It has come to an end...

Hi guys,

Here we go. It's the end of my PR393 internship. The past month at my organisation has been quite insightful and has taught me so much - not only in terms of PR skills, but also work experience in general.

Some days were dull, some days were hectic but almost everyday, I learn something new from my colleagues.

The best thing about my organisation is that we always do 'field' work. Always out there talking to people, attending events, doing a little bit of CSR with the community and so on. I must admit though, working with the government is a little different from what I had expected. For what I have learnt in class, most of them were about corporate PR. Nevertheless, the experience I gained has been tremendous and I am very grateful that the Ministry of Information had given me the chance to work with them.

On the last day of my internship, I did a little bit of internal relations - I bought pizzas for everyone! *laughs* Just a little thank you gift from me to my colleagues. Great fun working with them and I sincerely wish them all the best of luck.

p/s: One piece of advice for future PR393 students in Malaysia. If you are thinking of getting into a government based organisation, you will need to be proficient and able to converse in Bahasa Malaysia so be prepared to translate what you have learnt into Bahasa Malaysia :) Good luck!

Miri International Jazz Festival

Hello fellow PROs,

Some update: Last week, the department sent me and a few of my colleagues to attend a press conference for the Miri International Jazz Festival!

Miri International Jazz Festival (MIJF) is the biggest international annual event in Miri. The host, ParkCity Everly Hotel and Sarawak Tourism Board have asked us to invite all the local media to attend this press conference. They have also requested us to attend the press conference. It was my first time at a press conference and it was an eye opening experience.

What we did was to make sure that all the media invited by us were informed and attended the press conference. Not only the local media came, some international media were there too! The most amazing thing is that most of the local media that came were invited by me days before. All the NTE (Note to editors) posted in our website, all the faxing and the occasional phone calls were all for this. It was very rewarding for me to see that all my hard work had paid off.

I’m really starting to enjoy my work here but sadly its coming to an end very very soon! There will be another international event coming up soon and I just hope my department is involved in it. It’s the Miss Tourism Intercontinental 2010. Wish me luck!

MIJF website: http://www.mirijazzfestival.com/

speech events (2nd)

Hi all.
It has been 3 weeks now. Some of the more prominent task that I have been doing during this placement is to help with the speech events organised by the department I'm working with. The speeches are mainly delivered by my boss and the aim of the speech is to create public awareness and make them understand the actual meaning of the 1Malaysia concept introduced by the Prime Minister.
Due to the centralised nature of the department (for consistent dissemination of information - speech script came from the HQ in Kuala Lumpur), none of us here are not authorised to draft the speeches. However, one area that I learnt in previous PR & MCI units proved to be useful in this assignment. We are required to study the demographics of the area where the speech will be delivered so that the message can me tailor-made suited to the needs and understanding of the people in the area. The types of demographic research done are the level of education of the people in that area, the type of occupations and age. To top it off, an evaluation sheet is also given to the participants to evaluate the quality of the speech delivered and which areas can be improved so that future message can be delivered more effectively. I'm glad that some areas that I studied in the past can be put to use in this assignment.
As usual though, after the speech, we would also have a face-to-face interaction with the people (informally), and learn what issues they might have and the issues will be reported back to the HQ. This is one way we make sure that the voice of the people is heard and that the government can cater to and improve whatever issues that the people may have.
I guess thats all I'm going to write for now. Looking forward to the media conference this Friday. Wish me luck!

First post - Working with the government

Hi everyone! My name is Khairul and I'm from Curtin Sarawak Campus. So I've been reading some of the posts here and I see that most of you had a really good time interning at your organisation. Good stuff.

Let me tell you my experience so far. It took me almost half of the semester to finally get an intern. Somehow, it was really hard for me to locate an organisation that I could intern for. Well, I found an organisation (well, more like a ministry) and its been almost 3 weeks now since i started.

I'm currently interning at the Ministry of Information in my country (Malaysia) and I have to say, it is a little different from working under a private corporation. Everything they do seems to be 'confidential' and some of the tasks that I think would be a good experience for me, I am not allowed to do. To give you a general idea of what the Department of Information is, basically this department act as a public relation department for the government, which also mean that its a public relations department for the WHOLE COUNTRY! Scary..

My first week was almost hell. I didn't know what I should do. One thing that is different working for the Department of Information (which is under the Ministry of Information), we have no authority to plan out our own strategies and tactics to carry out our own PR tasks. Most of the tasks given to us are orders from other government Ministries so certain days, we won't have much work to do.

What we do alot here though is monitoring public opinions regarding government policies, vision and ideologies and also any issues that the public is currently facing. My line of job requires me to interact with the public alot and find out any issues that they have. These issues then will be sent to the headquarters in the form of written report and filed so that appropriate action can be taken.

The one thing that they did not utilise for monitoring is the Internet! Which surprises me. I feel that there are lots of issues being discussed in our local forums that could be useful as inputs for the government.

Well I think that's all I'm going to write for now. Will update more next time. Good luck guys!