Behind the Scenes of the 4th Sustainability and Resilience Workshop : Working at su-re.co pt 3

Hi again!

It’s Maya from DO-business and BE-event team. I started my blog series a few weeks ago and today I will continue to share my experiences working at su-re.co.

Last week, I shared about the preparation of the 4th Sustainability & Resilience Workshop: how we prepared the venue, contacted the guests, set up the venue’s decoration, and coordinated the logistics. This time, I will share with you the experiences during the event itself.

I think it is interesting to tell you about the drama and difficulties behind this big event 🤪🤪🤪

This workshop was held in 3 days and I will share it day-by-day. I will start with day 1 and continue the other days on my next blog.

Day 1, Wednesday, 27 November 2019

Open Presentation & Discussion @ Four Points by Sheraton Jimbaran, Ungasan

The workshop started at 12 PM, but Radhya and I had to come to the venue earlier at around 9 AM to check everything from the sound systems to the seating arrangements. We even came the night before at 10 PM, to drop 10 standing-bamboos each 1.6 meters tall as posters and decorations for the venue. It was really late and all the staff who was responsible for the venue had already returned home, so we could not set up everything right away as they were quite heavy. In the end, we planned to set everything in the next morning which was the first day of the workshop.

However, setting up the decoration was not the only task we had on the first day of the workshop. We also had to be the timekeeper for the guests. They stayed at the same place as the venue. Some of the guests had breakfast pretty late, while some have already registered themselves and had conversations with other guests. The difficulty was to remind the guests to be on time. Here, we learned how to better manage people that the event is not behind schedule.

On day 1, we had volunteers from Universitas Udayana for the performance, MC (master of ceremony), and notetaking. Another thing that we needed to prepare before the workshop started was to brief and assist the volunteers. It was our first event for me and Radhya, we tried our best to brief the do’s and dont’s for the MC, but we had no idea how to brief the volunteers for the note-taking. Luckily, we had Mayun who was experienced with previous workshops and he helped us a lot to solve this issue. We still found some mistakes especially for the notes, and so those became things that we needed to improve.

After the main event finished, another issue came! We did not prepare the recommended restaurants or cafes for the guests’ dinner. From my previous blog, I mentioned that we invited guests from international and national institutions, government, to policymakers. Neither Radhya nor I knew about Jimbaran area. At that time, we checked some recommendations through Google but…we didn’t trust it 100%. We had guests from different areas, we didn’t know their taste. We wanted to introduce Indonesian or Balinese food but it was a bit difficult to find the good and typical restaurants in that area as there were so many beach clubs and western restaurants. We then consulted to the hotel manager and the person in charge of the venue. Also, the volunteers and friends helped us. Even though Radhya and I did not join the dinner, the restaurant that we chose ended up being a good choice. ^^

Hm…then, but why did we miss the dinner with all the guests?

Simply, we had to clean up the venue! The equipment and the stuff we brought such as banners, posters, name tags, stationery and paper, and THE HEAVY STANDING BAMBOO!

It was a long day for su-re.co gift makers! The event was not perfect but the team did a great job :)

Everyone was so helpful, not only the gift makers and volunteers, but also the guests, hotel staff, the security of the venue, and also the driver for delivering and picking up our 10 HUGE STANDING BAMBOO. I still think the bamboos were worth it. 🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪

There was another drama that I made on that night with the person in charge for day 2 at FourSeasons Jimbaran Bali. It was about decoration and logistics. BUT!

I will not tell you now 😘

Thank you for reading my blog, I know it’s a cliffhanger, but I promise to tell you on my next blog 😍

Please stay healthy and safe wherever you are. Don’t forget to still wear your mask, see you on my next blog, next week! 🥳🥳

*Bonus: photo of me and Radhya ^^