A fresh pair of eyes

Starting a new job is always incredibly daunting, especially when you’re in a different country and you don’t have much knowledge to fall back on. In my second week in, I was asked to seek out an appropriate venue for a media event, I was stumped. I wanted to find a unique venue, but I also had financial restrictions along with space, catering, and visual requirements to fulfil.

I wanted a venue which was more than your standard hotel events room:

• Where guests had space to move around (while still being close to the city, otherwise attendance would fall) 
• Different events of the day (catering, meeting area, greeting area) could be separately set up to save time and maintain a professional and organised image. 
• Room for media to interview guests away from the noise of the event

When I first got the task, I felt completely bewildered. I hadn’t seen much of Kuala Lumpur yet, and my research was hampered by language barriers (Google Translate can come up with some strange interpretations) and my own lack of experience in event management. 

However, I eventually started to use my lack of Malaysia-experience to my advantage. Not being a local, I was open to researching venues some may not consider. This led me to discovering a fantastic venue at the Bird Park - usually a tourist destination. 

Turns out, there was an ideal meeting room which met all the requirements, and as a bonus it had a great visual element to lend itself to photographs and an overall relaxed atmosphere.

Kuala Lumpur Bird Park

A few lessons I learned from this events experience:

• Research facilities - It is so important, especially in a big city, to ensure guests can easily get to the venue, there's ample parking, and furniture availability (in this case many tables were required in a specific set-up). 
• Catering - Does the venue allow outside catering, or can they provide it? How will catering work with the venue? E.g will the room be too small, making it awkward?
• Financials - don't let costs get out of hand. A few places I looked at had reasonable starting prices, then costs grew out of hand when other factors are considered (may charge for extra furniture, cleaning costs). 
• Look at reviews - If you can find them, it's good to get someone else's opinion. Sometimes a location looks great until you hear others experiences. 
• Time - research what else is happening on the day and time of your event. Is it school holidays, or a public holiday? Will traffic be bad? What will the weather be like? 
• Photo opportunities - Photo's make a story! It will make it more likely to be published a resonates more strongly with the audience. As this article explains, having good photos should not be underestimated. 

Adding a photo to your tweet makes it more effective 

Some more tips on basic event planning I found to be useful are here.

Until next time,

Whitney Slater

Curtin Bentley