The focus of the seminar is taking a coordinated approach to
suicide prevention; it is a networking opportunity for people from whole of
corporate, government and community with a shared vision to help prevent this
worthy cause.
This is the first Momentum’s event that I have the honor to
be involved in, working closely together with the other intern girls makes it
an even more brilliant experience.
They say event management can be a stressful affair. It was
about 8:30 in the morning we arrived the function center at the Technology Park
after a long drive with irritating traffics. Everything was all over the places.
There were boxes of media materials and booklets on the floor and tables that
need to be sorted. The task was to put all the materials into one media kit and
place them on each chair in the seminar. We somehow turned this process into a little
production line, it was amazingly efficient, each person allocated one task and
pass the un-finished media kit on to the next person which the last person then
start placing them onto the chairs.
If you think something will go wrong, it probably will. While
people were running around were busy robots someone discovered that the box of
name tags is nowhere to be found. We were responsible to organize the name
batches and provide to guests upon arrival. After minutes of panicking the box
arrived just before the beginning of the seminar – lucky!
The most stressful task is finally done; everyone was
relived and started making their ways to the coffee section. The next task is
to groom guests and assist them with name batches and signing forms. There was
almost like a competition between our intern girls. In fact, everyone was
working so hard and trying to contribute the best performance in assisting and
grooming the guests at the entrance. It was totally a war in the workforce,
everyone was fighting to get more tasks – a very competitive also highly
striving and power-driven environment.
There was a dilemma when everyone was busy getting
themselves into the seminar. One sophisticated short-hair lady walked in which
I groomed and questioned her name in order to allocate her a name batch. She
told me that she was Dr. Sally Talbot and that she might not be on the list
because she received a very late invitation as of the night before. I remember her.
She is the shadow minister of the Disability Service, Mental Health and Child
Protection – a special guest of today’s seminar. I remember sending her emails
about coming into the seminar yesterday in the office. There was recently been
an overtaking in the position, which the former shadow minister has been
replace, the department did not inform us till the very last minute as a result
we could only invite Dr. Talbot as a special guest to the seminar instead of a
spokesperson. I remember how panicking the situation was and there she is
standing right in front of me. Surprisingly she was not a bossy person at all, she
was all friendly and nice that made me feel like I didn’t look after her the
way I should. She is one of those successful and well-known people out there
who just want to be treated as normal people. I admire people like that.
The rest of the seminar went extremely well and it was
overall a very successful one. I could never imagine learning this much in one
day’s event assistant. Thanks to the amazing team and wonderful speakers.
