Cultural Issues in Events Management
Culture
is a powerful word that can be explained in many different theories. For
example Browaeys & Price (2011) mention that culture is a code of
attitudes, norms and values, a way of thinking that is thought within a
society, something a man cannot inherit. Also the definition of Hofstede (2010)
points out that culture is the collective programming of the mind that
distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.
Culture
is closely connected with another term, diversity. Diversity is “a range of different things showing the
variety” (Oxford dictionary). In order to avoid racism and cultural
prejudices diversity training is recommended in large organisations and large
events such as Olympics. Diversity trainings promote differences in people and
refuses categorising. Team building exercises help to build a team and accepts
working with a diverse set of individuals.
Lewis (2006) divided culture to three
categories and assigned them to countries of the world. From this model it is
possible to predict the behaviour and reaction of appointed citizen and also
avoid controversy or offending someone. Especially in events is diversity of
the crowd very frequent and constantly changing so understanding your crowd is
crucial. Even the smallest thing as handshake, attitude to time or addressing
the crowd can impact the event. For instance in the USA is hand shake the most
common way of greeting and kissing each other is viewed as a bit strange, on
the other hand for French people is common to kiss and hug when greeting and
also when saying goodbye. Sticking your tongue out when greeting your
colleagues is absolutely normal in Tibet although some cultures could perceive
this habit as rude. These examples show that it is important to understand and
learn about different cultures in order to succeed in Events industry. Nevertheless
sooner or later every events organizer might encounter cultural faux-pas. Only
signs with your fingers might cause cultural resentment, for example a ‘peace
sign’ in the USA means in the United Kingdom and other united Commonwealth
Nations something very similar to giving
someone the finger. Also giving someone thumbs up in Iran traditionally translates as the foulest
of insults and is definitely something worth avoiding. Katie Shonk (2015) points out another
common reason for cross-cultural misunderstandings. People often tend to interpret others’
behaviors, values, and beliefs through the lens of their own culture. To
overcome this tendency, it is recommended to learn about the other party’s
culture.
Harvard
Business Review (2014) also highlights that the most important quality of event
leader is empathy and understanding for different cultures. Empathy is defined
as seeing and feeling as another person that can fit to any culture. Another
advice from the review is how to balance different perspective from ways of
doing things. Humble attitude of questioning about the culture was as a key to
cross-cultural communication.
Understanding
of different cultures is essential to globalisation of the industry and is very
important to every event organizer. Nevertheless learning from mistakes and
cultural faux pas is a part of life and every experience might be useful in the
future.
Social Media in Events
With the recent boom of social media it’s hard to ignore them in any
kind of business. However in events industry are the benefits for the event
organizers bigger than anywhere else considering the opportunity to promote and
advertise your event wherever you want.
Nonetheless it is important to learn how to use social media right to
engage potential audience for an event. For this purpose was social media
strategy developed. This strategy helps the event organizer to evaluate how
successful the event is at reaching the target audience through social media.
Setting the clear objectives of the event is the first step for using social
media to engage with their audience. Deciding on measuring technique of the
event is also crucial, for example by number of views, likes, shares or ticket
sales. It is essential to observe current trends in events and competitors,
advantage from their mistakes and maximise the exposure of its own event.
It is recommended to create social media plan to think
ahead about posts and updates before, during and after the event. Posts
including pictures, videos or links are proved to be more successful on social
media rather than just a text. Hashtags became very popular lately especially
between twitter and Instagram community. For the event organizer it is
important to think about what the audience wants and how to satisfy their needs
through social media.
On the day of the event at least one of the organizers should be present
on social media and respond to any potential questions and complains. Many
large events have recently introduced WiFi on the premises for attendees in
order to enhance use of the social media during the event. After the event a
thank you to attendees is important on Facebook or Twitter to get the important
feedback and review the activity report. Jay Baer (2014) highlighted 7 ways to
buzz-up your event by social media. Engaging your potential attendees with you
early on by enabling some measure of feedback or crowd sourcing on the
conference programming. He also points out that creating an event on Facebook, Eventbrite
and Upcoming might intrigue new people coming to an event. Invigorate your social media websites as the
event date approaches. During the event keep integrating with attendees on
social media by posting updates, photos and videos from the event. Pick a hash tag for your event, so attendees
and remote watchers can monitor on Twitter. Don’t forget to keep informing
attendees about program, create an app and use QR codes. After the event thank
your attendees, sum up all the best bit that happened at the event and your
goal is to get the doubters that didn’t come this year to view that content and
decide to go the next year.
There are positive and negative points of view at the
use of social media at the event. Some of the positive aspects are the low cost
of using internet and the fact that social media are free of charge.
Nevertheless if an event organizer wants to promote certain event or post,
charges may apply. Another advantage is that social media can reach large
audience all over the world at the same time and it is also easy to target
certain groups of people.
On the other hand one of the drawbacks is older
audience that is usually not very familiar with the use of Twitter and
Facebook. Also negative comments at social media can easily harm the reputation
of the event in the future and spread the rumours.
Nevertheless technology is ever changing and
its important to monitor social media, keep track with new networking sites and
make sure you don’t miss out on any opportunities. It is very important to think about
what your audience want, and how you can satisfy that need through social media.
Volunteer motivation
In
this subsection of my post I would like to discuss the importance of volunteers
during an event. Motivation is bonded with volunteering and can be explained as
an inner force that drives human beings to behave in certain ways. Volunteer is
defined as a person that willingly works for free for in an event. Motivation
is often a big part of volunteering experience, especially in events industry.
For example during Olympic Games in London over 40 000 volunteers worked 8
million hours and majority of them were motivated by the experience of the
event and its legacy. Without volunteers would costs of the Olympics climbed up
dramatically and for that reason it is crucial to take care of every single
volunteer with care and to make sure that by the end of the day they are fully
appreciated and happy.
In some cases neglected care of volunteers may cause a
tragic impact on an event. Some of the example of de-motivating volunteers can
be too much work or no work at all, lack of appreciation or acknowledgement,
lack of training, impersonal attitude or appropriate roles. Event organizer
should always ask for feedback from the volunteer after the event to find out
whether there can be something improved in their attitude in the future. Volunteer
retention is one of the goals of the event organizers for repetitive events
because they are cheaper to retain, crucial to company’s image and has an
impact of the experience on future volunteering. Reward of a volunteer is also
vital, offering a recommendation letter, free ticket to an event or the
opportunity to do be promoted as a supervisor in the next level.
My personal experience with volunteering varies from really great and
exciting events where I gain contacts and knowledge to feeling redundant and
not appreciated at all. However overall I have really good experience with
volunteering at music events- from large festivals as Secret Garden Party to
small multiple venue festival called Drill in Brighton. I appreciate when
people talk to me and try to find out what motivates me to participate at the
event. Honestly speaking most of the time, mainly at music events, I was hoping
that volunteering would help me to get to the music industry. I was lucky
enough to meet interesting people through volunteering who gave me contacts for
other job related opportunities. Also nice little things as free lunch, t-shirt
of the event or free tickets enhance the experience and gives a bit more than a
good feeling.
Motivation is an important part of volunteering and
making the volunteer happy and motivated is one of the most important tasks of
event organizer. Nevertheless each volunteer is motivated by different factors
but still, reward and recognition is the key. Most sport events on a regional,
national or international level could not be staged without the voluntary
engagement of many people. Bang and Chelladurai (2009) explored the major motivation
scale between volunteers in Sport Events in Canada. Some of the stated values
informed about expression of values, interpersonal contacts focused on
affiliation, the relationships and networking with others. Career orientation
had a focus on gaining practical experience and skills and preparing for the
career also played role in some cases. Likewise personal growth contained
increasing self-esteem with the help of the experience and finally, extrinsic
rewards involved being motivated by free admissions, t-shirts, pins or similar
give-aways.
Volunteers are an important
force in Events industry and it’s important to appreciate them for their will
to participate in something positive. It is crucial to motivate them, train
them and challenge them with suitable tasks.
Personal reflection
Personal reflection is a brief paper that describes the experience of
giving the tutorial for Health and Safety topic and how it changed my
perspective and understanding on this particular issue. In this part of the
post I would like to express my overall experience of giving a tutorial,
discuss my current strengths and weaknesses while performing in front of the
students and express how this practise will have an impact of my performance in
front of the crowd in the future.
At the beginning of Contemporary Issues in Events management all students
chose a topic they were interested at but never explored before in any other
subject. I have decided to select Health and Safety topic because I have never
properly looked into this issue and also because it is vital and challenging
topic important in events industry. Each topic was chosen by approximately 8
students in Events management course and their task was to prepare a lecture
and a tutorial and present it in front of the other students of the course.
First challenge of this task was to gather the group of students working
on the same topic and organize a meeting. A group on Facebook was good and fast
solution to communicate with the other people from the group about deciding who
from the group will perform a lecture and who will carry out a tutorial. In my
Health and Safety group we have determined to split up small portions of the
topic to each member, explore a bit about every subject and then decide as a
group what topics should be covered in the lecture and plan the tutorials. A
following week the group met again and discussed the importance and uniqueness
of each topic and picked crowd management as the most recent and covered
problem in contemporary issues in Events Industry.
The challenge of this task was to come up with new material that was not
covered in the previous health and safety lectures, interesting case studies
that would hold students’ attention and prepare interactive tutorial.
My task was to prepare material for
tutorial with other two girls I’ve just met through the group. The first
challenge we were facing was to agree on the way our tutorial will look like.
We discussed different methods but agreed on a discussion between students
about case studies we were showing through YouTube videos on the screen. This
method was proved as successful as the students were quiet and paid the
attention to the task. As a group we managed really well the flow of the
tutorial and timing of tasks. This was probably due to our preparation as each
of us tried the tasks at home before presenting to the crowd. As a team of
girls with different strengths and weaknesses we have divided the roles before
the start of the tutorial. One of us proved as a better speaker and introduced
the topics and tasks; other one was giving out the material and pens and
announced the rules. I was sitting behind the computer and tried to extend the
discussion about each of the videos.
Teaching the tutorial made me realize that one of the strengths I have
is the respect of the crowd and the ability to quiet down the students. Another strength of mine I would like to
point out is the ability to work in a team of people I have never met before
and to respect other people’s ideas.
On the other hand I found difficulties when dealing with certain
technical terms related to Health and Safety topic on the grounds of not being
native English speaker. Also speaking in front of the large crowd makes me feel
nervous and slightly anxious, that’s why I chose to perform the tutorial. However
preparation at home and repeating the text in front of the mirror always
enhances my performance.
Giving the tutorial to group of Events management students enriched me
with brand new teaching experience. Being in a position of a lecturer and
trying to manage bigger group of students made me realize how difficult job
teaching is. The experience gained in this course will help me in my future job
interviews, business meetings and overall performance in front of the crowd.
