The Royal Show

My day 15 was during The Royal Show week. I get the chance to be part of the WAEC team and help at a booth (stall) that the WAEC had organised. The booth was located at Silver Jubilee Pavilion, booth 324, where it was next to one of the exits.

The purpose of the stall was to get as many people to either enrol to vote or just check whether they are already enrolled and make sure their details are up to date. To check people's details, we had a laptop contained a snapshot of the roll and a 'simple to use' look up system.

The one shift at the Royal Show was to approach as many people as you can. We approached them when they were close to our stand or coming close. The most important thing of approaching people was 'DON'T BE SHY!'

At the beginning of the day, it was very quiet as there were not many people coming inside. We discussed that it might be because it was Tuesday and its after the public holiday and also the weather was not looking too good. But during the heavy rain, we managed to get more people and that actually was our highest peak for the morning shift. During the shift there were one or two people that came to us because they wanted some merchandise but we encouraged them to check their enrolment as well.

To try and get people interested, the WAEC had prizes. We gave out entry forms for a prize when they either confirmed their enrolment via the look up tool on our laptop or filled in an enrolment form. The prizes were a daily prize of a $50 IGA gift card and a grand prize of an iPad Air 2 32GB Wi-Fi.

Working at the Royal Show was a great experience because I got to see all different kinds of people. I was surprised that not everyone was interested to win prizes and they all thought that checking their enrolment was not important and assumed they had already voted, which meant they are enrolled to vote. Also some people didn't even know that there is a state election coming up in March 2017.

I enjoyed working with my intern colleague, Ed, and another WAEC staff, Katherine, who is the senior enrolment officer. I think we did a great job in approaching people.

Although, this kind of job doesn't really link too much with PR, it is still a very good experience in seeing all different kinds of people and using our own techniques to approach people.

I am glad that I found my internship at the WAEC, as it is fun working there and I can get a lot of experience in all different areas! 

Enrol Now!

The WAEC Booth

Merchandise

Getting out of the Office! Meeting Time!

Day 13 of my internship at the WAEC. After all the research and writing up a proposal, we finally got the chance to be involved in a meeting!

Today’s meeting was with Murdoch University, we met the Senior Executive Director, Steven Dickson and some head of departments. We were there to discuss about early voting on campus.

The meeting went on for 45 minutes, the topics we discussed include;

•          Are they interested in the project?
•          Day(s) (3 days, 1^st -3^rd March 2017)
•         Time
•    WAEC marquee is 8am – 6pm
•    Main peak hours on campus are 10am – 2pm
•          Location (Bush Court)
•          Key issues
•    Parking ( from 4.30pm onward parking is free for the general public)
•    Security (Campus has 24/7 security)
•    Promotional materials cannot be distributed outside the Marquee area (from candidates).
•   Communication Channels (Social Media)
•   How many students are there?
•    900 teachers, 3000 parking bays, 1000 others = 5000 students/staffs on campus during the 3 days

At the meeting, we first introduced ourselves as interns and the main spokesperson for the WAEC was Justin, supervisor of the early voting on campus project. As interns, we were just sitting the side listening, but during the middle of the meeting, when they talked about communication, Ed had a chance to speak out, and he talked about the communication channels and how this is promoted out.

This meeting was a great chance to see how a meeting works although it was quite informal and was just like a chat.

This meeting helped me gain experience on how to communicate with people in a meeting, and what things we should consider. The most important thing is to be prepared and know what you need to say.

By listening to Justin speak, I have gained knowledge on how to host a meeting with clients which will help me in the future.

I have found the presentations we have done in other units (Cross-Cultural Communications, Media Relations, etc.) to be very useful because it helps with speaking and passing on messages in front of people.

This is the first time I have been in a meeting and representing an organisation. I was nervous to speak and was a bit shy. The things I want to improve after the first meeting is to not to be shy and afraid to speak out. My goal for my next meeting is to speak out!

I can’t believe after all my research and calling people, we actually got to go and join the meeting. It was a great experience!

I love working at the WAEC, and am starting to worry about this internship coming to an end! 

A Peak of the Annual Report!

Every September the WAEC finalise their Annual report. Along with Ed and Isabella we were given the draft of the 2015-2016 Annual report for the WAEC. The Commissioner, David wanted us to go through the report and give suggestions on what they can improve and any recommendations we had. As interns they wanted us to view it with critical eyes and have some input into it.

We looked through the report and compared it with the latest published report (2014-2015). Things we picked out/ suggested were;

·         The formatting could improve

·         Use of pictures

·         Use of empty spaces

·         Should make it more engaging (visual engaging)

·         Change some basic dot points to ticks

·         The idea of change the bullet points to the style of a ballot paper (numbers in boxes, 1-5)

·         Photoshop pictures (more nicely not too obvious

·         Use of graphs and tables

·         Colours (the draft version was in black and white)

David and Lena (Executive Assistant) loved the ballot paper format suggestion and thought it was a great idea.

Besides adding our comments to the Annual report for 2015-2016, we also finished calling all the universities that we needed to call, and gave them more information about our proposal. This was the first time I’d sent an email to an official person, as before all the emails I’d sent were only to tutors/lectures or ones applying for internships.

It was a great opportunity to look at the WAEC annual report. I enjoyed putting forward my thoughts and I hope they are used. Calling universities is a great chance to build up my PR skills and on how to communicate well with different people. This internship is helping me built up my PR experiences a lot!

Here is a link to the WAEC annual report 2015-16: https://www.elections.wa.gov.au/sites/default/files/Annual_Report_2015.pdf 

Hello...I'm Winnie from WA Electoral Commission...

Day 7 at the WAEC, my task was to contact universities' Vice Chancellor, assistant.

The first thing before calling them was to write up a script. This is very important as I need to know what I am going to say. Also I have to prepare what kind of things I might get asked.

The first uni I called was Curtin. Making phone calls for the first time in the office where I'm representing a organisation was SUPER nerve-racking. I was so scared to press the numbers, so I got my intern friend, Isabella to help me dial the numbers! Sounds silly right?

Hopefully the call to Curtin's Vice Chancellor's assistant wasn't too bad! The lady, Allison picked up the call and she was super nice. I followed my script and asked her whether the university was interested in our project or not. Allison sounded interested in the project and told me to send a proposal to her so she can discuss it with the Vice Chancellor.

After making more phone calls to other universities, I worked on the proposal which helped me to answer questions from other universities.

When the proposal was put together. I went to the supervisor that was in charge of this project to check the proposal before sending and getting it finalise. We discussed what we needed to consider and what the universities would think, (i.e would they go for it?).

The outcome of this day is that calling people isn't that scary! Today I heard the best suggestion about how to overcome my nerves, think that the person on the other end of the phone is just as nervous that the phone is ringing and they are the one who has to answer it.   

Another outcome or experience I gained from Day 7 is that I now know how to write an official proposal, that needs to be sent to official people and what kind of things I should consider.

I love working in WAEC as it helps me gain more and more experience and knowledge in all different areas, not only PR! 

Script 

Ready to call!

Proposal for the project

Working in an New Environment!

Last Tuesday 9th August 2016, it was my first day of my internship at Western Australian Electoral Commission (WAEC). WAEC is a Government department where it deals with election enrollments. The office is located in St Georges Terrace.

On the first day there were three interns Ed, Isabella and me. The first thing we started with, was knowing all the staffs at WAEC, we got introduced to them and also we had a tour around the office, as we got introduced to the staffs, we also got explained how things work and also have the knowledge about the areas and where they are. There are 2 levels of WAEC and we were located on level 2 and we were settled down in an area called the 'ROLOs', where it is in the middle of all the areas/departments which includes State, Federal and Local. Those areas are very important as each different areas we might be working with during the internship. And also we have to work with our individual project and we will be helped by those areas.

As WAEC is a Government department, we were given mil keys so that we can access through the office because security is very important in the office as the department deals with personal details. First day of intern was pretty full on because we received a lot of information such as staffs' names and roles and what thing we have to do. I found it full on as I have to adapt to this new environment as it is my first time to work in a proper office for a 7.5 hours. But I found it very interesting and I really like it, especially the staffs are very nice which means me feel very comfortable working there. One thing I didn't know is that working in an office can also be so flexible.

Throughout the first day, all of the interns, worked together so that we can give ideas and help each other with our own projects. Our supervisor, Sotear organised us to work together as a group on some broader engagement strategies before we get started going off doing out individual projects. The engagement strategies workshop, we brainstorm a lot of ideas about the project that WAEC will focus on before the next State Election and we worked out what kind of strategies we can consider. The workshop was very useful and working as a group does help with the ideas. I love working as a team/group.

Thursday was my second day of the intern, when I arrived to the office my task was to work on my project and using the information that we all worked out on Tuesday as a guideline to start researching. Sotear wanted us to prepare a project brief, in the brief thing that we have to include was the objectives, outcomes, deliverables, how it should be done and what resources we need and also who we should contact. As Sotear said this brief will also be a guideline for us to use during the internship.

After the first two days of the intern, learnt about how to work in an office environment, and I found it is very interesting working in this environment. After the first week, I know that working in a PR industry, planning and research are very important. Also working as a team is very useful as more brains have more ideas.

From only the first 2 days I have already been gaining experiences and knowledge on how the PR industry works. I really enjoyed the first 2 days. Also me and Ed figured out how to use the printer which we thought it was a great improvement.