D-day! (1st of Dec) - 2nd part

Clear decisions and directions

As a manager who controls the all staffs, demonstrators, volunteers and even the audiences, it is very important to make a clear decision and give a clear direction to volunteers and other staff. When a few things are not clear with some staffs, everything can easily go long. As a person who takes in charge of managing the whole procedure of the event, you should understand all the circumstances each minute of the day from the very beginning till the end.

We were supposed to set up the floor with Taekwondo mats from 10am to 11am then to start a tech rehearsal after around 30 minutes of demonstrator’s own physical practice. However, as I mentioned from earlier journal, we couldn’t start the rehearsal even after 11:30am. The problem came out right away. The head coach of the demonstrators would like to conduct a practice by themselves for about an hour, but we should finish the final tech rehearsal with sound, lights and video staffs by 12:30pm. We did not have enough time. At around 11:30am I had to stop the practice and conduct the tech rehearsal but the coach did not allow me to start tech rehearsal. Then, I had a moment that I should make a decision whether let them practice more or start the rehearsal. I configured that we did not have enough time to do the tech rehearsal if we waited till the end of their practice, I pushed the coach come to the control area (in the middle of the audience’s seat to manage the entire show), and started the rehearsal. The coach was slightly upset when I forced him to start the rehearsal, but through the rehearsal, we could check all the timing of sound and lights. I am sure that the first show looked unorganized if we did not have the rehearsal. After the successful first show with a cheerful crowd, the coach also satisfied with it. I realised that the moment of starting the rehearsal was most crucial when I look back the performing day retrospectively. It was the moment that reveals the clear decision at the clear moment is very important.

Wrap up

The show finished successfully and all demonstrators went back to Korea safely. I made a final phone call with the Convention Centre to thank them for their kind assistance. After finalise all the financial documents and sorting all media exposures, I could feel that the show had done. It was a long journey from researching the venues, signing contract, venue inspection to the actual demonstration. There are a few urgent matters and concerns to solve out during the process, but I realise that everything will go well if you put enough effort and time. Also, it is very important to heartily believe the success of the event. I guess the strength come from the strong belief makes everything successful. Comparing to the exhibition program that I normally deal with at the office, there are many similar and different elements between. Producing an event, attracting audiences and running a show are the same simple procedures that both events have, but artistic approaches of production, targeting methods for marketing are very different. Overall, I think I have learnt different perspectives that I definitely can apply to organize exhibition programs through managing the Taekwondo performance. I can’t measure how much I have progressed or achieved, but I am very sure that I have learnt a lot. 

D-day! (1st of Dec)

Tickets were all distributed well. Our seats are 1,000 for each performance and we distributed around 2,200 tickets. (plus VIP tickets – 50) We couldn’t do much about making the ticket holders actually turn up at the performance, but when we saw the very high demand on the tickets, we expected more than 2,000 will turn up, including those who hadn’t got the ticket yet. In conclusion, we had around 900 for the 1st performance and 1,100 for the 2nd one. It was quite successful in terms of the number of the audiences.

Administratively and artistically, there were a few points disappointed at the 1st performance, but overall it was smooth running event. Since we only had a one rehearsal with demonstrators and camera, lights, sound operators, we had some minor mistakes at the 1st show, such as the malfunction of a mic. However, audiences very enjoyed the show. They ran up to the stage after the show and tried to get signatures from Taekwondo demonstrators. All looked very satisfied, and it was very a rewarding moment.

I would like to just make a few comments that I felt very important to keep in mind to run a performing event. The comments focused on the performing day procedures.

Rehearsal

As I mentioned we had only one rehearsal because of the schedule of demonstrators and also the venue hiring finances. Even though we were planned to conduct our rehearsal from 11am to 12 or 12:30pm, it couldn’t have started until 11:30am because the demonstrators should have checked the floor carefully before they actually jumped and performed on it. Therefore, we had a very tight and quick rehearsal for around 40mins and it wasn’t sufficient time to check all details among demonstrators and stage tech staffs. (lights, music and video) We did not have any major problems that disturb the continuity of the performance during the show, but the quality and completion of the show was not that high in my personal perspective.  I feel that we definitely needed more time for rehearsal and more communications between the demonstrators and staffs. We could not spend too much time for that, but at least we should have had one oral rehearsal without operations of all tech equipments (but with oral confirmation) and a tech rehearsal as a real show running. Maybe that is why the 2nd show was better than the 1st one, because we had a tech rehearsal with the 1st show. Setting a strict time frame is very important to conduct all the planned procedures. Then, you can have a good rehearsals and better show.

To be continued…

Busy November 2

Advertising

The Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Parkside Auditorium was a huge venue. It has 986 seats and we could install a few extra seats as well. However, our expected number of audiences was more than 2,000 because we have decided to have 2 performances (1pm and 5pm) in a day. Considering the expenses of inviting the Taekwondo performance team from Korean, including their (about 20 people) flights, accommodations and meals, just one performance was obviously not enough. It is good to have 2 performances in a day to increase the chance of exposing the World best Taekwondo performance to more audiences, but on the other hands, there was more pressure to attract more audiences to come to the show.

We could have advertise the performance through TV or radio commercials, but the cost of using these medium were too much expensive as you know. In addition, we did not have a sufficient budget to advertise the show even through any printed materials, such as newspapers or magazines because. Therefore, the marketing angle we choose to attract viewers was to target the people who had the most potential to come to the performance. We concluded that those who have been learnt Taekwondo (there are more than 100 Taekwondo clubs in Sydney) or who were interested in Korean Culture might be very interested in watching the Taekwondo performance. We had contacted the Taekwondo associations in Australia to get assistance to advertise the performance to the club members in Australia. Also, we provided Korean Cultural Office members with some priorities, such as an early booking period and the increased maximum number of ticket booking allowance, which was 4 tickets per person rather than 2 tickets per person for non-members.

Our strategy worked well, so that the tickets were sold out 5 days prior to the performance. I think it was successful advertising and marketing plan we conducted with the situations we had. 

Busy November 1

The Taekwondo performance show has been successfully done on the 1st of Dec. It was very busy November and after the show I had a good rewarding holiday from work so I am continuing my journal retrospectively now. I will start with the stories in November.

Venue Hiring

I had a meeting with Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre and I had many things to finalise. The contract should be carefully examined and the fee should be paid (it was a lot of money..). It was a bit stressful to be responsible for contracting with the venue because of the amount of money will be spent on it. A little mistake can occur huge lost for our organisation. Also, the financial size of the show also puts more pressure on the successful results of the show. Now I think all the pressure and stress is very productive for me because now I have an experience and also confident to deal with at least the same size of project as this one.

In terms of venue hiring, I can tell you that there are many hiding elements on using a venue. It means that except the actual venue hiring, which is literally use the floor and audience seats, everything else, such as lights, sound, videos etc., should be counted additional fees. Therefore, I should negotiate with the venue manager to minimise the use of additional facilities of the venue due to our limited budget. At least we should use video and audio facilities for the show, so we should find a sponsor for that.

After we found the sponsor and paid all fees, I should manage to give them very detailed plan of the show with run-sheet with exact time of different acts of the show. Also, I should check all the spaces that the performance team and our volunteers use. I confirmed the location of ticketing desks, flyer hand out space, survey counters and so on. Everything should be clear between us and the centre. I could sense that what professionalism is. When everything was ready, we were ready for the show. 

Contract

Accidentally, again, we have decided not to go to Perth this time. We have concluded that it would be hard to bring enough audiences to the event if we manage it from a fat distance here in Sydney. We even did not have adequate budget to hire a person from Perth to take care of it. Less amount of job is good, but I lost an opportunity to go to Perth.

Now, we have got a contract to sign from the Exhibition Centre for venue hiring. It is my first time to examine this kind of contract. I have been dealt with several contracts with artists for our past exhibitions, but I have not involved with any venue hiring duty. The exhibition contract I have examined before helped a lot for me to check the terms and conditions of this venue hiring contract. Sometimes the contract seems to be pointless because I simply think if two or more people make a promise each other, they should conduct the promise naturally. However, people are not like that I believe. Which is a very sad truth.

While I am reading the contract, I felt that the venue hirer (us) is very disadvantaged. There are many limits that the hirer can conduct, although there are abundant rights that the venue owner can insist to us. I could imagine that the venue owner would like to minimise the risks that they will get from any misconduct of the venue hirer, but it seems a bit unfair.

The good thing is, however, most of the inconvincible limits that I have found from the contract could be negotiated with the venue manager. They provide us an enough space of negotiation for minor issues, such as restriction of taking photos, installing banners at the venue. I could see that they also would like to lease the venue to make profit. Simple economics.

The day is coming very quickly than I expected. I feel that I need to plan more and get ready well. 

Perth

We never know what’s going to happen in the future. Life is full of accidents.

At the beginning, we were struggling with hiring a decent venue for the Tae Kwon Do demonstration due to high expenses. We had never imagined that we could get more financial sponsorship at that stage, but it happened. Now, we are looking for other venues for the demonstration, even in another city in Australia, Perth.

It is a bit easier than when I started to look for a venue in Sydney. Experience makes everything easier. I have been researching some venues in Perth. There are great theatre style hall, such as Perth Concert Hall, but the hiring cost is higher than we expected. There is a decent hall in University of Western Australia, but we do not know how accessible it is for the public, so we are a bit intimidating to approach to it. The most irritating matter in terms of holding the event in Perth is I do not know much about Perth. As matter of fact, I do not know where the University of WA is at. I rely on the cutting edged technology, Google Map, to figure out the locations of the venues. (Actually, it is clear enough to get the hang of the geography of Perth) I also concern about some more hardships in terms of promotion, site management, and so on. I assume that it would be good to hire a person in Perth to coordinate the event over there. We will think about it after we assure the event schedule.

While I was looking for the venue in Perth, another accident had happened. I was talking with one of the venue managers and I tried to explain what Tae Kwon Do (Korean Martial Arts) is because most of the venue managers I had talked to before were not aware of it. However, the person I have talked to recently, have learnt Tae Kwon Do for four years. He definitely has more knowledge than me about Tae Kwon Do I assume. I realise that you never imagine who you will meet (or talk to) in the future, because life is full of accidents.

Money Does Matter

As all of you may know (or as all of you may be experiencing now), most of art organisations are struggling to be stable financially. I have heard that most of staffs at art organisations spend significant amount of time on filling application forms for grants programs from different funding bodies. We also have very limited budget to manage various programs. Especially, when we organise a big exhibition that requires artworks to be shipped from overseas, most of our budget should be spent on the transportation of artworks, and then other things should be dealt with very short budget. Maybe that is why I conduct much labour jobs when an exhibition is on the face. (I do not complain it. Sometimes, physical duty is fun and exciting, especially, it gives for me a chance to move my body in a very still office working environment. Physical labour provides me lots of energy after I move.)

Not only the exhibition, our Taekwondo demonstration also met a financial problem. We can afford very fundamental elements of the event, such as venue hiring, bringing performers, but the problem is, we would like to make the show more enjoyable. Kicking is the main movement of Taekwondo and it is very strong and fast. Yes, fast! Even one can hardly see the kicking motion with their bare eyes. To cover this disadvantage and also to maximise the dynamic of the kicking, we considered to hire a slow motion real-time replay video system. However, money was the matter. The estimated cost of hiring the equipment was very high, including technicians who will control the machines. We almost gave up to utilise the equipment and were seeking other ways to compensate it. Fortunately, we could find a sponsor who could support the equipment hire and all of us are so excited to see the kicking on the screen on the day. It tells money does matter.