First blog post

This is my first blog post. For the Public Relations Internship unit, I did my internship at the Mauritius Turf Club on the advice of my lecturer who suggested that I do my internship at the Mauritius Turf Club because I was already working at the Mauritius Turf Club. The Mauritius Turf Club does not have a PR department but it has a Communication and Events and Marketing department, which covers the PR-related tasks. My supervisor was Mr Shan Ip, the Communication and Events Manager of the Mauritius Turf Club but I was leasing with Mrs Pritee Ramcalawon, the Marketing and Communication Secretary. An overview of the Mauritius Turf Club for those of you who do not know, the Mauritius Turf Club is the unique organiser of horseracing in Mauritius since 1812 and it is also organises International meetings since 1984. The Mauritius Turf Club is the oldest horseracing organiser in the Southern Hemisphere and the third oldest in the world after The Jockey Club (UK) – since 1750 – and the Irish Jockey Club since 1790. As you may have noticed, the Mauritius Turf Club is bicentenary since 1812 and not many organisations in the whole world can boast about the fact that they are bicentenary.

Venue research for an event

There was mist by the lake when we arrived on the site we've been talk about for so long and here we are. The first time i went to Gros Caillou, I was struck by the  overwhelming void i felt in this place. Everything was so beautiful, it felt surreal, artificial. The guy who owns this place told us how he did some concerts and parties here, and how with a few tents here and there and all the equipment, you could put up and entire festival in the site. While he was finishing his commercial speech, I've figured out that it was way out of our reach budget wise, it would be better to think about indoors event instead. I thanked my guide, asked him the shortest way to reach the highway to home, highway to heaven, and mama's farata.

The researching process in event planning can be exhausting but it was part of my experience in the internship. And, my life.

Network Ahead!

One of my earliest memories as a young Curtin PR student back in 2010 was my tutors fervor in ensuring we learnt how to 'network, network, network!'

I remember thinking back at how tedious this "networking" business sounded and my head swam with visions of suited men and women discussing topics beyond my realm of first year knowledge. 

This may have attributed to my severe lack of networking experience until I started my work at my current job/internship placement at the not-for-profit organisation MWLP in Campbelltown, NSW.

I was to learn (and quite quickly at that) the power and significance of networking for the not-for-profit. For many NFP organisations the budget left over for marketing and communications can be small and it is the role of the person in charge to try to stretch this as much as they can.
Networking is a budget saving and personal way a NFP can work to circulate their brand within the community at a fraction of the cost! Business owners and professionals will often take a keen interest in hearing what you do and if dome right, remember your name (and hopefully your organisation) in the future.
Moreover, networking is that perfect opportunity to make industry contacts and meet with people who represent organisations you may want (or need) further contact with in the future.
When offering forward a proposal, having that personal contact with a person can be invaluable, particularly in the case of a NFP seeking something in return.

I am proud to say that to this date I have hosted over 40 networking events and have attended just a many, if not more. The contacts and relationships I have made and maintained during these events has been invaluable to me personally and professionally and my trepidation for these types of events is a thing of the past. 

CREAD Internship – An Unprecedented Enriching Journey

CREAD Logo

Twenty days have already been flown out and interning at CREAD – The Idea Company has been unequivocally the best professional practice theory application which I ever incurred. The very last blog will lay much emphasis upon how my short port of call at CREAD will act as a strong learning point in my future working career.

Since the very beginning of this internship chapter, one word persistently came out of my supervisor’s mouth; MALLEABILITY. The malleability of juggling in between various working projects is the stardust of PR which I have to admit was VERY stressful at first. Actually, the ability of being constantly at the disposition of colleagues whenever is demanded as collaborative approaches always prime. On an overall perspective, I personally believe that to affirm one’s footprints and entering the working force of the world of corporate communications, PR practitioners must be: spontaneous, concise, tech-savvy, well-groomed, adaptable, impeccable within written and verbal communications.

On a sweet ending note, just let the PR force be with you, you’ll succeed majestically.

A Bitter-Sweet End?

My lost blog contribution. My last assignment. My last stressful week until the next one.

I want to say that I am overjoyed, but I am actually emotionally and mentally exhausted. Never-the-less, we made it - just. So to anyone reading this, best of luck. Don't forget your struggles, because without them, overcoming the challenge would not last as sweet. What did I learn from all of this? Well believe it or not, I actually only just learned the basics of PR. Again. 

What is Public Relations? Communication + Engagement + Trust. The best part, was that I got to see what PR looks like in real life - executed by people that come from non-PR backgrounds. I'm telling you, I was mind blown. My only regret from this experience is not having taken more risks. Until we cross paths again, take care and good luck. 

May your hours of sleep be long.

-Michelle

That’s a wrap!

I am approaching the end of my internship and are three weeks away from graduating, given I pass all of my unit.

I have not had the opportunity until now to stop and reflect on not only this past semester but also the last three years. This internship experience, along with the previous work placement opportunities I have been provided with along my way have proven to be so invaluable and have helped be develop on both a personal and professional level.

Often, we can get so caught up in the chaos of assignments and life in general, that we can often overlook the importance of gaining “real world” experience and can sometimes ignore the advise we receive from our lectures. Without sounding cliché, you really can’t put a price on experience. If I could turn back time and give advise to my 18 year old self, in my first year of uni, it would be to make the most of the opportunities and resources Curtin can provide with regards to placements and work experience opportunities.

The internship experience has been the highlight of my PR degree, to date. I have noticed that my written and communications skills, in terms of conducting phone calls, emails, developing documents and sharing content have dramatically improved, as well as my organisation skills which have significantly improved in comparison to before I commenced my internship.

I have made sure I have absorbed all of the advise I have received over the course of my placement and will take this with me in my new careers endeavours. Approaching the completion of my internship has really been a milestone for me, as I now know that graduation is just around the corner and instead of feeling nervous I feel excited and ready to enter the “real world” and are so excited to see what the future has installed for me!

That’s a wrap!

I am approaching the end of my internship and are three weeks away from graduating, given I pass all of my unit.

I have not had the opportunity until now to stop and reflect on not only this past semester but also the last three years. This internship experience, along with the previous work placement opportunities I have been provided with along my way have proven to be so invaluable and have helped be develop on both a personal and professional level.

Often, we can get so caught up in the chaos of assignments and life in general, that we can often overlook the importance of gaining “real world” experience and can sometimes ignore the advise we receive from our lectures. Without sounding cliché, you really can’t put a price on experience. If I could turn back time and give advise to my 18 year old self, in my first year of uni, it would be to make the most of the opportunities and resources Curtin can provide with regards to placements and work experience opportunities.

The internship experience has been the highlight of my PR degree, to date. I have noticed that my written and communications skills, in terms of conducting phone calls, emails, developing documents and sharing content have dramatically improved, as well as my organisation skills which have significantly improved in comparison to before I commenced my internship.

I have made sure I have absorbed all of the advise I have received over the course of my placement and will take this with me in my new careers endeavours. Approaching the completion of my internship has really been a milestone for me, as I now know that graduation is just around the corner and instead of feeling nervous I feel excited and ready to enter the “real world” and are so excited to see what the future has installed for.

AH… THIS IS THE END~~~

 Not really tbh (to be honest)...  more like another beginning... Anyways, the time has come to the end of my journey working as an intern with Corporate Communication Department of Curtin Sarawak. All the hardship, the struggle of completing each task, led me to getting invaluable experience which will allow me to face the upcoming challenge within the public relation field.

As a student of Curtin Sarawak, undergoing the mass communication course has let me to be aware of the presence of a corporate communications department within the campus, yet very less information that I have before to know about their function.

Slowly I try to get to know them by getting involve with more with them through joining more events but not as a participants but to work in similar field with them. From that, they that to acknowledge me and I became closer to them.

Before starting my internship my relation with them is pretty good. It changes once i start my internship with the department. Working as a team within Curtin Sarawak’s corporate communication has exposed me to the underworld of organization’s communications process. It feels like looking at the underwater part of an iceberg, it huger that the tip that we can see. Form it, I have learn much about the way that the department works and collaborate with other departments. It’s not a one-man show, or one-department show. This led me to appreciate more on the job conducted by the department. Then on, we work more as a family, brothers and sisters. To me that's the way a department should work to be able to function efficiently. Sometime, not only public relation that matters.   

Oh, before I end this post,I would like to thanks the manager my of Department and also Curtin Sarawak’s International Student Association to assign my last task to cover a comedy show. What a way to end  my internship! Not any kind of comedy show, but a show by Harith Iskander! The top 20 on the world funniest people! Yeah!

"Wefie" with Harith Iskander and the crew

Exploiting creative content

One of the main goals when communicating messages towards the public is for public to consume it. The lingering question is, does the public have the interest to go through the messages that we’ve broadcast to them? Was all the effort of promoting the brand using traditional method still effective? How to get the audience to receive the messages? This thought came into my mind while I’m doing my routine media monitoring. Looking at the advertisements in the newspaper, wondering does the reader even bother to read it.

Within the era of social media, the public tends to only consume media that really interest them, that manage to catch their attention. Information that has been written down though print media rarely have the factor that can catch the eye of the readers. Hence the question, is it worth it to invest in these medium to distribute information towards the mass?

Well there might be a solution for that, by exploiting creative content. Creative content act differently compared to traditional content. While traditional content is designed to deliver the information directly towards the targeted audience, creative content is crafted in a way that it attracts the audience first before making them interest to continue to go through the message. Creative content comes in different types, which consist of but not limited to short videos, blog article, radio sketch, social media post and more. It is the uniqueness of every content that draws the attention of the public to find out more about the information composed into the content. On top of that, the way that it is distribute, which most of the time though social media sites and other content sharing site, enables the message to continuously shared among a bigger group of audience without any limitation of promotion budget or even time. So is it worth  the investment if communication department decides utilises creative content as the next communication tools?

Field trip

Working within a closed area such as the office can be boring at times. Well, lucky for me, my department is kind enough to assign me with some off campus task. Field trip!!!

There are two task that requires me to work outside, one is a CSR project which has planned earlier by the department  and one is a video production task in collaboration with the Unilife department. In a way, I can say that the second project is also categorised as a CSR project too as it involves Curtin Sarawak’s community  to contribute their effort to help the local community.

Back to the first task, it is a combined social project between Sarawak Forestry Corporation and local organizations in Miri which includes Curtin Sarawak. Known as “Bring back the Rainforest” project, it is about reviving the Piasau Nature Reserve back into a proper rainforest within 2-3 years. The plan is to bring Miri’s community to collaborate as a big team to plants up to 10,000 trees of diverse species within the project’s duration. The decision to join the project is a right choice as it allows Curtin’s community to get involve with the conservation effort initiated by the community. To me,  the project is in line with Curtin Sarawak’s famous slogan, “Make tomorrow better”. As the only university exist in Miri City, Curtin Sarawak should led good examples towards the local community which is one of the university's stakeholders. I was assigned to  do a coverage for this event and to produce a highlight video for distribution within Curtin Sarawak’s Social media.

Team work is the right way to go!

Group photo! The volunteers deserve a good photo shoot after a job well done. Not to forget the Deputy PVC
tagging along inside the photo

The second projects is about producing a video that features John Curtin Weekend (JCW). It purposes to let the public know the basic idea of  JCW and also the kind of activities that the participants do  throughout the project. This assignment had bring me way further from the city towards the rural area, about 80 km from the campus. The location is an Iban longhouse located at Sungai Tiris. To be able to shoot it, i am required to stay at the longhouse with other participants for about 3 days and 2 nights. I have bring along one of my friend along to become my assistant for the video production. Indeed it was an unforgettable experience. Not only I've got the chance to be free from the office atmosphere, I also manage to get together with the local community of the longhouse and enjoy the weekend. Oh, regarding the video, it is still under process which is edited by the corporate communications team, it might be done after the semester ends. XD.

Onward and Upwards

Hi there!

I've read through quite a few final blog posts and they all seem to be saying the same things about how time has flown and how they're so thankful about the time that they've spent in their Internships. I thought that I would try something a little bit different but now that I'm sitting here typing, I just want to say exactly what everyone else has said! #goodintentions

Time has flown by! My first day with Toyota seems like just a few days ago, where I was meeting so many new people that I was worried that I wouldn't remember all their names (I did forget some of them; that was more of a working process). It has been an incredible learning experience and I am so excited to say that Danni, my supervisor, passed on contact details for an event management organisation called Sunset Events. Hopefully, I will be starting a new internship very soon! In my last few posts, I mentioned that Events PR was something that I wanted to look into and I am so thrilled that an opportunity has arisen so quickly.

If I had to do it over, I would probably have asked when I begun for more time. There is still so much that I have to learn and it was such a fantastic opportunity to have a mentor like Danni to guide me through everything that I had to get done.

I will miss working in that kind of environment but hopefully I won't have to miss it for long! I can't wait to graduate and start working full-time in such a creative and high-paced environment. #PRlife

Talk soon!

My PR Toolkit

Throughout my experience at WAM I have gained numerous tools and valuable skills for my PR kit, that I will take with me throughout my career regardless of where I may end up. A few of these include:

• Better time management between tasks
• Successfully cross platforming
• How to use: Mailchimp, Wordpress, Hootsuite, Canva and Be Funky
• The importance of spreadsheets and keeping a compilation of contacts for future references
• Editing skills
• Some (but wish I gained more experience in this area), writing skills
• Networking skills
• Stakeholder engagement skills

I'm excited to carry these lessons into the real, real world, where I won't be shadowed as much, but rather left to my own devices, to be able to see how well I go. 

This experience made me realise that the Public Relations role, no matter how you define it, in every job, it is going to be slightly different. You are going to have to learn to be flexible and pick up skills quickly, ask questions and be assertive. It at times can be an extremely stressful industry, but it can also be a very rewarding one when you see the hard work you've put into, fruition. 

And that's exactly what I'm going to do during these next few days. I've been given the job to attend various WAMFest workshops and gigs to take pictures and splash messages across WAM social media platforms. Let's see how I shall we! One thing is for sure, It's going to be amazing to see how all our hard work at the WAM office has paid off!

Dharshini Murugiah

17648358

Curtin Bentley

End of my adventure

Mikayla Wearne - 17081270 - Bentley 

Hi Guys!

It has been a few months now since I finished my internship with Go Communications and returned home from Kuala Lumpur. I have settled back into university life and into a new internship with the Curtin Activation team which means I can finally reflect upon my time and experiences with GO.

When I first found out I would be heading off to Kuala Lumpur to work at Go Communications I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but I envisioned a large company with lots of employees, I thought the company would be very corporate in the way dealings were conducted and in the way that everyone would present themselves. I expected the internship itself to be extremely organized, with a set plan for me to follow daily. It turned out that all I had envisioned was quite the opposite of what my experience turned out to be in reality.

When I arrived at GO I discovered that it was actually quite a small company that dressed and acted very casually but professionally. Although I had many tasks and responsibilities throughout my internship it was not as organized as I had expected, I was given tasks as they came. Although this was not what I expected it gave me a good idea of how communications companies are run and some perspective on a real working environment.

In my role I completed various tasks including media monitoring, both online and print, composed monthly reports for clients, created blogger profiles for client’s potential sponsorship, wrote documents such as media releases, media invitations, fact sheets and interview questions. I also attended events where I was able to interact with the media there and see first-hand how the company’s hard work had paid off, this also gave me an opportunity to network and learn about traditional Malaysian culture.

A lot of people have asked me recently how completing my internship overseas helped me and the challenges I faced whilst over there. I think the biggest advantage I gained from completing my internship overseas was that I learned about public relations on a multinational level, I was able to observe where practices were contacted the same as at home as well as where they differed. It opened my eyes to just how big public relations is, not only in Australia or the US but in many different countries and cultures and in many different companies, brands and businesses.

Another massive advantage to completing my internship overseas was that I was able to discover and learn about a new culture. I became quite close with my team members who introduced me to traditional Malay foods, one of my co-workers even let me wear one of her traditional “baju kurug” outfits to a traditional feast! I was taken to traditional markets where I discovered many different foods, fresh fruit and veg, electricals, home wears, clothing and knick-knacks.

Of course there were challenges attached to my internship being overseas, one of the biggest challenges was trying to overcome the cultural and language barriers that existed. This issue wasn’t present so much in my working environment but I found that it was a problem outside it. Although KL is a very modern, westernized country I still found that locals often misunderstood me or even ignored me. At times I found myself confused and frustrated with the way locals did things, for example I found that I was getting charged a higher price just for being a foreigner.

All in all, the internship provided me with experiences I will never forget, I have already found that I am more of an asset in my new internship from my learnings with GO. I definitely feel more confident about graduating at the end of the semester and jumping into the real world of PR! Thank you to everyone who helped me along the way and for those of you reading my posts, good luck to everyone who is still in their internship placements!

Kind regards,

Mikayla Wearne