Two days on, 1 day off and still did so much

This week I only managed to do two days since I was sick for the third day. I, however got to work on website content for the events/projects page and help out at an event organised by our organisation, 32dsg.

The events page content is looking good and I am learning to set it out exactly how they want the web designers to produce it. There are so many skills I thought I would never use from university, especially the units that I started off doing in Mass Communications before I changed to Journalism and PR. For example the skills of text wrapping where you format pictures within the text so that the words move according to where the picture is. The understanding I have from ‘wiki’s’ we did in PR corporate and PR International gave me the knowledge to be able to link documents to the page and realise how all the pages will be connected in the end. There are so many little things you learn in university that can help you so much in real life.

The interns were asked to help out at the oZAPP Roadshow event being held in Perth at Spacecubed in St Gorges Terrace. We were told we were going to do the meeting and greeting, give out nametags and information as well as help out with food and drinks. The manager of the event space did not help out all the ‘girls’ all carrying drinks and heavy glass ware up to the room. It was amazing how this portrayal of rudeness can change the opinion of a company hosting an event in this space. 32dsg’s events coordinator immediately said she would never use this space again.

Although there were a few things that were working against this event such as the fact that there was another event straight after ours, in the same space, and that many of the people registered were not on the list for nametags, no one really noticed anything was wrong. The glassware was hired and therefore we needed to take them home but people for the next event were using a lot of them. However, we managed by kindly explaining the fact that this was for a different event. We solved the nametag issue by getting attendees to write their own names on a nametag. Overall people enjoyed the event and we were able to enjoy it too. I think one of the things I noticed was that there is little time for a person organising the event to actually enjoy it. There is always something to do or something to coordinate and therefore you really have to sit down and debrief to realise what could have been done better or what was successful to truly appreciate your efforts.

This coming week I will be making up the extra day I missed because of being sick and therefore I will be able to do a lot more in terms of website content and helping out with the content writing of a clients website that is about to launch in a couple of days.

Until then,

Thanks for reading.

Martine

xxxx

Organisation: my death and savior

Hi All!

This is my first blog as I have been flat out busy - given ample opportunities to take charge and initiative within my placement. Interestingly enough my placement is actually at Curtin, within the Campus and Community Life department. Of course this means I get the amazing experience of working on Curtins charity and volunteer projects that help a range of organisations within the wider community!

Firstly I was charged with organising and running 'Daffodil Day' at Curtin which ran over a three day period. I mainly want to focus on the organisational aspects of this in my first blog.

To be honest organisation of work and time is often not my strong suit - I know i can deal with people very well but I am aware that my prep can sometimes leave a lot to be desired. This is especially true as I am juggling near full time work, full time study and the placement this semester. I have found that running schedules for my personal life as well as for the daffodil day event have been incredibly useful. In meetings we've had in the office I've noticed that the running schedule and time action plan really helps me understand the long term picture and prioritise what needs to be done and when.

Daffodil Day - is mostly done in the organisational stages - calling the cancer council to arrange merchandise, speaking to the florists about delivery, creating a list of staff pre orders, creating a list of volunteers to sell, bunching and cutting the daffodils then wrapping them. Thus having a strategic running schedule helped me smoothly transition all of these various aspects.
As Kim Harrison (Strategic Public relations 3rd edition, 2003) says "the strengths of working to goals and objectives are that it lets individuals know what is expected of them."

Have any of you found yourself organising a lot more than usual??

I think in my experience so far this has been a key factor in really controlling the work that is assigned to me! It is daunting and full on, but I really am enjoying it!!

I'll post again soon

Bec Curtin
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