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.  

Communication

A significant time of working at the office is spent on the desk. Most tasks done on the desk is sending emails, talking on the phone or making documents. I think almost half of work is related to communicating with people. I have received lots of emails and calls from those who get involved with our exhibition programs or the Taekwondo demonstration event. Not only that, effective communication with staffs in the office is very important as well. Staffs share ideas, solve urgent issues together and make event schedules to avoid events clash each other. Communication skills are one of the key elements to complete tasks successfully. Sometimes I thank my Organisational Psychology lecturer for letting me know this with theories in the class. The lecturer kept saying that once I would apply the theories into my working environment and then the class is worth it. The theories can be applied very often.

While I am communicating with performers, artists, venue hirers or my boss, it is important to confirm the issues that might cause confusion in the future. For example, when we offer an exhibition with artists, we did not assure the location that their artworks hung. We informed the possible areas that the artworks would be hung and the artists agreed with that space. After we locate all the artworks in very specific positions, the artists came to the venue on the installation day. We decided to put one of the artists work in a certain area, which is within the space where we indicated to the artist before, but the artist was not happy with hanging the works in that certain part of the space. It took some time to negotiate with the artist and we finally ended up with satisfying location for both sides. Then, I realised that we could lessen all this time consuming if we had confirmed the specific location earlier with the artist. I hope this lesson will be helpful when we organise the Taekwondo demonstration event.

Good communication and confirmation is the way to work effectively and successfully.

Planning..Planning.. Planning…

I am getting realised that a planning stage is very important to organise an event or an exhibition. Sometimes it ends up with unexpected results, but mostly it is in the track of the plan. We are planning different things for the Taekwondo Demonstration and the first thing we should figure out is managing the venue facility.

The stage of the Auditorium in the Sydney Exhibition Centre where we will hold the event does not have a backstage area, which is kind of necessary facility for a performance. Therefore, we are looking at other options, such as using the Hall area connected to the sideway of the stage as a backstage for the performers. However, the additional cost of using the space and the availability of that space is holding us to decide whether we chose that option or not.

The second thing we are planning is creating a chance to engage Taekwondo with the locals. We have known that there are many Taekwondo gyms in and around Sydney, and there are a good number of people learning Taekwondo. We are trying to invite them to see the demonstration. In addition, we are also planning to have an Australian kid’s Taekwondo demonstration before the main demonstration by the national team. Researching Taekwondo learners and contacting them to invite and have a short demonstration of kids won’t be a simple task, but it would be the best way to make the event most successful.

On top of that, there are many other things we should take care of such as arranging hotels and transportations for the demonstration team, inviting VIPs for the event, promoting the event for the general audiences, and etc. Even we have this kind of map in our mind, we do not know how the event will look like till we put up the show on the stage. Checking every possibilities and accidental elements and clarifying every single ambiguous points regarding holding the event will minimise the unexpected incidents near the event day. I think this kind of job requires lots of experience to predict every possibility and handle unexpected situations at times. That’s why we are putting lots of efforts in planning NOW!!!