First weeks at IPAA...

So, 14 days in to my PR placement and less than 2 weeks left of semester, I thought I best get this blog situation happening.

I’ve been working at the Institute of Public Administration Australia – WA Division (or IPAA WA when I’m feeling lazy). Basically, they run a lot of training seminars and organise a lot of events in the Public Sector, so while the work may not be supremely glamorous, I’ve met some interesting Government-y people.

My first few weeks there, nobody knew what to do with me. There was a lot of reshuffling going on in the office. This person was leaving, that person needed training, another person just up and left in a rather spectacular fashion. Drama drama drama! In the time I’ve spent in the IPAA office, three staff have left, and three newbies have been hired. In an organisation of only 8 people, these were some fairly significant changes.

But once everyone got into the swing of things and got used to having me around, I was given a bit more responsibility than data entry and coffee runs. They’ve had me designing promotional material, helping coordinate trainings, and mingling at the WA Local Government Conference at the Convention Centre (I was the youngest there by several decades).

This week I put in to practice the theory I learned in our PR Media unit. IPAA WA has an event coming up targeted specifically at an older age group. It was my job to put together a distribution list (outside that of their existing contact list) of organisations or media outlets that may be interested in the event, or have a close association with the older community. A few of my suggested mail-out organisations actually resulted in registrations for the event, so yay for my blossoming PR skills.

That’s it for now kids. Hope you’re all further along with your blogs and reports than I am…