So I have recently (one week ago!) made the big move from Margaret River,WA to Bondi NSW to complete my professional placement at Surfing World Magazine. I have grown up around the surf industry and have worked and volunteered for associated non-for-profit organisations over the past 3 years, which has resulted in me being offered this amazing internship. After living on the east coast for ONE whole week I made the 2 hour journey up to Avalon and started my first day at the office.
For those of you who aren't familiar with surfing world I will give you a brief insight into the company... Surfing World are an Australian print magazine who are highly regarded in the surf media and have a circulation of approximately 20,000. They are closely linked to Coastal Watch, who provide the magazine with a multi-media opportunity and are the number one resource for Australian surfers. This means that my role looks at the PR and communication strategies for both Surfing World and Coastal Watch. I could go on for hours explaining how many things these guys do but for now i'll keep it short and simple, as later blogs will show this to you.
I have begun my internship at a pretty crazy time! The Quiksilver Pro begins on Saturday March 2 on the Gold Coast and as Surfing World and Coastal Watch are major sponsors of the event I have had a really interesting first week on the job. My first day consisted of compiling a list of surf industry contacts on the Gold Coast to attend 'The Garage Party' that is being presented by Coastal Watch. Before inviting our selected guests I was given the task of communicating with the printer and getting invitations printed for the event. I then worked alongside the editor to create some interesting copy that was used to email along with the invitation to our guests... On the Surfing World side of things I had to get 300 copies of the magazine delivered to the event site on the Gold Coast, as these will be sold at a pop-up store at the event.
Another part of my internship involves working with non-for-profit organisation SurfAid, who aim to improve the health and wellbeing of people living in isolated communities (such as the Mentawai's in Indonesia) that are connected to Australia through surfing. SurfAid are closely linked to Surfing World who support the organisation through their media and events. At the moment I am working on two upcoming events for SurfAid - the SurfStitch SurfAid Ball in Sydney and the SurfAid Cup Margaret River, that will be held during the Drug Aware Pro Margaret River. At the moment I am using my local knowledge to create a database of local media contacts that we will approach within the next week with the SurfAid media kits. I am also developing run sheets for our events and have just discovered the best site for managing events (trybooking.com) have a look at the site, it's such a great system and hopefully it will help some of you out as well!!
I hope this has given you an insight into my placement... I will give more detail into specific tasks and my experiences throughout the next few weeks. But so far, I have learnt so much and I can't wait to learn more as I am given more responsibility and learn more about my organisation and my role within the team.
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