all I learned to multitask. Our boss accompanied us to all the events so we had to assist him in every little tasks. Fiona and I had a set of tasks to do, from taking pictures of each events, to recording any part of the speech of the Mayor he would ask us to. I once even had to join a group of photographers from the press on stage to take some shots of Mrs Baboun and the Mayor of Quatres-Bornes at an event at the Municipality of Quatres-Bornes. This was one of the most embarrassing and tedious task that my boss gave me. First of all I felt awkward getting on stage to take the pictures required but my boss insisted, then the fact that I am quite short made it hard for me to snap a picture amongst the crowd of agitated photographers. I named them the pack of hyenas throughout the whole evening while complaining to my colleague Fiona, as I got elbowed and pushed quite a few times which I found impolite and unnerving. I may have faced a few irritating or inconvenient moment during the different events but in the end I learned a lot and I loved working on this once in a lifetime project. Check out below two of the pictures that I assiduously took standing amongst the pack of hyenas:

Post event  

The next day after each events Fiona and I had to work on the press release, for the first one we worked on it was a bit hard because our recordings of the event were not that clear, but in the end we managed. We worked as a team on this project which quite helped as we had to manage media monitoring and follow-up calls at the same time. I felt confident and independent when we were given the task of writing the press releases and I also learnt how it was to actually write one in real life and contemplate the possibility that the information that we provide may actually appear in different newspapers.

In the end I learnt a lot from this unique and wonderful project and I am really grateful for having this unique opportunity to work on and participate in such an event. This developed many of my working skills such as managing social media, writing press releases and promoting events; and hopefully prepared me for all I may face in my future in the PR industry.

Cheers,

Sophie.