My Event (part. 2)

Our event is over and done with, now a couple of weeks ago I gave you a low down on my 90’s themed event and here is my newest post telling everything that it’s over!

The 90’s night was, thankfully, a huge success – even though we were up against Bedlam – and now here is my chance to actually give you in full detail how this night came about.

According to my group mate, this idea came about by watching the Spice Girls on a laptop and from getting very excited about our childhood and what we remembered from it, Voila! The 90’s night was born – under the original name of “Death of Pop!” It was meant to celebrate the year that Pop died… but as time went on and the confusion of others, the name changed to “I <3 Pop”. Unfortunately, this had to change again to the final “Saturday Night – born in the 90’s.” Expressing the Whigfield classic (don’t act as though you don’t know the dance…) as well as giving the obvious information about the event, it was going to be held on a Saturday and of course, born in the 90’s the main theme.

Promotion and marketing went hand in hand together and for our event our main aim was to bring back nostalgia to students. We bought rainbow dust, ultra violets and lollipop sweets as a giveaway when handing out leaflets.

We held a promotion day with a gazebo in the middle of our university campus blasting out very cheesy tunes from the gym next to us and with hand-made t-shirts (made by our very own marketing manager and her boyfriend) spent most of the day handing out flyers and dancing along to tunes (see pictures). I’m not going to lie to you, I would like to say everyone got involved but it was just me handing out flyers… everyone else was cold and it was freeeeezing!!

We had 8.45am starts handing out flyers at the gate to university, promotion flyerring on the various club nights held at our venue and every night selling tickets at the university halls.

Then, came getting people to come. Now, as we all know, Saturday is a day of doing nothing for the fellow student and we are rarely seen out on a Saturday, unless it’s a house party or there is something ‘Student special’ going on, or, you have money and like a Saturday night out. So, when the news that it was a ‘Reading week’ for a lot of students (which means a week of students all going home) did frustrated us, especially when our whole group trekked around all of halls to sell tickets (myself and a group member getting escorted out because it was deemed as “business” – don’t worry we talked to the warden the next day and she let us come back in).

We had 300 tickets available at the Student Union shop, 100 online and then another 100 or so with us at all times. We hardly sold any tickets with a week and a bit to go. We were stressing, plus, it didn’t help that our lecturers were starting to worry too.

But not to fear, we knew that like a Friday night out most students only ever bought tickets a day or two before the event and most of them would probably get them on the door. However, for our event we had hardly sold 300 in the student union shop two days before our event. Everyone would pop into the shop to ask how many were left or constantly refresh the online ticket page just in case it ever went down.

As luck and life would have it, Thursday saw us go down to 50 tickets online and we put another 100 up by 1pm that day – it did annoy us at first because, naturally we wanted it to go down to a lot less before we put more up, but by that evening it had gone down to under 100 which resulted in us having to put more up on Friday when we realised we had sold just about 400 tickets.

By 8pm on Saturday, our group could only put just under 100 tickets online. Can you believe our luck – I couldn’t explain how it all happened from selling just over 200 on a Wednesday to the Saturday being able to say that throughout the day our total had risen to 700!?

We had spent Saturday dragging our friends/ boyfriends who had come down for the day, redecorating the whole of the club in bright neon cut-out words, CDs, 90’s CD cases and bright coloured cassettes. V.I.P sections decorated with sweets, our brilliant posters and pictures of the 90’s.

Leaving the venue at 5.30pm and coming back for 8.30pm we waited anxiously for our first lecturer to assess us and that was even before everyone else turned up! Thankfully, she was overly impressed with our group – I have to admit, truthfully, we do get on together really well, because we all wanted the same thing - for the event to be a success. If there were ever anything we weren’t happy about, we could always talk about it.

So imagine, 800 of your peers once hearing the song that was a big hit, everyone knew the words to because it was a guy and a girl speaking about a popular girls toy (huge hint)… would you say that everyone erupted with joy and screams and shouts or that everyone turned their head in disgust?

Because if you wanted to go for the latter; you wouldn’t have come to our event. Every so often a classic song would come on and everyone would erupt with excitement! It was crazy!!

Unfortunately again for our group, we couldn’t drink and though we enjoyed the night we couldn't exactly go out on the dance-floor and boogie on down like we desperately wanted to.

By the time our second and final lecturer came to us, it was 1.30am – yes! I’m being serious – I was the one in charge of showing him around the venue and keeping him entertained until he left. There was no way I could not dance to Take That – Never Forget and out-right told my lecturer that I simply loved this song there was no way I could'’t put my hands up when the chorus came on. My lecturer however did not mind at all claiming that the 1990’s were his Master years and he would go out clubbing to the 1990’s music. Result! He even volunteered to come to our event.

He left at 2.15am. Champagne hit our table at 2.19am.

The night ended to us hugging, chanting in joy and congratulating ourselves. We had pulled off a sell-out event!

I’m not going to say that I went to bed that night exhausted but happy but tired and I collapsed in bed with a smile on my face. OH NO! I came back to my house – everyone asleep from already been and gone to my event – shouting at how great my event was. I walked into my bedroom my best friend who had come down just for me in my bed sleeping – I woke her up screaming at how well my event had been, how my lecturers had said to me congratulations to me and was very happy with his stay!!

I WANTED TO SCREAM ABOUT IT! I WANTED TO JUMP ABOUT AND TALK AND TALK AND TALK!!

I had even driven my cab driver crazy talking to him about what he had done, how it had gone and the wreck the venue was after everyone had left.

It was surreal over the next couple of days where our peers are still organising and stressing about their events yet to be put on and ours was over and done with!

The next meeting with our client was the most anticipated… he loved what we did, he came down to see our event and was astonished at the outcome, and more than that, he wanted us to do it again!

Us, second year events students, and a real client wanting us to recreate our event again so more people can come, more profit, more 90’s!

Our client had said to us that he was already going to make profit with his bar sales so the ticket sale profit could go to us. We were almost at the point of fainting we were so happy!

And that’s where our story gets a little confusing because, most of the second year events are for charity and the profit made would go straight to them. But this was different and even though our client said we could keep the money – University laughed at the idea; of course we couldn’t keep the money it’s the clients!

So we’ve been pushing to have the profit of the ticket sales invested into the next event – which is what our client suggested.

Its' not our fault and it's not exactly my university's fault either. According to our client, any of the events that have been put on at this particular venue has never made enough profit to cover its budget. So, this has never happened before - which we all need to take on board as a huge compliment - however, we're all still buzzing off this amazing news and this amazing night that we organised and ran as successfully as we could. We've had heated discussions with administrators who is completely clueless and because we are too - we're all going around in circles because they are leaning towards giving all of our profit away to charity – which is all well and good but not when we can half that money to invest and the other half to a chosen charity of ours.

We've got to wait until Monday so she can figure out what is best. From the talk I had with her, the profit that was made is wholly the clients and so what they do with it is completely up to them. Which then makes us say – then why can’t we have it, because he said he could have it!? But as a university, again, they’re saying “oh my! Oh no! Of course you can’t have it for yourselves…” but then they get stumped… to which we want the rest of that sentence and they can’t give it to us. Legal stuff, contracts, permission etc., it’s all in the way.

So we wait until Monday.

If you wanted to ask me what I learnt from this, it would be that I really think I can do this as my profession. Which sometimes as students I think that’s hard to say. We study a degree in something we like and are good at, something we are interested in but really it’s not what we see ourselves doing in fifteen years’ time. But as an event management course, it’s not something you can just say that you didn’t want to do for the rest of your life because it’s not that kind of course; it’s like a marriage or I guess, more permanently, a tattoo. As well, it’s your personality as I think event managers as much as they can be taught – it’s a hard profession to get into and the person has to be willing to do it.

So what I’ve learnt is that, I cannot wait to do this event again with some great people and hopefully with some money to help us. I’ve learnt to overcome my fear of being in charge of finance  and even though, I’m very slow with numbers and it takes a while to get my head around calculations etc., etc., I think, personally, I’ve done really well in keeping it all together and working out everything in a way that everyone can understand and not lose any money!

I’m overwhelmed at how well we have actually done, I had given up hope of a sell-out event (even though I made a £5 bet that it would), I was happy with about 350 people so we could break even. And I guess as well, for university to know what to do if this sort of situation ever happens again.

That, all our effort, our good team work and just the hard work and thought process we put into every single detail of the event, paid off in such a exploded way that has seemed to dumbfounded everyone; us, the client, our university and now it’s all about how we can all go about this in the correct way that we all win.

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

My Event

As you may or may not have known for my second year Event Management course, our assignment is to put on and run an event. This event will be about 40% of my grade and on the night I'm being assessed by my fellow lecturers too so with the help of five others (who are great!), it will all run smoothly.

Get ready for: SATURDAY NIGHT - BORN IN THE 90'S!!!

Yes, that's right, a 90's night. Forget Calvin Harris' Born in the 80's - it's always been about the 90's!

So it got me thinking about the 1990's in general. And so, I've come up with a whole bunch on things fantastic and not so good about the 1990's:
Now, we all remember getting up early on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons, reading Goosebumps, playing either Playstation Sega or Super Nintendo. We loved CD players, danced the Macarena in our school discos, we would spend hours on the stairs with slinky's, Space Jam was the coolest movie you'd ever seen and then Cool Runnings came out and now you're torn forever.
You probably owned a Furby, a Beanie Baby and a Tamagotchi whilst drinking Sunny D and putting the alien thing in the fridge so it would have a baby - it never did.
You remember your parents owning a brick of a mobile phone or, the grey huge boxes we called computers playing solitaire.
Pokemon cards were not allowed to be played at school anymore, but we did it anyway because Pokemon was cool!
You may or may not have kicked your younger sibling in the head trying to imitate Power Rangers or Ninja Turtles but you'd run behind the sofa when 'Are You Afraid of the Dark' came on.
Before a time where we would just press the record button, we owned a hell of a lot of VHS tapes (Lion King being one of them), you literally had to jump on the bus and it cost you 20p to get somewhere.

Going on a bit ain't it?

Anyway, here is the low down to the 1990's:

News:
Nelson Mandela was freed and Apartheid in South Africa ended
The case of O.J Simpson
The Channel Tunnel opens
Prince Charles & Diana divorced
Princess Diana died - okay, that was horribly sad and the whole nation mourned
Michael Jordan ditches Baseball for Basketball - but then retires from basketball
Aryton Senna is F1 champion twice - later to die in the San Marino Grand Prix with Rolan Ratzenberge
Michael Schumacher take home the first F1 title twice
Gulf War starts
EuroDisney opens in France
The World Wide Web (or the internet) goes public
George Foreman is still winning titles at 45
Deep Blue is a computer that won chess match against a human
Dolly the Sheep - who can forget the first ever clone!!
We kinda went mad on Mad Cow Disease
Mike Tyson bites off his opponent's ear
Bill Clinton's sex scandal
Google!
Hurricane's Andrew and Mitch rear their heads
Napster is created and uploaded
oh! in 1999, the 6th billionth person is born
Tiger Woods goes from strength to strength

Movies:
Pretty Woman was released along with Ghost, Kindergarten Cop and Home Alone. Clueless, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs, Beauty and the Beast, Father of the Bride, Addams Family, Hook, Boyz N the Hood, Thelma and Louise (introducing Brad Pitt to ladies around the world).
Sister Act, Wayne's World, Unforgiven, Basic Instinct, The Bodyguard, Aladdin, Batman returns (Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman).
White Man Can't Jump, Schindler's List, Mrs. Doubtfire, Sleepless in Seattle, Indecent Proposal, Cool Runnings, Jurassic Park, Lion King. Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction.
Four Weddings & a Funeral, Natural Born Killers, Shawshank Redemption, Santa Clause, Toy Story 1 & 2, Pierce Brosnan as 007, Jumanji, Pocahontas, Se7en, Casper, 101 Dalmations, Independence Day, Jerry Magure (you had me at hello), Scream and Trainspotting.
Edward Scissorhands, Austin Powers, Men in Black, The Matrix, Titanic, The Full Monty, The Fifth Element,  I know what you did last summer, Good Will Hunting, My Best Friend's Wedding, Armageddon, Mulan, Dr. Doolittle, A Bug's Life, Godzilla, Blade, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Rush Hour, Truman Show and The Wedding Singer.
Blair Witch Project, Sixth Sense, Notting Hill, Tarzan, Star Wars (the one with Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor) and Cruel Intentions.

Music:
We had music like Madonna's Vogue, New Kids on the Block, B-52's, Vanilla Ice and Kriss Kross.
Deee-Lite, Mc Hammer, Snap!, REM, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Massive Attack, Salt-N-Pepa, Nirvana, Bryan Adams, TLC, En Vogue, Genesis (goodness..).
U2, Beastie Boys, House of Pain, The Cure, Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, Annie Lennox, UB40, Wu-Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Rage Against The Machine, Toni Braxton, Tori Amos, Beck, Green Day, Soundgarden, Rednex, Mariah Carey.
Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Shaggy, Coolio, Seal, Spice Girls, Oasis, Tupac, Chemical Brothers, Backstreet Boys, Take That, Fugees, Jamiroquai, The Prodigy and the original Puff Daddy.
Blur, Erykah Badu, Smash Mouth, The Verve, Hanson, Aqua, Fatboy Slim, Placebo, Foo Fighters, Brandy, Monica, Lenny Kravitz, Areosmith (I know which song you started to sing), Celine Dion (again, do the actions with the singing), Lauryn Hill.
Limp Bizkit, Sixpence None The Richer, Britney Spears, NSync, Korn, Sugar Ray, Jennifer Lopez, Enrique Iglesias, Bloodhound Gang, Lou Bega, Ricky Martin and Destiny's Child, and Blink 182.

Television:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Rugrats, Live and Kicking, Dinosaurs, Baywatch, Jerry Springer, Home Improvement. Pokemon, Fresh Prince, Barney, The Real World (when reality TV was new and people didn't really watch).
Diagnosis Murder, ER, Friends, Ren & Stimpy (I still don't know what animals they were: red body, blue nose big eyes. long ears/ small body, pink out-y eyes.), Ricki Lake, Blossom (so good).
Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, Moesha, Saved by the Bell (top 5 TV shows ever), X-Files, Doogie Howser - M.D, Ally McBeal, Simpsons, Boy Meets World (my ultimate favourite).
Buffy, Will & Grace, That 70's Show, Dawson's Creek, Charmed, the Powerpuff Girls (!!), Dexter's Laboratory, Spongebob Squarepants, Family Guy, Futurama and The Sopranos.

Fashion:
Grunge is born (think baggy), Boob jobs were acceptable, the 'Rachel' haircut, Floppy curtain hair, Doc Martens, sheer clothing, fluffy cuffs, pointy kitten heels, pigtails, lots of plaits.
Goth came alive, Fanny packs, tank tops, really baggy trousers, jean cutouffs, a load more tattoos (around the bicep and around the belly button), short skirts, the supermodel was born (Naomi, Helena, Christie, Kate, Cindy).
The short crop for girls, coiffed hair for boys, glorious hand through your hair look, Nike ticks in the hair, the 'Caesar' (think pre-grey George Clooney in ER), the goatee (Kurt Cobain), beach blonde hair, showing off the midriffs, belly button piercings, lots of black and lots of flowers.


How long was the 1990's?! - you'd probably answer well, ten years long.. (oh. ha. ha. very funny) but seriously, maybe one day someone will do a blog on the 2000's or the 2010's - but let's face it, let's get real... 1990's was an alright ten years to have entered the world in (especially that 6th billionth kid).
So if someone decides to disagree, just start singing the Spice Girls, put a hand in their face (you know, 'talk to the hand') and say you obviously weren't a kid growing up in the 1990's (but just in case they were, give them a slap and redirect them to this blog).

Oh! the whole reason for this blog was to try to get people to come to my event! So the 11th Feburary 2012 at the Old Fire Station, Bournemouth. There's no other place to be on that night. No excuses.

I'll blog about it all when it's over. :)

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet