Office Work.

Hello everyone,

I’ve just finished up my third week at Bright Communications, bringing me up to six days of work. I have two main projects that I’m working on, the Australasian Safari and Yallingup Surfilm Festival, as well as doing small, random tasks for other clients.

The Australasian Safari is Australia’s toughest motorsport challenge with 4WD’s, motorbikes and quad bikes racing mainly off-road from Perth, through Geraldton and the northern goldfields, to the finish line in Kalgoorlie, all in just seven days (check out the Australasian Safari Website for more information). As the event itself is run on its own, Bright Communications is responsible for the media relations. This includes sending out media releases, event alerts and setting up interviews with the competitors. I had the task of emailing out event alerts for both the ceremonial start at Hillary’s Boat Harbour and the official finish in Kalgoorlie. I also started to go through the competitor list and match up competitors with local newspapers in the hopes of setting up interviews. The Safari is not something I would normally be interested in, but it’s nice to work on something different and broaden my horizons. Plus, when I do recognise a name I feel like I’m learning quick, does the name Craig Lowndes ring a bell for anyone?

My second event is the Yallingup Surfilm Festival, which I refer to as YSF as it can be a bit of a mouthful. This is a 3-day festival in the south west of WA that showcases films, music, art and workshops all inspired by surfing culture (check out the YSF Website for more information). This event isn’t until January, and again it is run on its own, so at Bright we are doing media relations. The highlight of my placement so far has to come from YSF. I got to interview Courtney Potter, the only southwest film finalist in the 2010 Festival, and write up a media release for local papers. I wrote the release, had it approved by Janine and then sent it to the director of YSF, Jesca, who sent it back with the only change being that I had written the wrong year in the date. I was so happy to see something I’d written was up to a high standard. And I also learnt to double check all my dates and start times on everything I write.

Other then exercising my writing skills (I swear I can hear the tapping of my keyboard in my sleep) I’ve been compiling media lists and trying to make sure I’m on top of every task I get given. This week in particular I felt a bit like I was starting one task and forgetting about another. I've found that keeping a list of what I'm working on next to me has helped keep track.

Doing mainly office work is new to me, I’m not used to eight hours at a computer, so I'm really excited to attend an event launch on Wednesday. But I can’t give away any details on that just yet, so you’ll have to stay tuned!

Lauren.