As an intern with Special Boot Camp, I am able to have a general vision of a pre-event meetings, ongoing planning and to learn about the services vendors provide.  In assisting with the event management of the One King Rocks, I went through a learning experience. Event preparation and coordination provided me with many outstanding lessons. The following are the five most important experiences that I learned from this internship which may be the life lessons and tools that I can keep with me along my career path.

 

Collaboration. As an event planner, it is really important to work with every party involved in an event. A successful event takes time and efforts, and it does not happen overnight. Take One King Rocks as an example, three major hosts of the event: Suites at One King West, League of Rock and Special Event Boot Camp were working closely to each other and exchanging ideas openly. The only limitation of this experience is that I work only one day a week with Special Boot Camp, so it requires me to get the information as much as possible. I was fortunate enough to work with these great individuals to help me keep informed of the event details and production information.

 

Management Skills. This is the most important experiences that I learned through these weeks’ internship. As an event coordinator, my duty of that One King Rocks event is to manage volunteer team. I took the suggestions from on how to manage a team and make a checklist. I approached the volunteers in a volunteer meeting and expressed to them on what is expected of them on the event day and assigned  positions accordingly. During the event, we worked together and hourly I inspected our crew to make sure everything went smooth.

 

Time Management is vital to plan a successful event. Since pre-event preparation requires tremendous details and huge amount of information, a great event planner should have the ability to effectively manage time. I learned this experience from Brenda Cane, Group Sales Manager Suites at One King West. Although I was not involved in every pre-event meeting; through emails, I managed to complete all undertakings I was required to accomplish.

 

 Networking. As an event planner it is important to establish a networking database. Special Event Boot Camp makes a contact database of all the personnel we met and engaged with at our events.  This included our crew, our event partners, and our event guests.  I enjoyed my networking after the One King Rocks event with volunteers and the people from Suites at One King West.

 

Stress Management. In that it is my first time in managing a special event. I gave myself a lot of burden mentally the night before the event; especially as my roll was to manage the team of greeters that volunteered.  When there is a large list of tasks at hand,  I combat my stress by creating time line and check list of tasks and updating it constantly. Helma, our Event Manager, provided a detailed production schedule of deadlines helped me to manage my to-do lists I need to perform throughout the event.

 

With experiencing these events and trade shows I attended internship provided me with fluent event planning knowledge and it will cast a great impact on my future career.