Event day goes by in a flash

On Sunday August 4 I arrived at Curtin bright and early, 7:30 am! Open Day was finally here and I was extremely excited to see everyone’s hard work come together but a little sad to end my time with Asha and University Marketing. The final week of my internship was a blur of meetings, final confirmation and what felt like hundreds of emails a day!

Many of the Fun Zone suppliers were arriving between 8 – 8:30 am and I had to be there to ensure they knew what to do and where to go, fortunately there were very few problems! A few days before Open Day I had compiled information packs for each supplier and sent them via email so they knew what was happening, how to access their area etc. Andi, our entertainment manager, was extremely helpful with handling the talent and activities on the day.

There were only a few small hiccups, such as St Johns Ambulance driving into the wrong area and having to drive all the way back around campus to the right area. I also had to direct Nova through heavy traffic and crowds up into John Curtin Forum, which was quite scary!

The Fun Zone was extremely popular, we ended up having a circus workshop alongside all our other activities which visitors of all ages absolutely loved! I also managed to book Vintage Photobooths at the last minute, their carnival themed booth was a huge hit. Coordinating and managing the Fun Zone definitely taught me the importance of through preparation and keeping a constant line of communication with external stakeholders – we had done so much preparation prior to Open Day that the Fun Zone basically ran itself.

Despite bad weather for the week leading up to Open Day, it was a very sunny and warm 23 degrees! It was a little annoying as we had invested so much time and effort into accounting for the possibility of rain, but we really could not have asked for better weather. The day came together very well and it was amazing to see the scale of the event and the huge number of people who attend.

Asha, my boss & the Open Day Project and Brand Consultant, was definitely the best boss I have ever had! She has taught the importance of time management as she definitely practices it on a daily basis. Asha is so organised, she is always on top of everything and aware of what’s going on which is an important part of why Open Day runs so smoothly. Despite the fact that the week prior to the event was busy, it was never stressful or difficult to deal with anything, which is something that Asha fostered within the work environment. I am definitely happy that I chose to complete my internship in corporate communications instead of consultancy, it was amazing to see how the marketing and public relations team behind such a big brand works and how smaller teams within Curtin came together to work on the Open Day project. 

(Written on August 10, 2013)

PR is more than just media release after media release

During the semester break I was spending three days a week interning at University Marketing and it was very busy! 

(Written on July 29, 2013)

Open Day is starting to come together but everyone is busy meeting deadlines for various elements of Open Day, the most stressful deadline for University Marketing staff has been the Open Day program.

The program is integral to Open Day as it is the document that visitors receive to find out what’s going on and where it’s happening. This year it caused a huge headache for the staff members involved, as there were so many venue clashes and staff from faculties/ departments at Curtin who were unwilling to change their plans. Asha and I later discovered that several venues would be closed on Open Day due to construction works around campus – yet another issue to consider! All of the problems with the program made me realise how important effective team work and communication are in a place like Curtin, the University Marketing staff worked extremely well together to edit the program and ensure they made it to print. Asha and I realised that there definitely needed to be an easier way of putting together the program in the initial stages, something which I'm sure will come up in the evaluation phase of the project. 

Halfway through my internship, the Fun Zone is final coming together! Asha and I have decided on a ‘Carnival’ theme for the Fun Zone. The aim is to have a Carnival Marquee with activities such as a laughing clown sideshow game, face painters, balloon twisters, a storyteller, petting zoo, free popcorn and much more! There will also be a separate craft marquee complete with a REmida carnival mask making workshop which uses materials made from recycled bits and pieces.

For an event like Open Day you have to consider so many things, including the risks involved with running such a large-scale event. Whilst I was confirming activities for the Fun Zone, I was tasked with writing up a risk assessment for each activity in the Fun Zone.  This was a time consuming task but part of my role was to ensure that we were aware of potential risks and had appropriate measures in place if any of the potential risks/ hazards were to occur. Completing the risk assessments definitely affirmed the importance of practicing ethically, something that is reiterated heavily in all public relations units. There are so many important stakeholders on campus - employees, students, potential students and their families, so ensuring that Curtin maintained a safe environment and had considered all the risks was highly important, not only for safety but to ensure we had a strategy if anything did go wrong. 

I have also learnt about paid and unpaid media strategies Curtin is using to promote Open Day. University Marketing is in charge of the paid media strategy which has focused on broadcast advertising on radio stations such as Nova and print advertisements on buses, bus stops and billboards outside the university and advertisements in newspapers. Curtin has rebranded Open Day as 'Open Day Catalyst' (i.e. a catalyst for change) so all the merchandise and print advertisements have changed from previous years. The idea of the print ads is for them to look like a festival poster, like a Big Day Out or Groovin' The Moo ad, in order to attract the attention of a younger demographic. 

A Open Day Catalyst advertisement in The Weekend West

The public relations department at Curtin works on the unpaid media side, mostly targeting local newspapers due to the 'community' feel of the event, and they achieved coverage in the Canning Times in the lead up to Open Day. We also worked with Future Students to inform high schools and students about Open Day through their newsletters and I also wrote a short piece for Curtin Wire, which is Curtin’s e-newsletter for high school students. This taught me that public relations is so much more than writing media releases – although this is an integral part to media relations there are many other ways to communicate with your key stakeholders. Coming into my internship I had (wrongly) assumed that PR mostly involved writing media releases, although I have been writing a lot my job has involved many other public relations tasks. 

During the last few weeks of my internship it was my 21^st birthday – Asha very kindly agreed to let me have the day off and also went to the effort of buying me a birthday cake and a small gift! It was a lovely pre-birthday and during my time at University Marketing Asha has made me realise that although we are working on a high pressure project, it doesn't need to be fast paced and stressful all the time. The office environment is still really warm and fun even though everyone is working hard to achieve their deadlines. 

There is no such thing as an ‘obligation free’ quote

Although Open Day is an event, I have quickly discovered that Asha’s role is definitely more project management than event management! Open Day is Curtin’s largest recruitment event and in 2012 over 17 000 prospective students and their families attended Open Day, which makes it an extremely important event in engagement of Curtin's key target market and their influencers. There is a lot of work involved in perfecting the event – branding, marketing, communications, event management, public relations - and so many staff members from different departments within Curtin come together to work on the project.

My very first task was to look over what had been done for the ‘Fun Zone’ in previous years and come up with new and exciting ideas. This involved a lot of research of what is on offer in Perth in terms of performers and entertainment. Perth has an extremely small community of entertainers and suppliers so some of our options were quite limited, which created a problem as we needed our amusements to be family friendly, weather resistant, different to what other universities use at their open days and fit in with an overall theme for the Fun Zone. We initially considered having an amusement park attraction, such as a cup and saucer ride, but there is only one supplier in Perth and they are unavailable on Open Day. Considering that this ride could not be placed under a marquee in case of rain, this idea was totally abandoned.

I have also been heavily involved in negotiating with suppliers, which has been extremely interesting. As soon as an external businesses realises you are from a university, sometimes all they see are dollar signs because they assume Curtin has endless amounts of money to spend. This can be extremely frustrating as Open Day does have budget constraints, but some suppliers would still email-stalk me even if I had told them we were unsure or would not require their services. There is no such thing as an obligation free quote! Despite this being a frustrating experience, studying public relations has taught me to always be professional when communicating with stakeholders, I had to maintain a professional line of communication with all suppliers as someone at Curtin may need to use them in the future and I needed to maintain a good reputation with all suppliers, even those we did not use on the day.   

In my first week as Open Day intern I was introduced to the amazing project management software – Trello. Trello looks a little like a Pinterest board but allows you to collaborate with co-workers to see who has completed what, you can have boards with titles such as ‘Do,’ ‘Doing,’ ‘Done’ and drag specific tasks to different boards once you are completing or have completed them. My boss and I are using it to communicate (and remember) all the tasks I have completed or need to complete.  I would highly recommend it for anyone interested in project or event management!

When you’re not looking, you will find something.

I’ll start by introducing myself  - I’m Katie and have just commenced my final semester of a Bachelor of Commerce (Public Relations) degree.  When considering places to intern I wasn’t quite sure where to start, but knew I wanted to gain experience in corporate communications. 

I had completed work experience in a boutique consultancy during my first year and felt consultancy just wasn’t for me. Whilst most of my PR peers are interested in consultancy I have to say I would definitely prefer to work in-house!

So, knowing that I wanted to gain experience in corporate comms provided me with some sort of direction.  I was starting to stress as I wanted to secure a placement over the semester break so I did not have to worry about fitting a placement around studies and work during Semester Two. 

About three quarters of the way through Semester One this year I noticed on Blackboard that University Marketing at Curtin was looking for an intern to assist with Open Day. I had not even started looking for an internship but the perfect opportunity had just surfaced so I applied straight away. Within a few days I was contacted by the Open Day Project & Brand Consultant and was asked to meet for an informal interview. 

I met with Asha, the Open Day Project & Brand Consultant, she explained the main role of the Open Day intern would be coordinating family/ children’s activities for the ‘Fun Zone,’ and helping with signage and the central volunteer briefings. 

I also work in a paid position at the Curtin Careers Centre which has taught me a few things about how to interview (alongside what I learned in PR classes!). I made sure that I dressed professionally and went over-prepared with copies of my resume and samples of my work, even though this was not requested by Asha. In the end, Asha did look at a communications strategy I had completed in my role at the Careers Centre and was impressed ideas that I had come up with. It's definitely better to be over-prepared than under-prepared. 

After the meeting Asha told me that I would hear back in a few days as to whether I had been successful or not, and right on time she emailed me to let me know she would like to have me on board as Open Day intern! This was extremely exciting as I had heard so many stories about students’ difficulty in finding a placement and I had successfully landed an internship in my preferred field on my very first try.

I am extremely excited to update you on my experience working in corporate communications and project management, I hope to learn a lot about during my time at University Marketing and I look forward to hearing about other placements that people are undertaking this semester. 

(Written on May 18, 2013)

Our Big Day has Arrived, as has the end of my Internship

Open Day was held on a beautiful sunny Sunday, and everything went better than we could have planned for. We got to the University about an hour and a half before people were due to arrive, as there were still things to be set up. On the day, everything went as planned, and my role was mainly to help manage any enquiries coming on through social media channels. Myself and another lady from the public relations team, were also tasked with managing the social media, in terms of raising awareness of events, taking photos, and we even managed to get #OpenDay trending.

The day was amazing, with each of the educational departments at Curtin having massive marquees, and entertainment everywhere. Nova arrived, as well as a petting zoo, 10 roving entertainers, two bands, a human soccer table, a human venus fly trap and food everywhere.

We managed to have more attendees at this year's Open Day, than any other previous event. We had 17,500 people arrive, and thankfully, there was no need for our emergency response action plan.

The week after the event, Asha and I attended meetings with many of the people/departments involved in Open Day. These were to note down any suggestions for the following year, to thank everyone for their effort, and to brainstorm ways we could out do ourselves next year.

The event was great, and it was amazing to see all our hard work come together. However, it did mark the final fortnight of my time with Curtin's Marketing and Public Relations team. I have had so much fun, and I found working within a big organisation, which include a huge number of people from different departments, coming together for the one project, really enjoyable and exciting. During my time here, Asha and I attended many meetings with people from Marketing, Public Relations and Media departments, and everyone was always encouraged to voice their ideas, including me. Asha was an amazing person to work with, and I can't thank her enough for giving me the opportunity to help her. She showed me how important being organised is, and just how much you can achieve when you are.Working with the Curtin team was so enjoyable, and everyone is so good at what they do. What I took from my time at Curtin was, how important good communication is within such a big organisation. It takes a lot longer to get things done, when you're working with so many people, but the end results, can be, and were great.

Preparing for the Big Day

I've been working with the Digital Media Unit within Curtin University, in order to organise a social media plan for the Open Day. As our Open Day targets a wide variety of people, mainly future students, who can be high school graduates, current high school students, current tertiary education students, or prospective mature age students, our communication channels for the event need to vary also. We have an Open Day website, that includes an online program for the day, as well as information on what will be available on the day. We also have radio advertising, and print advertising being run on Western Australian radio stations and newspapers, that is raising awareness for when the Open Day will be held, and what time. I however, will be focusing on social media. Many of the people who attend an event such as Open Day are 21 and under, and it's no secret that social media is the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to reach this target audience. Curtin twitter accounts, facebook pages, and instagram accounts are all up and running, and are focused on open Day throughout the end of July and beginning of August, in order to raise awareness for Open Day. The social media plan for Open Day includes objectives, before, during and after the event. These are:

Before

• To propagate event awareness outside of the assigned media channels and schedule.
• To encourage attendance and remind attendees of the date on their preferred channels.
• To extend the reach and value of individual activities which might not otherwise be seen.

During

• To support and respond to users of Twitter and Facebook.
• To remind, promote and propagate activities on the day through Twitter/Facebook.
• To alert staff and pass queries or conversations of interest.
• To monitor conversation and comments and feedback for future event use.
• To identify and intercept any potential issues/alerts raised in social exchanges.

After

• Collection of statistics from social media on the day.

Other aspects of the social media plan included examples, 20 core messages, and 100 extra messages to raise awareness of specific activities on the day, to be spread over the Curtin Facebook and Twitter accounts. 

I believe that social media is a really important and easy way to communicate with a large audience of people. Curtin has used social media in previous years on their Open Day and had a lot of success with it. Goals for this year's event was to trend on Twitter, and respond to every question and comment posted to the Curtin Facebook page and Twitter account. I met with the Digital Media Unit (DMU) in order to discuss these points, and how the social media plan would work on the day of the event, so that every one knew which role they would be undertaking on the day. As Curtin is such a massive institution, there are so many people involved in the planning of the Open Day. I've found this really different to other work I've done within smaller organisations, such as the MS Society of WA, but also really exciting. There are always so many people working with you on particular projects, which makes for more innovative and exciting ideas. This has shown to me how important clear and regular communication is. Asha and I meet with people in different areas of Public Relations and Marketing approximately three times a day, in order to keep on top of any new information or projects.