The 8th Annual Conference on US China Economic Relations and China’s Economic Development

As an international student from China, I’m very interested in the economic, political and other relationships between US and China. So I submitted the registration form and became a volunteer for this conference. The US China relationship is now the second to none in importance for international economic relations and policy and accordingly is a major focus of many political institutions nowadays. And This China-US annual event was sponsored by the Institute for International Economic Policy of Elliott School of International Affairs at GW.

The conference had four sessions in total and started with the discussion on The China and Africa Relationship. Surprisingly, although it was not a tourism related conference, many professors mentioned the sustainable tourism in their presentations.

I would say this volunteering experience was really impressing and I look forward to participating more similar events in the future. 

My Different Kind of Experience Working a Wedding!

I’m usually behind the desk of wedding, planning all of the logistics prior to the big day. On Sunday, December 6th,  I was center stage as an assistant to a caterer (who prefers to remain anonymous) at an all vegan wedding.  I was pleasantly surprised when I asked the chef how he deals with the craziness of bridezillas. His reply was that they come in for a tasting and then final guest count and menu selection and it ends there. The day of, I arrive and execute and they are usually in such awe of what we do because my food is “THAT GOOD” he says with a wink.

During my shift everything ran like a tight ship. There was a schedule that the manager stuck to by the book and she delegated tasks to make sure we were on time. Since it was a winter wedding and the ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception took place in the same room. Everything for the wedding had to be set and ready to go in two hours. It was a lot of work but being steadily busy made time fly by.  I even learned how to fold fancy napkins.

This is how the the entire wedding took place in one space. Guests sat in the front half of the room. 

Depending on the quality of food of caterer and  by working a few more weddings, I would consider staying in the wedding industry from the catering perspective.  The manager handles the logistics, bypasses the bridezillas, and is amidst all of the action. It seems like the best of both worlds as a possible career choice.  On a side note I would also like to add the vegan red velvet cake was to die for! 

~Kristen

Driving Development Through Tourism: World Bank Group Tourism Forum 2015

Tourism Forum in World Bank, doesn't it sounds cool? 
On December 8th and 9th, I attended the World Bank Group Tourism Forum 2015 at two of GWU's neighbor buildings- World Bank Group Headquarters and IFC Headquarters. The theme of the forum was “Driving Development Through Tourism”. I define it as an association meeting because one of the two institutions of the World Bank is "International Development Association".

The Forum was opened with the speech by President of the World Bank Group, had the CNN and New York Times correspondents as two of the moderators and panelists of Hilton Worldwide CEO, AirAsia CEO and Ministers of Tourism all over the world. As you can tell by the speakers, the forum had been very informative valuable and it went through many facets of tourism industry. I want to highlights some of my insights of this two-day conference from the angle of event management.

Venue:
Both venues for each day were well secured, the venues had a strong security system, from a number of securities by the gate, to sending bandage and checking IDs of each attendees, and on December 8th, there was an alert for emergency drill to remind everyone stay inside the building. To attendees, it brings a safe feeling in such a protected building.

Reception at World Bank Headquarter Building

Attendees' Engaging:
The attendees for this conference had been kept engaged in several ways. In spite of the interesting ideas brought up by the speakers, first, the organizer created a hashtag(#Tourism4Dev) on Twitter and the audience were encouraged to participate. Second, the online version made attendees from all over the world could join the forum back at home, I remember on the first half day, the host said there were more than 4,700 audience stayed online. Lastly, the Q&A parts were quite engaging, coordinators of each session were very helpful, they actively gathered audiences' questions on the paper cards and passed them to the moderators, also the online attendees can raise questions as well!

Topics and Speakers:

All the speakers are very experienced in the tourism industry. The organizer used it as a very good marketing tool to attract audiences, they put the names and positions of the key speakers on the poster, though some of them did not come.

The 11 session panels were all informative and covered different topics of tourism development. The top three topics that interested me was "Sustainability, Cultural and Heritage, and Crises Confrontation".

From left to right:
Ms. Maggie Lake, Anchor/Correspondent, CNN
Ms. Sandra Howard, Vice-Minister for Tourism, Colombia
Mr. Christopher J. Nassetta, President and CEO, Hilton Worldwide
Ms. Aireen Ornar, CEO, AirAsia Berhad

Conference technology:
As I mentioned about the online meeting system, it is an innovative way that has been widely used in many conferences, but I still feel it cool as I got up late this morning, opened my lap-top computer at home and joined the first session online while doing make ups.

Other technologies were also used in this conference, such as simultaneous interpretation headphones were used to help non-English speaking audiences; and remote tele & Webcom system to connect with two panelists that are back in their countries.

Conclusion:

To sum up, it was a great educational forum for me, I made professional networks and I could write another full page of blog to share the informational takeaways that I got.

Auditorium of IFC Headquarters

Volunteer at Events DC Nation's Triathlon 2015

As I started the topic of my event volunteer experiences, all the memorable scenes came up to my mind, I have helped out several events during this semester such as:

-HSMAI's MEET Conference, September 2015

-2015 Events DC Nation's Triathlon, September 2015

-Welcome of Chinese President's Visit, September 2015

-Taste of DC, October 2015

-XX ANOC General Assembly,  October 2015

-Fudan Washington Forum, November 2015

I can pour millions of words on those experiences but the most impressive one would be volunteer at "Nation's Triathlon". I will share some of good and bad points of their volunteer management from my personal view.

Overall Experience:

2015 Events DC Nation’s Triathlon was taken place on September 13th, but the volunteer shifts started from athletes’ registration on the 11th. The event was raising money and benefited to the "Leukemia&Lymphoma Society".

I registered three shifts each day, and my positions were helping with Sports and Fitness Expo, body marking/bike racking, and helping with bike in/out on the race day. Overall, it was a good experience, I met interesting people, got a little acquaintance of “triathlon” (before this, I knew nothing).

Good points:

1) The organizer promoted the volunteer opportunity very well.

Events DC did a good job to socialize and getting people to volunteer. As I know, volunteer of this event came from different organizations, students like me got emails from our faculty, another lady was from the Society Association which the event benefit to, another guy was volunteering for military service reason, and some others belong to different sports clubs and they volunteered full time for registration days and may waive the registration fee ranging from $95-260, yeah, that's a big deal!  

And when it came to early October, two weeks before the ANOC General Assembly, emails were sent to all Nation's Triathlon volunteers to call for our repeat participation in another sport event. I think they were really good at those volunteer appeals. 

Thank you email for recognition

2) Volunteers got recognition!

I feel I was appreciated for my volunteer work, an email letter was sent to me one week after the event saying I deserve a metal! blog was posted on the event’s official website, and pictures of the “green shirts” were posted on the website too. I feel I was valuable for them!

3) Good timing on rotation.
There were 3 shifts each day, 4 hours for each shift, which was a good timing for volunteer's rotation, so that volunteers would not get too tired. Also lunch and snacks were provided during the shifts to refuel the energy.

Things need to be improved:

1) The process of training the volunteers.

Little information were collected when I registered the volunteer, and there was no training or briefing before each shift, some of the students were from high school and they were not helpful.
Also a lot of information about the event were not given, so I was confused with a lot of guests' questions. I think it is essential to train the volunteers before they start to work.

2) Insufficient Risk Management.

Weather is a big risk for outdoor events especially sport events, weather was cold and drizzling on September 12th, so athletes were worried about the weather on the next day. We have been told that the men’s swimming part of 2014 was cancelled because of bad weather, but no one informed us what was the "trigger" of cancellation for this year, so we were not able to respond the athletes' question, and I think this is an inadequate point for risk management.

In conclusion, volunteer is a good opportunity to know people and gain skills, I have been involved in all kinds of volunteer activities for many years and I will keep doing it. 

Bonnie the "Green-Shirt"!

Tracy's Top 3 Take-Aways

There are many great ideas and important lessons that I’ve learned through my experience in this Event Management course and since I cannot go over all of the different topics and interesting subjects, I list and briefly discuss a few things that I’ve considered important that I found essential in managing events. These few items, which are not in any particular level of importance, are Stakeholder Management, Risk Management, and Sales.

In our event management course we studied the importance of stakeholder management. I learned that an analysis must be conducted for any event strategy, not only to identify who the stakeholders are, but also to act as the foundation for the risk management plan.

Each stakeholder group will represent a cluster of risks and it is therefore vital to identify all individuals or organizations that might influence the planning, implementation or execution of an event.

I’ve always thought I paid attention to the stakeholder when planning events because at this point, I am pretty much conducting social events for one or two clients, typically for weddings or a social birthday party for instance. I now realize that the stakeholder is not just the client but everyone participating in the event and to have the best possible event, all stakeholders should be taken into consideration.

I am now more cognizant to ensure I list and consider certain stakeholder concerns as I plan events such as:

What financial or emotional interest do they have in the outcome of my work? What motivates the stakeholders?
What do they want from me?
How do they want to receive what I have to offer and what is the best way of communicating the message to them?

I believe knowing these few things at the start will put me on the right track to managing my stakeholders. As a class, we received a lot of information to reflect on, read case studies and entered into discussions considering the importance of the topics.

Another great lesson learned dealt with risk management. I learned that organizations should conduct a review of events on a regular basis to ensure the environment is safe for participants, officials, volunteers and spectators and to use a checklist to evaluate the levels of safety and risk every time.

As someone who loves to do events and does them in support of my business, I never honestly took into consideration the importance of conducting a review that is so important. Yes, I have gone to site visits and merely just looked at the overall space visioning beauty and grandeur and I would evaluate if there is a nearby bathroom and enough power outlets for the equipment but that was pretty much the bulk of my concern. I learned that failing to assess risks involved in events can be disastrous and can result in:

Loss of reputation

Financial loss

Damage to facilities

Injury to participants

Stressed out employees and,
Loss of equipment

All the above translates to dollars for me and I am not even making nearly any money to pay myself let alone be in a position to pay someone else after being sued, not to mention the damage caused to my business name.

This lesson was an eye opener for me that I have to take seriously to avoid being a victim of the above tragedies. I used the example given to us in class as a template to consider when conducting risk assessment on site visits and developing a client’s event. It is a serious thing that I don’t want to get caught with my pants down.  

The final point that I’d like to cover which was a learning point for me in this course was the skills I need to develop when making sales.  I still think I have a lot to learn with this subject because I am not a good salesperson and I hate sounding like a commercial. One point that I felt was helpful from the lessons we learn came from a video that Dr. Levy played; it featured a hotel salesman having a consultation with a client attempting to sell her on why she should select this hotel for her event. Needless to say, I thought he was a selfish salesman not really trying to take into consideration the stakeholder but just making a sale. The depiction reminded me of myself which is not how I want to represent myself. I know that I need to be more cognizant of how I communicate with potential clients as I don’t want to run anyone away and I find myself losing a lot of business.   

What I learned in the course is to do my best to make it fun. Bring upbeat energy to the consultation, ask about them, and use creativity to move forward toward selling a solution. I know I must remain positive, not be lazy by using tired sales scripts, don’t argue with my prospect and use storytelling to my advantage by telling the client what I can do for them or how I can accomplish what they want.

Overall, these 3 lessons learned have helped me rethink how I want to do a better job at providing service to my clients and how I need to develop the core competency skills to becoming a highly effective, incredibly memorable, and super successful event manager. I am so happy to be taking this program of study and everything I learn I try to immediately apply it to my day to day business operation. I look forward to my next course of instruction.

Top Three Takeaways From Event Management Course

As the 2015 fall semester is going to have an end, I have to say that TSTD 6277---Event Management course is the best course compared with other three coursed I've taken this semester. I learned a lot, not only academic knowledge but also practical skills. There are three takeaways that I want to share.

Top3  Case Study

For all the cases we have to get fully prepared before each class. It is a good way to learn about actual event, not only learn "how to do" with textbook. For students who do not have much working experience, case study is an efficient way to  know the event, such as how to plan, how to overview the event, how to deal with the problem and who are stakeholders. Also, by watching case video, it is also interesting, as least for me. Also, we highlighted the risk items, made budget and timeline for an event.

the case we learn a lot from

Top 2 Software

During this semester, I learned how to use MS project to make timeline of Haskayne BBQ event. At first, I thought it was hard because I totally did not know this before and also I had other courses homework to do in two days. Therefore, I were a little bit anxious. But after I finished that Gantt Chart, I felt a great sense of achievement. 

Also, for the social table trip, I learned to use Social Table to simply design an event layout. This is also the first time I learned to use a software to design a layout. I have to say it was so interesting. And definitely, I enjoyed it! When I was pursuing bachelor degree, I was responsible for designing all the posters for my association. I love design. Therefore, I combined my thoughts and using Social Table to express my ideas which was really awesome. There's another thing to mention----- working atmosphere of Social Table is so relax and positive. Love this field trip.

                                                                 presentation

Top 1 Networking!

Networking is really important! From small group discussion, game in class to informational interview project. I kept on networking even I'm not good at it. Dr. Levy always offer a chance or give recommendation for us to seize opportunity for networking, knowing more people. At first, I thought the interview project was so hard. But finally, I found five interviewees using my methods. I got what I wanted to know and also kept touch with them.  Also, recommendation by Levy would offer great opportunities, such as GW tourism alumni network.

                                               

Blog #4: Top Three Takeaways

Top Three Takeaways

I have learned so much in such a short time during this course and am truly grateful for the opportunities it has given me to grow in and out of the classroom. Here are my top three takeaways!

1. Informational Interview - Networking

While the informational interview was one of the most nerve-racking assignments this semester I am grateful that it was assigned to us. It pushed me outside of my comfort zone to network in a way I don’t I would not have done otherwise. Not only do I better understand how to request and conduct an informational interview I gained a wealth of knowledge from my interview subject on what it takes to build relationships in the meetings industry, build my professional reputation and how to drive the success of my own business. Additionally, I gained a mentor and access to a network of meeting professionals I would not have been able to connect with otherwise. 

2. Gaylord Hotel Field Trip

The Gaylord Hotel field trip was one of my favorite class experiences. It provided us with the opportunity to better understand what it takes to manage a hotel and how that plays into supporting meetings and events on their property. I never considered a position with a hotel as a meeting planner because I felt that I would not have the same involvement in the event planning process as a hotel staff member. However, this field trip made me consider the possibility of working in a hotel after completing the MTA program. While Gaylord properties are unique convention properties I see the value of what hotel meeting planners do a lot better now. I also understand that there is much more than what meets the eye that the job entails. It was exciting to see how well the staff understood all aspects of the hotel and company to better serve the meetings and events. It was also great to hear from an MTA alum on his journey with the company!

3. Social Tables Field Trip - Meeting Design 

This field trip was such a unique experience because it offered so many learning components outside of a traditional field trip. During this field trip I was able to understand meeting design not only through our text book but through hands on experience learning how to use the software. Additionally, how technology can enhance our events experience is something I have always been interested in. So it was very exciting to see and hear about what SocialTables is doing to change the meetings and events industry using cloud-based technology.They are helping to better plan and design meeting space layouts in real time by connecting both the property and the meeting planner in a way they have not been able to communicate before. Finally, I also really appreciated the opportunity to get certified in their software as this is something I would like to continue to develop as a skill!