Jenevans7's Blog

Final Blog

jenevans7 — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:52:33 +0000

Detailed Time Inventory:
We had our first group meeting on February 26th. We met every Wednesday from 4 until about 5 or 5:30. I had to miss one meeting because of a dentist appointment. We met the Sunday before our event for about 3 hours. Personally, I took a couple of hours driving around to buy candy for the gift baskets and getting t-shirts for everyone. I also took about 3 hours driving to sponsors and trying to get donations.

Blog:
This whole experience was a great tool for learning about event planning. I learn best from hands on work, and planning an actual event was great! I really feel like this even helped me apply the course material to a real life situation. Applying the material to an actual experience always helps me understand it better. I get a better comprehension of the information when it’s applicable to a circumstance I encounter. One way that my experience helped me better understand how to plan an event was by preparation. I never knew how many little details you have to remember to consider when planning an event. You have to remember to bring a pen to write receipts with, bring plates and cups for food and drinks, etc. Another thing I learned is to start talking to sponsors as soon as possible after planning the event. I also learned to advertise as much as possible, like an excessive amount of advertising! You can never advertise your event too much. Finally, I learned that attendance is not something you can control. I was really worried about our event not turning out well due to the small turn out, but we really had no control over whether people actually showed up or not. I think that we were very effective in helping our population acquire knowledge about leisure services. Our theoretical approach involved figuring out a way to support the RLSSA trip to Russia, which opened up a window for us to talk about Recreation and Leisure Studies to members of the community. With our design, we set up a way to advertise to students about the trip and encourage interest in the Rec. and Leisure program. Our delivery helped the population acquire competitive skills by challenging each other in the actually tournament and it helped support the RLSSA trip as well. This whole experience was very important to my career plans because I was planning on being a dolphin trainer when I graduate, but I am seriously considering event planning as my fall back if training doesn’t work out. I feel like this pushed more people away from event planning because of the stress, but I am really more interested in planning events now than I was before this class. I think my skills have improved as far as event management and putting on an event. I think that we all learned to be good problem solvers when we had to, so that impacted all of us. I think that our commitment to making a difference was very strong, as well. I think that my evaluation would just be kind of a survey of our group to see what we could have done better, but we talked about that in our last lab and came up with some pretty great solutions. I have a lot of advice for next year’s students, but I will be in that class again since I decided to be a RLST major, so I will share that with them next year. Mostly the sponsorship and advertising advice would be what I would want to share, but also just a few little things like getting along with your group and not stressing super hard about the event. I think the supervisors could probably offer a little more guidance, but it’s hard to share everything necessary for a successful event in the short amount of time before we put our events on. I feel like this whole experience was very fun and educational, so I look forward to applying my knowledge to our event next year! I’m sure my group won’t be as awesome as this year’s group, but I think I’ll make it through! =P

Reflection 2 =)

jenevans7 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:33:15 +0000

Our event design was very well thought out. I feel like we covered all of the bases and took everything into consideration. Our original plan was just a bunch of bulleted points, so to get to the final product we had to take those bullets and turn them into complete paragraphs. Danielle had our original draft, so she sent me some of the bullets over facebook, and I helped formulate some paragraphs for our final project from that. I think that our tasks that we assigned to each member of the group got completed to the best of the person’s ability no matter who it was or what the task was. We were all trying our hardest to get everything done that needed to be done to make this event a success. I feel like our group was pretty much amazing! We had a great leader and wonderful group members. I guess hindsight is 20/20 but we could have looked for sponsors earlier. I really feel that that is one of the only things we could have improved on though. I think that our whole process was done very well, and we were very productive about getting our tasks done as quickly as possible.

Reflection 4

jenevans7 — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:21:12 +0000

I think that our event process was good, but it could have been better. The main thing that keeps coming up is time. Even in our meeting, we all agreed that if we had started on the sponsorship requests and the advertising earlier then our event probably would have been bigger. I firmly believe that had we started on sponsorship in our first meeting, and gotten our letter done first so we could start asking for donations, we could have raised more money. I think that we were very well organized, and our meetings were extremely productive every time we met up. We seperated up responsibilities very well and everyone did their part. I think our process was exceptionally good.

I think our event went very well. I feel that it was successful, and I am proud that we actually raised money. I feel that I helped raise money because I had friends come that donated to our cause. Also, I feel that our gorup as a whole accomplised hosting a good event. We could not have done anything differently the day of event to make it go smoother than it is. I was very pleased by how everyone stepped up and took on the role they were given (especially Jake being the Wii-mote! =) haha good job!) I feel like, throughout the process, Danielle kind of emerges as the person everyone looked to for leadership, simply because she was extremely organized. I think that everyone in the gorup was heard whenever they had something to say. We worked really well together, and were pretty considerate of the other people in the group’s opinoins.

I really like event management. Nic was saying in class the other day that making us put on an actual event in such little time would probably scare off some people who were considering event management, but it made me start considering it. This may be because our event went to well, but I had never really considered being an event planner until now. I think this class will be extremely useful should I decide to follow that path (if dolphin training doens’t work out, who knows?!). I had a blast planning this event, and I know our group worked together better than a lot of other groups so that may have something to do with it. I really enjoyed this class though. I have been reccomending it to everyone i know! This experience was definately a positive one! =)

Journal 4

jenevans7 — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 03:48:39 +0000

Sorry this journal is a little late! =( So our event is over now, and I, personally, think it went very well. We all worked well together to get everything done in time for the event. I feel that we all put forth maximum effort to make sure this event was as successful as possible. We didn’t raise as much money as we had originally hoped for, but what we did raise will help a lot! I was honestly starting to worry because we didn’t have as many participants as we hoped for, until Nic came by and told us that we had done a great job and to just have fun and not worry about people. I do believe there are a couple of things that we could have tweeked to maybe help our event be bigger. We could have started contacting sponsors a lot sooner, and we could have advertised sooner and more than we did. I feel like, even though we didn’t have many sponsors, the sponsors we did have donate a lot of stuff. Also, if we had had more time, I think we could have had better prizes donated because people were saying they needed about a month’s notice. I feel like our braket set up and execution of the tournament went off flawlessly. I think that the only thing that could have possibly been better would have been to have more people, and we really couldn’t help that. We had a ton of food for our participants, and I think that helped draw some people in. I know some of my friends came and just donated like $5 to eat instead of playing. That helped raise some money as well, which was good! I feel like this whole process has been a good learning experience, and since I have to take this semester again next semester, I will be able to plan an even better event now that I have been through all of this. Hopefully next year my group will get along as well as we did and we can all br friends, like we are! =) I really feel like, based on the feedback from the other groups and the fact that we all worked together so easily, that our group was the most cooperative, which is always a good thing. I am very please with how smoothly our event ran, and I honestly don’t think we could have done a better job as far as the planning was concerned!

Reflection 3

jenevans7 — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:32:17 +0000

Our event is finally here and it looks like it’s coming together nicely. So, how do feel about it? What have we done right? What would you do differently if you had to do this again? Were all of your ideas heard? Did anyone, in your eyes, emerge as a leader in our group? Finally, think of a word or a phrase to describe our group and explain why you chose that word or phrase. Thanks!

First off, let me say that I am SUPER excited about our event. I feel very confident that we are going to have lots of people and everyone is going to have a good time! I think we have done a very good job planning it, and we are going to have fun and raise lots of money. There are a lot of things we did right, in my eyes. For one, we all get along, which is pretty much the best situation you can ask for. Because I have heard from other groups that they don’t get along and we all work well together, so good job putting our team together Jake (even though you didn’t know us at the time haha). We have been very productive in all of our meetings, and we are all efficiently doing the jobs we chose. One thing that I would definitely change, given the opportunity, would be a longer time line. I would absolutely advise anyone planning an event like this, to concentrate on sponsorships first! The number one response from businesses was, “We needed this information about a month in advance”, so if we could have nailed that down, it would have been crucial. I feel that all of my ideas were heard, and I think everyone in our group feels the same way. As I said before, we work so well together that I think we became more like a group of friends than people who just have to work together. We all enjoy meeting up and talking, as opposed to other groups who act like it’s a pain in the butt to have to deal with their group members. I think if anyone could be designated the leader, it would be Danielle. This is for a number of reasons, the first of which being that she is so organized. She was probably the most organized person in our group, which is essential to event planning. She is also very focused and persistent, and she managed to keep our group focused during meetings. The phrase I would use to describe our group is The We <3 Wii family, because I honestly feel like that is what we are. We depend on each other to make sure things run smoothly, and we each do our own part to benefit the group as a whole. We may disagree on certain issues, but, like any family, we work them out and still manage to get along. I love my Wii family!! =)

Journal 3

jenevans7 — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:01:25 +0000

I had to miss last week’s meeting because of a dentist appointment that I had in Augusta, but I was kept up to speed via texts and facebook. I got all of the details about our event from Danielle once they were set in stone. I typed up the information we wanted to put on the page and e-mailed it to Corey to make sure it was ok before we posted it. Then I created the facebook event for our Wii Tennis Tournament and invited all of my friends. Everyone in the group was asked to invite as many people as they could, which will help get the word out. We are meeting again tomorrow afternoon so we will more than likely put all of the finishing touches on our event design then. We have been working on our event design all week, Danielle and I typed up and expanded on the ideas we discussed in our first meeting about all of the details of our event plan. Marybeth worked on our work breakdown structure by typing it up and color-coding it. We have all been approaching businesses about making tonations, and Thomas was working on a letter we could present to them to let them know that we are really doing this for a good cause. Today in class we talked about getting sponsers to donate money and getting big name people to represent your event and encourage donations. I was talking to a friend of mine, and we came up with some great ideas for local people that we could get to come to our event that would encourage attendance. Also, I compiled a list of local businesses that we could ask for donations. I feel like our event is getting closer and closer and we should have mjore stuff done by now. I am getting a little nervous about if we are going to raise enought money for the scholarship fund too. I had a few people tell me that they can’t come but they would like to still donate the $10 and possibly get the t-shirt and whatever else we are giving away with the entry fee, so that is another way we could generate funds. I know that there are a few other things going on that night, but I feel like if we explain to everyone how much they are actually getting for their money, and what a good deal it is, then I think more people will come. I mean t-shirts alone. in the bookstore, are more than $10 so that is paying for itself right there. So I have been trying to brainstorm different ways to get people to participate and donate money if they are unable to participate. I think if everyone in our group tried to think of different ways for us to encourage people to come that our event could be a success. I have a few ideas that I will discuss with the group when we have our meeting tomorrow afternoon.

Blog Journal 2

jenevans7 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:01:19 +0000

I wasn't sure how to do my blog reflection as opposed to a blog journal, so I
kind of did my blog journal 2 as my blog reflection 1. This being said, I guess I
will just tell what we went over in our last meeting and our assignments for the
meeting tomorrow! In our last group meeting everyone reported back about
their assingments from the previous week. I was in charge of dicussing dates,
and after talking with everyone in the group and checking on the school
calender, we decided on April 5th (sunday) night. We are also considering the
possiblity of carrying it over to Monday, if we have enough people interested in
participating. Danielle and Dawn talked to Josh Podvin, and we can have the
event in Ramsey and can also sell pizza. He suggested talking to coke about
donating drinks, which will also be provided to people. Thomas was in charge of
researching price, and base on his research we feel that $10 is a reasonable
amount to charge for participation. Taylor was supposed to look into prizes, and
we discussed seeing if any local resturaunts would donate gift cards or possibly
get a trophy. We talked about how to run the tournament. We discussed having
it be double elimination with a winner and loser's bracket. We talked to Gwynn
and she informed us that one student trip is $3,000 so in order for us to send
even one student, we have to make at least that. This weeks assignments were
to try to find people to donate things for prizes and to figure up how long each
game would approximately take and how much time should be allotted for the
tournament. More to come after our meeting tomorrow!! =)

Reflection 1

jenevans7 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:44:33 +0000

I don't exactly know the difference between a blog journal and a blog reflection so I'm just writing down my thoughts, hope that's ok! Since our group meets on Wednesdays, I’ll write about what we accomplished at our last meeting! We actually established a lot of important things. We decided that the stakeholders involved with this event were Gwynn Powell and the students going on the Russia Study Abroad program. The goals and objectives of hosting this event are to raise funds for the Russia Study Abroad, have a fun time, and host a successful event. The target audience would be college students, though anyone would be welcomed to participate. Our marketing strategies would be to use flyers, create an event on Facebook, and use other networking sites. The budget for this event is unknown at this time. The venue is unknown as well, however, we are looking into Ramsey, if we host the event on campus, and looking into other venues if, for some reason, we cannot have the event on campus. The only auxiliary service we are considering would be possibly having food and drinks for the participants. The staff for the event will, preferably, include our entire team and volunteers if necessary. The risk management issues we discussed are making sure people playing the Wiis are using the wrist bands for safety and making sure there is nothing on the floor where the competition is taking place. The post event plans simply include cleaning up the venue and making sure it is left exactly how we found it. The only schedule we have so far are the assignments from last week’s meeting. These assignments are: Danielle is talking to Josh Podvin about if we can hold the event on campus or not, Dawn is finding out what food and drinks are ok to serve at an event if we have it on campus, Jason is looking at other venues incase we can’t have the tournament on campus, Thomas is researching participant costs for similar tournaments so we will have an idea of what to charge, Mary Beth is finding Wiis to use for the tournament, I am compiling a list of possible date options to hold the event, and Taylor is in charge of the secret part of the plan. =) I talked to everyone in the group and looked at the school calender, and I think the best dates to do the tournament is the beginning of April, like the 4-8. Next meeting is tomorrow, so we will see how it goes!! I’m excited!!

Questions

jenevans7 — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:26:24 +0000

a. My group is meeting tomorrow for the first time. We are all bringing a Work Breakdown Structure for our event so hopefully we will be able to combine everyone’s WBS and nothing will be missed as far as what needs to be done. I think that since we have so many people contributing to this event that it will be easier to make sure nothing goes unnoticed because if one person doesn’t catch something, another person probably will. I am excited about meeting with my group tomorrow, and I am excited about this event.

b. I haven’t really seen the others so I can say what I’ve observed as far as they are concerned, but I think it is safe to say that everyone is a little anxious about the first meeting tomorrow. We don’t really know what to expect since we have never worked together before so we’re all kind of just hoping things will work out. I’m sure everyone is probably a little nervous about presenting their ideas to the group, but I think once we get to know each other and get comfortable with each other, it will be easier to open up.

c. Nothing has really happened yet that I would use for the future, but I’m sure after our meeting tomorrow I might be able to come up with some things. The only thing so far is the WBS that I am doing for our meeting, and if I had to change something I guess I would probably have started on it sooner.