ACEN Conference Happenings

Hi All,

One of my main responsibilities while working on the ACEN National Conference 2010 was to produce the conference booklet which will included the conference program, and plenty other helpful information for the guests and delegates attending the conference.

The Friday before the conference I went into minuteman press and picked up 210 conference booklets (which looked too awesome) and by Sunday the two other interns, Jim Elliott (our supervisor) and myself were busy running a bit of a production line to put together 210 conference bags. 210 doesn’t sound like much, but its amazing how much time and space it takes, especially with all the little bits and pieces that we were asked to include into the bags. From the amazingly brilliant conference booklet (I made it), to the equally exciting City of Perth brochures (City of Perth have done well for themselves with those brochures, I was impressed) to the little things such as a note pad, and many many pens which ill be using for years to come.

At this stage, it seems to be the cool thing to insert a photo ( possibly of the conference bag). However, I shall not conform and you will not get to see this conference bag I speak off!!

And then Tuesday came along, woke up with a sore throat and a runny nose, and was at Curtin by 8am for the first day of delegate registration at Curtin University. Luckily I had my soothers with me combined with plenty of tea and coffee that was provided for the conference to keep my sickness from taking over.

Tuesday was not the first official day of the conference, there was only two of us manning the registration desk and helping delegates find their way to their workshops and around campus. Later that day we also had to make sure everything was set up and ready to go for Wednesday.

Wednesday is when things started getting really busy as we had to register the majority of the guests, help with any inquiries, as well as help presenters pre-set their presentations onto the computers in lecture theatres and other rooms used for the conference and deal with any other issues that pop up on the day. We had some Volunteers to help us out and they were absolutely great, however the three interns (Matt, Tash and myself) still needed to make sure that everything is running as smoothly as it possibly can.

Thursday and Friday were more of the same but not as busy as the Wednesday, simply because guests started getting used to the Campus and the way the conference works.

One of the things I learnt from this conference is that every little aspect of an event or a job someone does is important, there are no “not significant” aspects and that was demonstrated through the conference when a microphone did not work and a whole session was put on hold which could’ve potentially delayed following sessions and all of that was caused by a dead battery. This goes to show that attention to detail and getting the all little things done is what contributes to the success of the project as a whole.

All in all, there were no major issues that we had to deal with and the conference was a success. Plenty of positive feedback was given in relation to the work done by Jim Elliott and the three student interns and I was very happy to see that my booklet was used by all the guests as a source of information and even happier to receive a few compliments regarding the book.

This is it for today, I hope that by now most of have at least thought of starting you report.

Goodluck!!

Issa Maimoun.