June 13th & 14th, a weekend, implying time to rest and movies for most of us! But not this time though as this weekend we learnt something which most of us only dream of doing in our lives, but actually never get a chance or I should say we only dream, never aspire. Well the case is different for the 9 people who not only dream but also take steps and making that dream turn into reality.
Be it school, college, our workplace or our day to day lives. Event management is something which all of us has had to do, wanting or un-wanting. And each time we completed that event, we've felt this could have been a bit better. And that's true but it's only because we've never got to learn it professionally. Last weekend at iReboot we got a chance to get a glimpse of the real Event-management world and got to close look of how things are done in the real world.
12th Avenue Hotel in Indiranagar, Bangalore, where all of us assembled along with our mentor Sidhanta Patnaik from the renowned Wizcraft International. Well the workshop turned out to be an abundant source of knowledge, we'll give an insight of what happened at the workshop.
Sidhanta started with basics, how our entire life right from birth to death is an event with marriage being the biggest event of our life which we plan,organize and then attend as the most valuable person. Then we had facts on how the industry is shaping up, what it was and the what's the present condition. Sidhanta gave us some interesting figures as well, the most interesting being that according to FICCI, the event management industry will cross a whopping 3350 crore rs by the close of 2011.What a great industry to be in! He also made a valid point that this industry will never die as entertainment is something which is necessary for all of us recession or no-recession and hence the industry.
Then we got into the modus operandi of the companies, getting various live examples. Sidhanta, himself being a sports fanatic, has managed many sports events across the country. He also shared about award functions like the IIFA and Filmfare. Like any other industry this industry has some loopholes which I won't name here ;-)
SIdhanta then told us about the risks involved in this industry followed by the most important points taken care of in any event. He calls them the 5 C's of events :
#Conceptualization,
#Costing,
#Canvassing,
#Customization,
#Carrying out
Phew! If that's not enough knowledge for you, he talked about income strategies and completed it with the skill set needed to pursue a career in this field.
Well I think I will need to cut this down short before you get bored off. The first day ended with an exercise with the participants divided into two teams and given real life problems. 1 hour of brainstorming and then the teams were out with their concepts. Wow! already developed a few key skills. This was followed with Sidhanta sharing with us pics of the events he recently managed. It was the Nike Indian Cricket Team new jersey launch, the handling of the IPL KingsXI Punjab team right from naming them to the semifinals(the IPL season 1) and the Nike Lounge at the Sunfeast 10k Run that was held last month in Bangalore.
Day 2 was a lot more absorbing as our mentor told important aspects like Marketing the event, promotions, BTL(Below the Line) advertising strategies and not to forget some unconventional ways of marketing and advertising. He told us some facts which I would love to share :
Friends are the best source of marketing : a good 56% convert.
10% newspaper and 11% magazine ads do their job, internet ads get only 7%.
Only 12% of the TV advertising gets converted, what's worse is only 1% radio ads get converted.
All those are world figures.
The workshop was extremely glorious and you couldn't leave your seat for a moment even for a moment. You can guess the intensity of the participants with which they were involved by the sole fact that on both the days, participants refused to take a break, even lunch was delayed and was eventually taken when Sidhanta himself put a break. Well Sidhanta did a marvelous job as a mentor for us, I'll leave you with a few quotes he spoke at the workshop.
# event-management - There is no business like show business!!!
# every minute working on a new thing, thats the charm of this industry
# event-management as a profession is about the right blend of cerebral stimulation, exhaustive work and the inexplicable thrill of achievement!
# Unseen face behind the most seen event - An Event-Manager
# If you haven't failed in life, you never done anything !
There was a lot more which you've missed but can get some more by looking at the twitter updates, that were tweeted live from the workshop, here. Not to forget the pics here.
No comments:
Post a Comment