Event planning…

The purpose of this entry is to write about an accomplishment that I’m proud of. For the past couple of years, I’ve been involved with my honour society in various roles. This year I was in charge of planning, organizing and running our new member recognition ceremony. It was a big task. I had to invite by email 300 new members. The people at Constant Contact make this chore easier. The next major task was determining many people were planning on attending. Using a combination of GMail and Google’s online spreadsheet software I kept tracking of ever growing number of RSVPs. In the food department, I ordered enough carrot cake for 300 people and in the end only about 10 slices of cake were leftover. A local coffee shop near the university was able to provide us with three large carafes of coffee and more than enough to serve the attendees. The ceremony was held in an ornate auditorium/chapel on the campus of the University of Ottawa. The chapel is high demand so we booked it in the spring. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I drafted the speeches that would be given at the ceremony. The speeches were a little tricky as they would be said in English and then repeated in French. At the last minute, I was asked to add a tribute to a new member that recently passed away. In the end I was able to meet an ambassador which was kind of cool. To save on paper we decided not to print a program this year and used a Powerpoint presentation to project the logos and the agenda for the evening. Much of my Saturday was spent bring all the diverse pieces of the event together in the right order. Some of my fellow executives became involved near the end when it came time to run the event. The event was a success. It’s quite an experience to address an audience of 300 people. I can’t remember the number of times that I practiced the speech. The final chore was to mail out the member certificates for people that couldn’t make the ceremony. This involved buying 250 stamps and putting them on the envelopes and dropping them off at the mail box.  So, as I reflect on the past week it feels good to plan, organize and speak to an event of 300 people.