The boons and banes of event planning and running

#96 - Diwali 'dhamaka' at school

Hi there,

“Things don’t go to plan” is one of the subtopics discussed in today’s post, where I’ve taken the time out to reflect on how I did in running our school’s first ever ‘Diwali Week’. Along with a friend in Year 9, we have put on a multi-winged show of Indian culture and Diwali celebrations across school this week (about which you can read a lot more in my report on the school newsletter 😉)

Things don’t go to plan is my excuse for not turning up in the past 2 weeks as well. Two weeks ago, I’d written most of the post before being hit by some “the night before you go back to school after a break” storm that I can’t even recall specifically now; last weekend was a more genuine reason and conscious choice of giving up our weekly chat to watch a movie with family on Diwali night - fair (I hope you think so too…)

Along with Diwali, I also went to school again yesterday to watch friends play Rugby and thoroughly enjoyed investing 4 hours into watching the Cricket World Cup final, only for a thus far flawless India to falter (again) on the grand stage.

Highlight of the week: our Tuesday food sale. Making a shade under £300, it was extremely gratifying to see 3 tables full of food, a pretty big queue, and (most importantly) 3 patches of orange Indian food stains on my white shirt (shhhhh! Don’t tell Mum!), sign of a good day’s work (and a very tired lower back 😩)

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A friend recommended a double post to make up for my absence, and, you know what…since the previous one is basically done, let’s go for it. This post will precede the one from 2 weeks ago, titled “What McDonald’s and clothes shopping have in common”.

Here is a poster summarising all the many things Nirek and I set about to stage this week, along with a group of ~20 team members lower down the school.

As you can see, quite a lot going on. However, 100s of messages, if not 1000s, and an empty energy reserve later, we’ve pulled it off pretty successfully. Here are a few things I’d like to share from my experiences this week

1. Things almost never go to plan, expect it not to, embrace it 😅 - with the karaoke, so many teachers were not interested. I anticipated it, but not to this scale. The cricket carnival very quickly went from something we were going to charge for to a knowingly chaotic bunch of kids throwing balls around. Even the food sale was haphazard to start, as the big table I was thinking of selling on wasn’t big enough. All these instances tested my ability to think on my feet and quickly change plans that had been made. Along with another school captain initiative we’ve launched this week, this notion of making the plan not going to plan a part of the plan stands out. Be prepared to see what you’d envisioned not work out exactly that way. Try to think of alternatives and stripped-back versions to still make it happen and think - what are the essentials? What can I let go of and still execute the event? When it turns out your resources are less than you imagined, you need to be harsh and do what you need to, to make the statement ‘something is better than nothing’ true.¹

2. Be agile and mobile, ready to switch if the situation asks for it 💨 - on Tuesday, our first food sale, the first lunchtime was proper busy, people clamouring for the new shiny toys that were the aromatic Indian food (a welcome change, I’m sure, for many from our regular canteen offerings 🤭). The 2nd one wasn’t as packed, purely because there was 1 less year group on break. With 20 minutes to go, I thought “I see a group of Year 12s hanging out outside, why not take the food to them?” Thankfully, there were quite a few people I knew who could help me and the food travel the 50-odd steps and, as I’d hoped, we made another £20.

   A second example would be one of the quizzes, where we were running short on time. I suggested we skip one of the rounds to jump to the music round and I later heard that it was great fun listening to some Indian tunes (for those interested, the challenge was to guess the language)

3. Get to know as many people as you can 👋- my role in school probably helps in getting nearly everybody to see my wonderful face and (hopefully!) a large proportion of them to know my name. In hindsight, I was able to leverage that when I needed food a) carried from the car park to the canteen and b) from the canteen outside, along with scrambling together more desks. It made all these years of saying ‘hi’ to people around school (just because it’s nice, really, and feels good to know many people) worth it.

4. Take things off your plate 🫳 - as much as I am a “doer” and love to do everything, my time, energy and attention are limited. (that’s the 3rd post I’ve linked to already!) That’s why I consciously let go of the stress of the cricket carnival, leaving it to Nirek to sort. I could’ve gotten my hands dirty in running it, but I would have been spreading myself too thin (something I am often told off for). It’s always an uphill struggle with delegation for me but at least I can step back and point to 1 example. And finally,

5. If you have the choice to, schedule cleverly 📅 - when deciding which of the events would be on what day, apart from a few limitations and pre-existing factors, I had free reign. I remember thinking on Wednesday, “I am so glad the events have been in the order they have. There is no way I would’ve been able to cope otherwise”

   1. We put the food sale, the biggest event of the week, on the Tuesday when there were no assemblies I needed to organise. This meant I could donate full attention towards it.

   2. Having the quizzes on Wednesday and Thursday gave us time to chase any teachers who hadn’t gotten names for their classes.

   3. Putting the food sales 3 days apart allowed us to give customers enough time to want to come for more, whilst being able to assess what was popular and what wasn’t for the Friday.

In all, those are a few observations of what I did well this week - it’s important to acknowledge the successes. And likewise, what can be better next time. I could’ve given a bit more thought to the speakers delivering Diwali presentations in assemblies, making sure they were well-rehearsed since they were school-wide speeches. I should have also kept an eye on the budget, a surprising weakness for me this time. Thankfully, our Finance department was flexible and allowed us to conduct a highly enjoyable week.

Despite the stress, running around, and time invested into this week, I feel it was very rewarding and, on the whole, enjoyed what we produced as a team. I look forward to seeing how they can take it forward next time, when they won’t have their key cog turning - it will have switched machines to Cambridge 😉

The key learning out of all? That running events is hard graft and you need to give yourself room for error, both physically and in your judgement of your performance.

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Podcast of the week 🎙️

On Purpose with Jay Shetty: 7 signs you’re a people pleaser and 7 methods to break the habit

An uncomfortable listen, given I had to confront a supposed fault of mine. There were both bits that made me eke out a wry smile, as well as those that certainly didn’t sound like me. How will you find the episode?

Article of the week 📰

Sam Altman: The extraordinary firing of an AI superstar

As with most in the tech world, this comes as a huge shock. Arguably the face of this AI boom and ChatGPT, OpenAI’s boss was sacked this week. The story sounds like a movie.

Quote of the week💬

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become - Jim Rohn

It’s nice to be writing again. Huge thanks to those who called me out on not writing, saying how they were missing their doses of sunlight. Your wishes didn’t go unnoticed😊

Adi

1. Don’t think I’ve ever written a paragraph that long on TSO, but I think that style works.