An end to the beginning

It’s hard to believe that not only my internship has come to an end but so has my time of studying, hopefully.  What an incredible journey it has been, over the past six years, I have studied architecture, quit university, come back to university and now, I’m finally about to graduate.  The last three years of studying Public Relations though has truly been the best, and reassures me that I have finally chosen the right career path. My 20-day internship has given me a valuable insight into the world of public relations and has given me the opportunity to build relationships and gain vital knowledge that has equip me for the rest of my career. During my time at PPR I was able to utilise and build upon the foundations taught at university.

During my time at PPR I learnt several key things that I can carry into the business world. Some of these things I already knew before starting, but working as an intern really highlighted these things. I would like to share with you and future interns to help improve their intern experience.

Ask Questions: I learnt very early on in my intern that the best way to get work or be invited to events is to show interest and ask questions. I realised by asking questions about colleague’s clients, work and upcoming events that they would realise my interest and quite often I was asked to help them out. This happened to me in the first week. With a background in architecture I was very interested in one of my colleagues clients, Finbar, who are Perth’s leading apartment developers. After showing my interest in this client I was invited to attend a meeting with Finbar’s Chief Operations Officer Ronald Chan and his marketing director. It was a fantastic experience to share my ideas for Finbar in this meeting, something that wouldn’t have been possible if I didn’t ask questions.

Meet your deadline: Completing a task before the deadline is a great way to show colleagues that you are a hard worker and are eager to learn.  Be sure though to fully fulfil the brief and to complete work to the best of your ability. After all you’re there to learn and improve your skills. It’s also important to show initiative and ask whether there is anything else you can follow up with, which will shape your colleagues opinion in regards to your work ethic.

Always say ‘yes’: This was definitely something I knew before hand, but saying ‘yes’ at PPR opened up so many doors and opportunities for me, and highlighted to me the importance of always being open to opportunities. Saying ‘yes’ allowed for me to attend various events, including the opening of a gymnasium where the premier was a guest, sit in on meetings, venture into the city to carry out tasks for colleagues, activations and attend media filming and interviews. It’s really amazing to see the opportunities you’re presented with when you just say ‘yes’. By doing so I have been able to use many of my PR skills including writing, interviewing, event planning, communicating and my ability to network.

Overall my experience at PPR was amazing and it taught me so much in regards to the PR industry. I was proud of myself for completing something that was so far out of my comfort zone at the beginning. Each day I was challenged in some way or anything, but this has only helped me face my fears and develop my skills and understanding of the PR world. I am so grateful for the opportunity I was given and I now feel ready to take a leap into the world of PR and start my career.

Good luck with your intern.

Georgia 

Future Music Festival Management

What a crazy experience I've had over the past week. Everything that we have worked towards came down to this one week.

All week was spent organising and managing all the 15 volunteers we had come into the office from Monday through to Saturday.

Whilst doing this, I also was also contacting and updating the staffing sheet for both Future Music and Good Life Festival. 

To get the staff, we put out gumtree ads, which over 500 people looked at and hundreds responded to. I needed to make sure every division of the Festival had the right amount of volunteers and that everyone would be able to get to work done. I read resume after resume assigning them to the right and most suited role to their abilities.

 

With working the whole week, there were also exciting perks, such as getting the chance to look at and help prepare each individual international artist riders. This is what they requested to have in their green rooms and what drinks and food they wanted. I also got to see the set times, which is all exciting when you're working backstage at your first festival.

At Future Music Festival I was local artist Liaison. I arrived at 7am, getting to the backstage of the Cocoon tent. I arrived to find there was no spot for me to sign on the artists so I had to quickly organise with the event managers to get 2 tables and a marque. After setting up my area, I waited for my artists to arrive. I was hoping they would sign in with me with a maximum of ten minutes before they are meant to be on stage. Lots of the starting acts didn't sign in with me, leaving me in crisis mode as many of them needed an Artist pass to get on stage as their local ones wouldn't allow it. This meant I was having to run around the arena trying to find them all in time. Luckily, everyone was where I told them to be so that when the gates opened, they could start playing. When I got back to my sign on desk, just to be sure that this wouldn't happen again; I messaged everyone telling them to come sign in with me as soon as they came to the arena which should be at a minimum an hour before their set start time. I would then send a reminder text to the artists ten minutes before their set, that they should be at their stage ready to take over from the artist before them. From then on , everything went extremely smoothly and the day ran completely according to plan.

Being the local artist liaison for Future, I had to create my own run sheet. This ran extremely smoothly on the day. I had made a run sheet that would allow me to know when they arrived, when they had to head to stage, where they were playing and what time their set started and finished. I also had a column for if they had handed in their APRA forms, invoices and if they had collected or had their dedicated rider. 

At GoodLife, I had a much more involved role. I was the Meet and Greet Co-ordinator, this meant I was backstage where the Artist Sign on was for the International Artists. Being the Meet and Greet Co-ordinator, I had to go pick up all artists either from stage or the artist commune area and take them to the VIP Ultimate Meet and Greet Area. The Artists only had a maximum of 20 minutes to take photographs with fans. The lesser known artists were easy to manage, but when it came to artists like Timmy Trumpet and Will Sparkers, there were hundreds of people wanting photographers. Here I would have to manage the crowd, telling them to make friends as no one would be able to get a photograph alone nor can they take 'selfies.' This was an extremely fun role as it tested my time, crowd and crisis management.
We also had a few international stars we had to manage. These stars would go to a meet and greet where they would be there for an hour or so as an even larger crowd would be waiting.

Positivity is absolutely free and 100% contagious

Hi team

This is my fourth and final blog and I was sad to think my internship was coming to an end. I had learnt so many new things and met some amazing people along the way. After our treasure hunt we organised our final event the dinner and awards night on the 26^th of August. During the day our intern team and I went out shopping for any last minute things including frames for the awards, candles and decorations for the tables and goodies for the prize hampers. We then raced back to the office to print out the awards and my other task was to type up the biding sheets for the silent auction we were going to have that night. After finishing any last minute duties I went home to dress for the occasion, complete with glittery purple shoes to match the colour of positivity J

We arrived at the Duxton Hotel and Minnie and I were allocated to greeting people at the door, ticking their names off the list and telling them what table number they were seated on. After everyone had taken a seat Kristal, Ryan and I went around to the tables and sold raffle tickets, I loved this aspect of the event, being able to go around and talk to people and explain to them what this campaign meant to me. We took our seats for the food to be served and it tasted amazing.

All the interns’ parents were invited to the dinner to see what we had been getting up to with the One Day of Positivity Campaign. During the dinner my parents leant over to be and said that they are really enjoying the night and that they could see me doing something like this as a job in the future, which made me smile.

The atmosphere in the room was amazing as we had inspirational speakers including a man who survived the Bali Bombings and described the negative things in life as “fertiliser for the future”.

The actual day of positivity was the next day the 27^th of August and this was the day that offices/companies around Perth held Positivi-teas to encourage positive action and communication.

To finish off my five months of interning with this wonderful campaign we had a little morning tea all together at the office, where we went through the strengths and weaknesses of the campaign and talked about what we would do differently next time. It was really important that we reflected on what we did to make the campaign even stronger next year. We finished off the morning tea by exchanging warm fuzzies which made everyone feel special.