Momentum Forum Events 'Kisses Violence Against Women Goodbye'

Today I am going to share with you my experience at working at the  Medaesthetics International Women's Day Luncheon!

Each of the interns (including myself) arrived early at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre around 9.00am. We were then greeted by our glamorous employer and CEO of Momentum Forum Events, Barbra Macnaught. Inside the preparation room were the models, make up artists, and hair dresses  and stylists, preparing Barbra and the models for the event. Unfortunately the other Interns and I were not fortunate enough to share this glamour and glitz!

We were put to work straight away manoeuvring sponsorship signs and event equipment into a backstage room.   Meanwhile answering phone calls giving guests last minute directions and information! Barbra then delegated each  of us  a specific job to do through out the event. She gave us a run down for the day and put us under the instruction of her Marketing Director.   Like most events their are small bumps or hiccups that cause disruption. Unfortunately this event was no different!

The event before us had lagged behind and then the staff that were in charge of re setting up the room were lacking in numbers.  The interns and I quickly used our initiatives and began setting up the room for the event that going to start in only an hours time! Thoroughly and quickly we re -dressed tables, dressed chairs and set up sponsorship signs and tables.  After we had finished setting up we quickly  put on our exclusive 'Kiss Violence Against Women Goodbye' T shirts on and began greeting guests that were accumulating outside the room.

We designated guests to their tables and were even able to get a glimpse of the Honourable Governor Julia Bishop.  The press from channel 7, Channel 9 and Channel 10 all gathered around her to hear about her opinion and support for the charity event Kiss Violence Against Women Goodbye!

Other Important VIP guests were Betty Tran, an international fashion designer showcasing some of her garments. But the most inspirational individual to attend in my eyes was Dana Vulin,  a survivor of Domestic Violence.  She once again told her story and her emotional and physical journey to get to where she is today.

The day was spent by me and the interns attending to guests requests in correlation with a charity auction we were hosting and providing tickets for them to purchase.  However later on in the day we were lucky enough to participate in a live auction for gifts worth  between $1500  to $5000 each. We were asked to stand behind guests as they raised their hands during the auction, to assist the auctioneers in keeping a tally as too who was bidding. This was something I didn't expect I would be doing as PR event  and had only come close to witnessing on TV!


 The day concluded after the auction and the  Women's Day luncheon had been an amazing success!  This event had taught me to act quickly, use my initiative and had increased my confidence when dealing with the guests of the general public. I did feel a slight panic when hiccups occurred in the event but I kept reminding myself that;

"Just because it's not going to plan, doesn't mean it's going wrong!"


Momentum Forum Events has had yet another successful and amazing event.  I am so grateful to be apart of cause with such compassion.


P.S Check out the picture of me and the other interns with Blake Garvey ( The Bachelor) another VIP guest at the luncheon!

Till next time guys!


Mica Nelson

FIRST BLOG POST!!

Hi everyone!!

This is my first blog post and I am very excited to share with you my experiences so far!

I am currently doing my placement at Sunset Events in Fremantle, most of you may know that they are a music events group that organises Laneway, Southbound, GTM and a couple more festivals! It has been really fun so far being able to organise these festivals along with working at them (woo free ticket) and seeing what the events industry is like from the inside.

At first it was really tough not doing the PR side of things but after a couple weeks of being involved in other processes of the operation, I have been put in charge of media monitoring, social networking and client liaising. The office vibe is really great and easy going which makes going in to work really fun and I am learning different components of the events sector each shift I go to! I work closely with the Marketing and PR team as well as the administration team.

I have been assigned duties such as meeting up with shopkeepers and being in charge of the advertising of upcoming events. I regularly have to prepare media ready kits to send directly to media outlets to promote our festivals on newspapers and magazines.

This is just a brief introduction to what I have done so far and I will continue to post and keep you all in the loop!

All the best,
Mel xxx

My first internship !

Hello dear PR people, 

I am Keshya Rassen and I wanted to share my personal experience as being an intern as well as my first footsteps in the working world. I have just started my internship at PROAKTIV PR Ltd which is a Public Relations Consultancy company in Mauritius since 2008. It is a small company with a few staff members but a very efficient and effective team. It’s been one week today and what I can say it’s been one of the busiest and the most knowledgeable week of my life! 

I think that most of us doing the internship module was quite stressed and worried like me before starting the internship. Personally, I was so stressed about not finding a suitable internship as per the assignment requirements but I did find an excellent one.

The first day I was so stressed about not being able to meet the expectations of my employer as I have actually never worked before and did not what was really expected from me.  However, everyone at the office knew how to put you at your ease and helped me to integrate myself in their team. Being a versatile person, I did not take long to adapt to the new situation. One thing that really marked me, is the convivial atmosphere that reigned there and this gave a boost to my motivation to work harder and give the best of myself. 

After several briefing sessions on my first and on second day on the ongoing files, I was given real responsibilities in the company. I helped the Account Officer to do the Press Monitoring and since I loved doing Maths in High School and that I loved to deal with numbers and calculations, they asked me to manage and calculate the Advertising Value Equivalent(AVE). Later in the week, the senior partner asked me that I would be the one to draft a Press Release for one of our clients. Oh, I can tell that it was not a piece of cake at all in the beginning to draft my first Press Release with only three lines of information on the subject! However, I did manage to write it after three-days of thorough research on the given subject! 

Overall, what I can tell after one week is that the working world and what we have learned throughout a three-study course and accumulated theories learnt from different modules are completely not the same. Of course, at some point it helped, but, since each company has its own way of working, it differed from what I have learnt. This is how I realised that although having done almost a three-year course in Public Relations and can be considered as a future graduate, I knew nothing about the real working world and, of course, less in the real Public Relations working field. This is why I came to a conclusion that I have everything yet to learn from my employers and from their own work experiences.

However, I really think that it is going to be a wonderful experience and I hope that you are all enjoying your internships like me!

I am looking forward to you sharing your internship experience with me.

Best regards,

Keshya Rassen.

On the side of interning...

On the side of SWEvents I managed to pick up a shift for the Urban Couture fashion show during the Joondalup Festival.

This was an event I picked up through working with Kelly Price at SWEvents.  Kelly is a freelance events coordinator, who was hired by Shani to help out with the Wesfarmers Concert and was also employed by City of Joondalup to coordinate the fashion shows of the festival.

The fashion shows ran over four weekends, and Kelly asked me if I’d like to come and help out on one of the shows over the last weekend.

Our main concern with these shows was a lack of knowledge about them. It was noticed that Joondalup didn’t really produce much in the lead up to the show, so one of the first issues I had to tackle was public awareness.  Easy considering all you had to do was walk up to people and hand out flyers. 

The second issue we faced was the weather.  If the rain came the show was cancelled, no contingency planning needed as we couldn’t bring in any new marquees into the already set up festival, and each show had already been designated to a specific location, there were no alternative spaces for the show to take place.

In the case of the day I was working, the first show managed to avoid any extreme weather.  The second was hit with heavy rain and as such the show was cancelled. The team was able to pull together a quick photo shoot with no spectators but able to use for the festival and for Urban Couture.

In contrast to working with SWEvents on large corporate events, it was interesting to see the difference to working with a smaller freelance event manager. 

I noticed a lack of tasks for volunteers at the fashion show, obviously due to skill management and knowing that volunteers are just that and cannot be expected to have any knowledge of event operations.  Having said that I definitely enjoy my responsibility load with Shani and value how she trusts me to take on my daily tasks and produce work at the end of each day.  The experience proved to myself that I am ready to handle a more involved position, rather than the more simple tasks volunteers are taken on for.

Fashion was something that I was interested in making a career from, but after my experience (or lack of) for Joondalup festival the idea of it has been made slightly different.  It would be more interesting to be a part of the planning process like I have been doing with SWEvents to be able to understand and feel apart of the event.

Grace Carpenter

15660677

SWEvents