A different kind of event management...

Having attended so many school alumni meetings and done event management for a couple of years, events management, to me, takes effort and is time consuming.. maybe because I'm a virgo, I like perfection and try as much as I can to drive everything to a perfect ending... of course, there are also times which perfection also ends up in a disaster...

anyway, my school is organising the annual purple nite dinner and we skipped last year due to the flu bug and so this year, we're planning it again and with more people coming in to help out, things seem a bit easier. As most event professionals will tell you, you start with budget, timeline and all other nonsense and then you do milestones tracking.. blah blah blah.. and of course, not forgetting the numerous meetings that you need to attend to discuss the various problems and possible solutions that you have... and one to two weeks before the event, you spend sleepless nights in the office trying to cover all the loopholes that suddenly popped up and scramble for all other nonsense that can only be done a few days before the event... almost all the time, you would be so dead tired by the time the event is over and all you can think of is your bed...

Now, here's what the school alumni - purple nite organising committee will tell you. We set the theme to be purple and white, you go get sponsorship for food, prizes and other stuff that needs money.. go ask around and see if there are former students who wants to sponsor or simply make them sponsor!! Then you go print the banners, invitation cards etc. You go do the design for all the stuff. You go put it up on the publicity platforms. We go settle the video montage and programme. You go settle the manpower.. just go ask the students to help out.. carry tables and chairs la... and then we will go ask our ex classmates to come.. the end of story... simple and sweet right?

I sat there and watched as I looked at the enthusiatic former students put in place the whole event within an hr.. delegate who to do what and even settle the nitty gritty stuff... i'm amazed... although i used to be skeptical about how this whole event will turn out, knowing full well how disinterested my classmates were, i cant help but think this event will be a success in the end...

what I really learnt from this session is that, while we were taught that events management really just needs common sense, as well dig deeper and work longer in the industry, we tend to forget the basic way of working.. delegation and take ownership... no need for fanciful timelines and all, just plain old good cooperation will work its magic...