Final Reflection

So, Visions 5 was pretty awesome. it was a super rewarding experience that I look forward to experiencing again next year. In reflection, I have a couple tips for the next facility and guest coordinator and some strong points and weak points from the event.

Tips:
       - Maybe start in on parking a little earlier next time around. I expected parking to be a bit simpler than it was. I had expected to email Ken Kaiser, who's in charge of parking for UNCW, and have this set up after one meeting. what actually needs to be done is to fill out the special event parking request form (http://uncw.edu/parking/forms.htm) and just leave some parts blank (like the parts about what fund the money will come from, because they'll just put you in a free lot), also, put Shannon on there as the main contact, with you as a secondary.
      - This never came up this time, but know about disability access to the venue just in case.
      - you won't really have a lot going on for the beginning of the semester, jump on some other projects to get some stress off of other people.

During Event:
     Strengths:
        - Teamwork. our team was strong during the event. everyone was ready and willing to jump onto anything that needed doing. definitely do this, some folks will have more work than you and may not handle stress as well, taking even a couple easy tasks off their plate can make the day go way smoother.
        - Preparation. We were as prepared as I think we could have been, we were ready. that being said, there will always be things that pop up unseen or that slipped through the cracks, just be flexible and respond to new challenges.



    Weaknesses
            - the one major weakness I noticed was probably stress management, and even that wasn't really a big weakness. there were a few situations where an issue popped up and stress and a lack of good sleep caused minor panic to delay expedient solutions. these situations can quickly and easily be solved if you are committed to remaining calm, using stress positively (as a motivator and not a hinderance), and flexible enough to handle an issue that may not necessarily be "your job" because you are in a better position to deal with it.




Above All
     My biggest takeaway from Visions was (cheesiness alert) Teamwork is important. a solid team is all the difference between a smooth, successful, fun event and a stressful nightmare of a day. just be ready to adapt and be determined to have fun with it.

Parking is secured, praise Jeebus

so I finally got somebody to give me parking. special note for future versions of me: google parking request form, fill it out to the best of your ability, make up some good estimate numbers for guests, leave the billing info blank. a nice lady in the parking office (Sally Lewis) will put you somewhere for free and email you about it. DO NOT WAIT FOR KEN KAISER, JUST DO IT. I will now plan where to strategically place signs around campus on the day of to lead the little film festival sheep into the promised land of filmdom.

a post for whichever week this is

     this week I've made contact with parking, though I didn't get my face to face meeting. After emailing Ken Kaiser, the head of parking, I was referred to an online survey request form to request event parking. It had a few questions that I didn't have the info to answer at the time, so I'm working up a mock version of the form to fill out with the class's help. As for garbage collecting, I have been unable to find a contact for that, and my predecessor informed me that he didn't have one, but i don't like leaving that to chance so i'll keep looking.

Week 6 post

I realize now that I've been missing these blog posts. the past two weeks, Ive been throwing most of my energy into the bake sale. now that that's over, I've been able to focus more on contacting individuals in charge of parking and waste collection at UNCW and will have face to face meetings scheduled with them by the end of this week. after these meetings, I will hopefully be pretty much set with my operations duties until closer to the event. after that, I will begin to prepare for the next bake sale.

week three

   For this week, I drafted an email to the campus parking manager, Ken Kaiser, so that the class could  review it and make suggestions during my operations presentation. I was also given a new job, running the bake sale, so I've been getting up to speed on that. in preparation for the bake sale job, I posted a "dirty dozen" review of that task in another blog post.

Dirty Baker's Dozen

1. What?
      -This project is gonna rake in the dough, pun intended. I'm told the last bake sale made $358, so I'm aiming for 400.

2. Customer?
     -Friends, classmates, the random passerby on Chancellor's. People who like other people and want them to have some baked goods, and people who like baked goods.

3. Deliverables?
     -Our primary tangible deliverable is cash money, to be used for the spending and such, hopefully about 400 dollars worth.
       An intangible deliverable would probably be awareness on campus of our event.

4. Budget?
     - This segment is currently under construction

5. How long?
     - The event will be 9 hours, from 9 am until 6 pm on Wednesday, feb 11th. set up will take one hour before hand, and cleanup will take roughly an hour afterword. there will be an hour or two in the week leading up for posting posters and baking bakies and such.

6. Specific needed skills?
     - we need sales people to sit the tables, as well as people who know how to operate an oven for to do the baking and such.

7. Special resources?
     - Tables, The Goods

8. Who's working on this?
     - Everyone! everyone will be providing baked goods, supplies, and time at the table

9. Schedule?
     -print posters feb 5th
      post those posters feb 6th
      event happens feb 11th

10. Risks?
     - Big risk would probably be that no one buys stuff. another could be weather. Unlikely risks include forgetting the baked stuff, not getting the tables delivered, and no one showing up.

11. how will you communicate with the team?
     -Facebook, cell phone, google drive, class

12. How will you determine if the project is successful?
     - if we make a good ol chunk of cash. preferably 400 and above.

Festivals of Their Own

   I found this article to be very interesting. I have only personally been to one film festival, but I was swept up by it and I've been taken in by the atmosphere surrounding festivals, which was a big part of my decision to join Visions. It was very interesting to read about the formation of the major festivals, such as Cannes and Sundance. It was a chunk of history that I had never read about before. The most exciting part of the article was the section on underground festivals. It was cool to see Cucalorus on the list, and I'll admit to wasting a lot of time looking the others up on FilmFreeway while I was reading. to read about underground festivals always makes me excited about my own projects and ready to enter into as many as possible, and I'm excited to be participating on the other side with Visions5.