Glitz, Glamour and .......... Government ??

Hi All

Have now passed the halfway mark of my placement and thought I should update everyone on how I’m going and hopefully pose some interesting questions and experiences that you may have dealt with on your placements.

Well I suppose I should start at the most exciting thing first, I was lucky enough to be able to become involved with the WA Training awards which is the department’s biggest event for the year and with 670 people I am not joking. I unfortunately only got involved in the event quite late so didn’t get experience the full planning process but was involved and the volunteer brief when all the volunteers were briefed about the event and also given their roles for the night. One interesting thing that came up at the briefing was that the department could not get any media presence at the event I found this quite shocking because although there were articles in the paper after the event about the event through media releases they couldn’t get anyone to turn up on the night. Have any of you out their on placement found it difficult to secure media coverage at an event?

Onto the night itself the event was held at the Perth Convention Centre on the 27th of August and the ballroom and the event setup was amazing. I was involved firstly at the name badge table where the guests were greeted and given a name badge for the event. It was at this stage of the night I began to notice how well planned the event was because every time there was a problem it had already been planned for and a solution was instantaneous, pretty good for an event organising team of four. Anyway the night soon progressed through to the awards where I was on the trophy table making sure that the correct awards were handed up on stage to the winners. The event as a whole ran like clockwork and really after seeing quite a few events I was surprised how well it ran so kudos to the corporate communications and marketing team.

I don’t want to take up to much more of your time but my fact sheet project is coming along quite well the only major thing to happen with it was I had to make a presentation to the corporate directorate which is a meeting of representative of each branch of the department . Although I have no fear of public speaking and indeed I performed well on the day I think the nervousness came from how well the fact sheet that I presented would be received. In the end there was nothing to worry about and the fact sheet was well received and should receive some feedback from other areas in the next few days.

Another interesting thing that has been going on is the regular team meetings that we have been having each week, when I started I was missing them because they were not on my placement days but now I am a part of the meetings which discuss upcoming projects and reviewing recent work of the branch. These meetings are quite informal just in the director’s office what do you guys do at you placements?

Well I’m out would be great to get some comments from everyone on how they are going

David Thatcher

Hardworking Govt. Intern