eventful times at minters

Hi all! The past few days at Minter Ellison have been full on as usual -Thursday particularly, as we hosted two events at our offices and as a marketing team attended the lunch box list’s ‘Marketing Mavens’ lunch.

The first event was a breakfast seminar. All ran smoothly as we had pretty much set everything up for it on Wednesday afternoon. However our event coordinator was at the scene from 6.30 to ensure a successful and professional execution.

My morning was spent entering information onto a membership database and running around the city picking up essentials and completing last minute errands for the NAB dinner later that was held later that night. The ‘NAB long table dinner’ is an annual event hosted by Minter Ellison and has a positive reputation with both firms –which adds to the pressure of exceeding expectations each year. This year’s theme was ‘China’ and the lawyer in charge of the NAB client ensured we left no stone unturned, used only the best and demanded absolute perfection –right down to how far down he wanted the lanterns to hang in centre meters!

All in all I can say I had defiantly found 30 before 10am and as the day went on I felt I was given my first real look into just how stressful events can be – and that the more help and support the team gets the better. The way the lawyers from the responsible division helped out was a real credit to the employee relations at Minters and I am grateful to have had another opportunity to experience a whole event play out -from the sending of invitations to the fifty guests arriving, and even all the time consuming tasks in between! I must add how lucky the guests actually were –taking home a hefty goody bag and a bonsai plant each!

Seven of us left the office to attend the lunch box lists ‘Marketing Mavens’ event. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to three industry professionals.

The first speaker; Lousie Ardagh was extremely inspirational and I felt she presented a very relatable story. She discussed her hardship early on in life and how three key lessons have in some way shaped her. They related to resilience, persistence and hard work. She started her professional career in Ireland –moving there for love and not knowing how to speak a word of the language! She told of how she had to continually prove herself as good enough to her bosses and how she would always go that extra step to get what she wanted from her career.

I have actually been lucky enough to have had an internship with the second speaker –Nicole Jenkins at her boutique consultancy The Hub earlier this year. Nicole gave an account how she was never the best student and didn’t even study marketing or public relations at university until she had been working in the industry and found that is where her passion lied. She is now completing her doctorate on branding and has worked on some exciting events locally and interstate including the Perth convention and exhibition centre and the 2000 Olympics.

One thing I noted about the speakers was that all of them did strike some fortune of luck to kick start their career –emphasizing just how important networking and who you know really is. But they all also put in so much dedication, commitment and had a drive to be an absolute professional in the field and it is that that has got them to be where they are today. It’s those kinds of stories that really do inspire you and gets you excited about starting your own career, building up your experiences, lessons and knowledge to share and hopefully inspire others with one day.

This was the second lunch box list event I have been fortunate enough to attend and I encourage everyone to try and get along to them when you can as they really are inspiring and a great way to meet people in the industry.