Terrible Teeny Tiny Pamphlets

With over 150 employees housed at the Fremantle Dockers (FFC) headquarters, the place can get a little busy and crowded at times! It never ceases to amaze me how many different operations and agendas are occurring within each separate department (and that’s just the administration and operations side of things!). As explained previously the FFC is split in to three distinct organisational areas. These include Administration, Operations and Football. Being in the Marketing and Events department I am interning within the Operations area. The Operations area includes 3 distinct departments: Events/ Marketing, Communications and Community Development. Putting it simply Operations are the doers or the implementers of strategy, whilst the Administration are the planners of strategic PR goals.

Myself being classified as a ‘doer’ or as the Events Coordinator said in other words a ‘worker bee’, I have realised the Events/ Marketing department work extremely hard. As part of my experience I have done absolutely everything you could think of that an intern could possibly do, plus more! Stocking fridges UPSTAIRS (this involved strenuous traipsing up and down hills and stairs with cartons weighing in excess of 7 kg each, wearing a dress and blazer I might add- would not recommend this!), attending to 78 children plus their parents for afternoon tea at a children’s football clinic (not as easy as it sounds), visiting a Major flgjghk (honestly had the most complicated name in the world that I could not pronounce) at the Fremantle Army museum to provide him with hundreds of tickets for his members and much, much more. All and all a highly colorful array of tasks that have taught me the great importance of appreciating the lesson in every opportunity thrown your way. Positive thinking is key to this!

Following on from my colorful array of tasks a huge part of maintaining any role within Events includes being excellent at time management, highly organized and having very high self-confidence. As an Event Coordinator so many people in various different departments internally and externally are relying on your organisational skills and pro-activity and the pressure can become pretty pressure cooker high at times! The best way I can describe dealing with such pressure can be summed up in just a few words:  do not doubt yourself for a second. The second you doubt what time you have booked the venue or if you actually did order the 200 gluten free, vegetarian, low fat canapes for the function correctly, is the moment of your downfall. On my first few weeks at the FFC I was in charge of counting all of the marketing collaterol in the hundreds for the Game Day corporate dining rooms. Not listening to my own advice at all I immediately began to question myself on how many hundreds of teeny tiny little pamphlets that I had counted out for each room. Disastrous thinking set in and I ridiculously nearly convinced myself that all of my counting had been flawed and that the dining rooms in Patersons would not run with my poor numerical skills to blame! It’s safe to say that Patersons stadium survived my horrendous counting skills and overactive brain that Game Day and has continued to function on the consecutive Game Days where my counting became much more self-assured in the end.

So on that note a few words of wisdom. Trust yourself, trust your team and for peats sake trust your counting skills!

What a crazy week!

Steve 'Thumper' Bandy (centre right) interviews Josh Hill (centre
left) while Marshy (left) films. 

Well, that officially caps off one of the busiest weekends I have had in a long time.  Thursday, Friday and Saturday were all insane days at the West Coast Eagles, and I spent a lot of time around the same people, which, as you can imagine, left us not seeing eye to eye on a few occasions.


So, let's jump back to Thursday.
The West Coast Eagles decided to celebrate Indigenous round a week before its actual date, because they were drawn an away game, so they wanted to celebrate the contribution the Aboriginal community has made to the Eagles at home.  On Thursday, we held a press conference with Aboriginal players Sharrod Wellingham and Josh Hill and were also joined by North Melbourne players Lindsay Thomas and Daniel Wells.  I was given the camera and had to take a few snaps of the players during the press conference, before we moved outside to take a few photos of the boys plus Aboriginal greats David Wirrapanda and Phil Narkle.  After the whole thing was done, I headed home to write an article on the press conference.  We were told early on in the week that we would push the fact that the Eagles were having a celebration of Indigenous round, so I had to include this heavily in all my articles during the week.

Sam Butler remembered who I was and we had
a real good chat with him. 

Moving on to Friday.
Friday was game day against North Melbourne.  After a big day at uni, I was tired and wasn't really feeling like going to the game, but what a game it turned out to be! Nic Naitanui kicked a goal after the siren, and the Eagles won by two points.  It was insane and everyone in the office was jumping around and the players after the game were over the moon.  It was still business as usual as we delegated players to the media and attended John Worsfold's press conference. After getting home really late, I still had to write my report from the game.

The ballroom at the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre was phenomenal and was an experience I will never forget.

Saturday night.
On Saturday night, the Eagles held the annual gala auction night which was a huge success.  I was not sure what to expect, and at the start was a bit of a loner in the corner because I didn't know anyone. That is when it hit me that I only work with the same three people every day!! Then heaps of Eagles people came and introduced themselves and new friendships were formed and it was really good.  I even had Ross Glendinning and Karl Langdon introduce themselves which was fantastic. We had to make sure people had bidding devices on their tables and that was when I entered the ball room for the first time.  It was like the Brownlow Medal! I genuinely could not believe how amazing it was.  The night was Egyptian themed, so there was an amazing sand castle pyramid with the Eagles logo carved into the side.  After ensuring everything was set to go, the people started arriving.  I got a real rush when Sam Butler actually remembered who I was and shook my hand.  I spoke to some of the players for a while and had an in depth chat with a high school mate who got drafted to the Eagles, Murray Newman.  We filmed a bit for Eagle Vision and that will be up on the website soon. As the night drew on, we ate and chatted about footy and then had to pack up all the silent auction items, all 300 of them. These included TVs, which were set up and plugged in, golf clubs, blenders and basically anything else you can think of.  It was great to see some of the live auctions, seeing some things like a trip to the Brownlow Medal including walking on the red carpet for $17,000!!!! I didn't get home until 1am and was well and truly spent especially after having work at 6am that morning.

Until next game,

Nathan Drudi :)

Like Clockwork.

Hi Everyone,

Elliott Telfer Back again for his 4^th and final contribution to the PR Internship blog! Elliott Telfer is currently employed by RugbyWA/Emirates Western Force on a seasonal paid internship in Events. Elliott Telfer is referring to himself in the 3^rd person because he has been required to do so in the last four days of his internship. He has been required to write the run sheets for the remaining five home games (a full timed plan of how each game/event will run, right down to the amount of sausage rolls in the match day photographer’s room). This Saturday night, the Force take on the Reds in what will be one of their toughest, most exciting challenges yet, and the whole event will be running according to Elliott’s plan.

Whilst writing a run sheet, not only does Elliott have to guesstimate how long the 150-odd individual tasks will take over the course of the day, but it has match up to that of the venue and television schedules. Furthermore, he has to assign himself and his fellow staff members (most of whom he hasn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting) mundane tasks that no one wants to do. Each day at the RugbyWA office, he meets with different departments from within the organisation to negotiate how they want the event operating, unfortunately he can’t let everyone get their way.

The typical run sheet has three columns, one for ‘Time’, ‘Activity’ and ‘Responsibility’. The Time column outlines when an activity must occur, not sooner, not later, but dead on the stipulated time. Activity outlines the task to be completed, for example a task Elliott is allocated for every game is “Final Check of Team Line-ups. Changes relayed to Media Manager, Fox Sports and Lloyd Events.” Under the Responsibility column is the duty in which this activity has been assigned to, for example ‘Telfer’ is printed as the responsibility for the activity above. If anything is unclear, or a task doesn’t get completed because it wasn’t stipulated on the run sheet, its Elliott’s head on the chopping block.

So, for all those that are so kind enough to read this, if you do not hear from or see Elliott following this Saturday’s game, and you happen to hear of an error in the game. Elliott Telfer’s has most likely been decapitated by his superiors. However if you do hear about him following this (and he is alive), everything would have run like clockwork and he will live to see another day.

Elliott Telfer extends his greatest gratitude for reading his past four blogs, they have been a lot of fun for him to write and he has thoroughly enjoyed sharing his experiences with you all.

Best of luck to you and your Internship.

Elliott Telfer (in the 3^rd person)

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Events - not all fun and games!

I have been doing my internship for Swan Districts FootballClub and what a crazy few weeks it has been!

Due to some interesting fixtures, SDFC have had three homegames in a row at Steel Blue Oval, which has equalled event management galore. This has made mevery aware of the day to day workings of a footy club before their big gameseach week and has given me huge amounts of experience in events and each jobthat needs to be completed to make sure the day runs without a hitch.

Each game day has required a lot of preparation because SwanDistricts hold luncheons in the members lounge for sponsors and members everyhome game. This includes coordinating with the marketing manager and functionmanager to organise caterers, bar staff, speakers, speeches, run sheets andattendees

As there were so many home games in a row, the events had tobe fun and interesting each time so I managed to grab a photo with cricketerDennis Lillee and met the infamous Brendan Fevola, who spoke at an event withfriend and ex-Carlton player Anthony Koutoufides (which was very, very enlightening, to say the least!)

I have always been interested in gaining more experience inevents as it seems like a great job to do, and so rewarding when the functionis over and you can say you did it! Helping with the events at Swan Districtshas been very eye opening though, as everything that is done is generally doneby the managers at the club. This is because the club has a smaller amount offunds and resources in comparison to what a lot of AFL teams would have. Therewere some times I would be folding brochures, sealing letters and printingnametags – happily I might add – with the marketing manager wondering when shehad time to do her job!

On game day though, these small tidbits definitely added togreat day and I learnt that it doesn’t matter who does the mundane jobs, aslong as they get done.

Until my next post!

Lucy