I put a lot into the Evenception Seminar, because
the field of event production was something that I was greatly interested in
and I knew the more I put in, the more I would get out of it. My contribution
was as follows:
Contribution and collaboration
There was honestly so many different stages and aspects to
the production of tis event it’s almost hard to remember everything that I was
involved in, but here is what comes to mind. I took leadership from the very
first brainstorming class and acted as the scribe who notes down all the ideas
we came up with, everything from ‘different types of events’ to ‘different
roles in event production’ and ‘examples of events in Australia and
internationally’. When the opportunity came up to be on a proper leadership
board, I raised my hand along with Maddie and Jenny, willing and excited to
take the added leadership responsibilities in co-ordinating everyone working on
this event. It was not always easy to be in this position, and at times it was
hard to motivate others who hadn’t invested as much in the project to work with
us. We employed a number of different strategies to work productively as a
group, including making sure that all brainstorming sessions were open to everyone
and we asked everyone to contribute, even those who could not make it to class
and gave them a deadline to contribute to the discussion online. We also made
sure that all major decisions were signed off by everyone so that we could
create something that everyone was proud of. While this worked some of the
time, there were instances where people were just not pulling their weight, and
the only thing we could do at that point was just to take on a bit of extra
work ourselves and make sure the work got done. Although this was frustrating
at times, in hindsight I really didn’t mind so much because I learnt a lot more
by getting involved in all the different processes. Even though I initially
didn’t want to host the event, I found that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience
and felt better for having done it. My contribution was quite diverse and
varied but to just pick some points…I extended upon and documented the research
we started in our first few sessions, I researched different guests for us to
invite, I wrote the blurb for the event, I found inspiration for the design
group and prompted them to start designing the different media we needed such
as pamphlets, tickets, slideshows etc, I brainstormed a lot of the ideas we had
for how to turn this event into ‘an event within an event’, I organised the
questions for the seminar once we had collated them together and structured how
they would run, I helped host the event itself, and I did not miss a single
class.
Proactive learning
I put A LOT of effort into extending my own learning beyond
what was happening in class. This was motivated by a number of factors: because
I wanted to know more about the industry so that I could help write
intelligible questions and talk to our guests at our seminar; because I wanted
to research the same area for my PNR report; and because it’s an area that I am
extremely interested in working in in the future. I have a notebook that I kept
most of my notes in from day 1, and here is where, after we started
brainstorming ideas on the first day, I went home and spent hours brainstorming
some more, and researching online real life examples of festivals that fit
under the categories we’d brainstormed. I’m a very goal-driven person, and so
when I went home after the first couple classes
I also wrote a list titled ‘goals for this course’, which included a
number of specific goals for the seminar project. I set up a Facebook group
just with myself where I started researching different areas of the event
production industry online. I looked at everything from the different music
festivals in Australia, and the world, to the major players in the industry, to
the different companies that would be recruited to do staging or catering for
events, to different issues that had faced the industry over the years (ranging
from deaths in mosh pits to the ever-increasing bidding wars for talent) and every time I would find
something of note, I’d post the link in this facebook group and comment on it
with any thoughts I had about it. In doing this I came across a number of
different online music industry publications, and I picked about 5 I thought
were worthwhile keeping track of and subscribed to their updates and
newsletters so that I could keep up with what was happening in the biz. I also
started an internship working in the marketing department at the Big Day Out,
which helped put a lot of what I was learning into real life context.
Participation
I attended every single class and group meeting, and met
every deadline we had online for approving decisions to contributing to
research and ideas. I was also very active in all these instances, often taking
a leadership role in directing te meeting, being the scribe or prompting and
nudging others into fulfilling their roles. I came to the meetings very
prepared, often having done extra research since our last meeting so that I had
fresh new ideas to present, and always walked away with a new ‘To Do’ list to
tackle. For the actual day itself I made honey joys the night before, met early
with everyone to make sure everything was on track, printed of the list of
questions and went through it with Jenny my co-host, meted and greeted the
guests, co-hosted the actual seminar, thanked the guests, and then helped pack
up afterwards.
Connections and intersections
I think that the seminar series was really, really useful,
in a lot of different ways. First of all, it allowed me the opportunity to
produce an event for the first time ever, and get my hands dirty in all the
different processes involved in that. It allowed me to experience the
collaboration that is involved in that and to realise how much of it is team
work. It allowed me to network within the event production industry, and to
gain some wisdom from our great guests who shared some very useful insight with
us on the day. It also allowed me to learn a lot from all the other seminars I
sat in on, from radio to documentary filmmaking. I found that I work well in a
leadership position within a group, but also that I don’t like being the only
leader. I learnt that I get frustrated when working with people who are
unmotivated, but because I’m invested in the project I’ll end up putting extra
work in because I know I’ll get more out of it in the end anyway. And I also
learned that I would definitely like to keep pursuing a career in the music
events industry!
Grade: HD 10/10
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