Representing and Leaving

Sometimes it feels awkward to represent your company to a school when you know that you’re already leaving after having spent 13 years of arts and passion. Good times are over and realizing the true life after those years is a serious matter. It’s about keeping the pride, pain, and hidden dreams for the best of the company.

I was one of the three panel members during the presentation of the service plan prepared by graduating marketing students of DLSU. The students completed their required number of training hours at Livewire Productions. The students got involved in some projects that practically gave them the real training on how to run an event. Some of the events are the opening of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), Candy Fair, Unilab events, and Nickelodeon events.

The goal of their service plan for Livewire is to be an exceptional events service provider in the Philippines, continuously innovating and adapting to global trends and practices.

They proposed 3 strategies:

1. To accept projects from SME or small and medium enterprises on which, according to them, have PhP8 million to PhP100 million in sales.

2. Introduce a customized Project Management System to provide better operational efficiency and further strengthen client relations and interactions.

3. To offer an Event Performance Measurement to evaluate the performance of the event with the use of pre-planning research, audit, survey, and traffic counts to identify the strength and weaknesses of the event that will help in providing actionable recommendations for future events.

Needless to elaborate their proposal, I was given a chance to ask the students to further rationalize their paper before the other two panel members who are the vice-chairman and a professor in marketing department. Due to limited time, I was only able to ask them two questions.

1. How will you build a relationship with SME and persuade them to use events as an effective marketing tool?

2. Some event companies give in to their creativity and sacrifice the income with the objective of either to impress the client or for their corporate interest or perhaps for creative team/director’s personal fulfillment or ego. How will they balance creative objective and implementation while still being concerned about the sales income of the company?

My 3rd question fell short of time that is how they can contribute to the academe like DLSU on helping to build a foundation and strengthen the event management field between the academe and the industry?

The presenting group got a grade of 90+ with me giving the lowest score among the 3 panel members. I wanted to give the group a room for improvement in both the academic and industry areas. After the thesis defense, I was also asked to talk for event management class or to teach.

It feels uneasy when you keep the ignorance within you. But who cares anyway? It will feel better, I think, if I would announce what I have just decided. At least I have transferred some information and experience I know about the beloved field of interest.

Bye to the business of arts and passion. It’s time to hang my old purple and yellow jersey. An innovation will take place after 16 days of being wireless. It may mean more rest or more work. Whatever it is to be facing me next year, the weight is in the hands of my Creator who’s giving me challenges and opportunities.