After the event...More work to do!

As I have mentioned in previous posts, this year's Open Day on the Green was a first for Curtin's Open Day team in many ways. There was a new location, new theme, and sometimes less space to organise things which all presented challenges for everyone involved, not just those directly involved with Open Day on the Corps Comms side of things, but for those mangers from within other departments who had to organise their own stalls and exhibits on Open Day.

Managing an entire faculty marquee would of been challenging, with space, tables and chairs and displays and giving everyone in the faculty a fair go. Some other departments which may have struggled was the team from Student Central, who often give some of the most important talks on Open Days concerning admissions, fees and scholarships, who were lumped with a new venue and had to try and make things work.

By the time the day came to a close, it almost felt like, whoa that was it!? Kind of how people relate to weddings, when they say they spend all this time planning for ONE day for it to be over and done with in what feels like a couple of hours! And then no sooner had everything been set up, from furniture, signage across campus to marquees, it was all taken down again and within days, you wouldn't have known that Curtin had just hosted 18,000 visitors!

At the post Open Day debrief meeting with all the faculty marketing teams, I was really surprised to hear some of the feedback. Yes it was a challenge for some, but most agreed the layout was really great and would love to continue it in future Open Days. There were a few issues here and there such as food availability, lectures being too busy or full (this one took me by surprise!) but overall everyone was satisfied! So it felt good to have contributed to something that ended being quite a success.

Another first for the team, is conducting surveys for market research, to help make the following Open Days even more successful. We had external marketing people on campus on the day asking a series of questions and they will then turn that information over for analysis. As a follow-up also, an online survey was launched with a prize pack of X-boxes and iPods. Questions mainly consisted of things like "Did you visit the so and so display?" or "Which faculty most interested you?" and that sort of thing.

I have heard that the results of these are nearly finalised and I will be very interested to learn how it went from the consumer's perspective. From my own perspective, yeah, it was a great day with little or no complications, but I wasn't obviously attending events or visiting faculties! It would be interesting to hear obviously the good things but also maybe feedback from someone who may have had trouble with say getting lost, or being crowded in a lecture room that was at capacity or something and then those issues can be tackled for next year!