I was going to move further out and buy a car, but decided to stay close by and be more central. It works! So I will contine to either borrow the folks car when at home, or else rent one as  I have been doing from Thrifty when I need it. Though I did find some nice Golf’s on the site, and I am sorely tempted!

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I like organising, that’s me. I’m a tad bit obsessive about some things, I’ll have my list done up, and saved somewhere online  that I can check against to make sure things are being done, when they are done, they are  moved elsewhere in the list to Completed, or Further attention needed. I know it sounds anal, I know! But you know what, it works, well at least it does for me.  I can stand up and say, yes I am a list person!

So some simple check lists, they may seem very simple and common sense, but eh don’t take simple things and common sense for granted when organising events!

Again there is no obvious statements. Don’t do it all on your own, even when you think at times, nobody can do it better than you can! So  committee or gathering of folks who are to organise said event. Meet regularly! Email is not enough. You cant rant enough over email (Flame wars are not the same thing!) Face to face meet ups are the only way, as you bounce ideas off one and another and come up with better ideas/solutions to problems.

If you do email people concerning the event, CC someone else on the committee so that if you get a date/time/venue or some detail off, there is hope that someone else will spot it and can be rectified, otherwise you could be organising something for September when the event locations thinks it’s August!

Double check venue is suitable, there is no point in word of mouth suggestion if you don’t check it out. What’s fine for some other event may not be great for yours, go down have a look and see what will work.  There is no point in having a venue that will hold 100’s if you are only going to get 30-40 people. That makes the speaker nervous and makes the event look crap. Alternative suggestions I recommend is if you can talk to colleges, tutorial rooms are a great size, and usually are in a good location. Small meeting rooms with business areas, or enterprise centers.

Advertise the event in as many locations as you can. Again depending on the event, but I would say hit colleges first, as many lectures, students may be interested, bonus if your conference is also located on the grounds, you can get college/staff mailing lists. If you don’t advertise and tell people why they should attend, well why would they! You need to tell them what they will be missing out. I’ve found IRC channels are a great way to promote events, but again that’s me, do what ever works for you, but if you’re noticing not a good uptake, re-look and re-jig it!

Make sure your speakers are on board for what ever is going on at the conference, do not surprise them by telling them on the day there is going to be a live debate between them and a known opposition. Do not try and “Shit Stir” It’s not nice, it’s poor practice, and only makes people think little of you. This is all well and good if you’ve talked to both sides prior to the event and have arranged it. Putting people on the spot only leads to “silence” and leads to awkwardness. Don’t do it!

Final run up to the event, go through your check list, which should consist of a large Done/Completed list and there really should be no “To Do’s ” left anywhere on it Have this done a week before hand to allow for things just cropping up!

Sit back and enjoy the event. As I said, this is not a complete list, it’s some thoughts and what’s worked in the past for me, or I’ve learnt from the past events.

]]> http://www.lczajkowski.com/2008/06/27/things-to-do-and-not-to-do-when-organising-an-event/feed/ http://www.lczajkowski.com/2008/06/26/4th-july-face-to-face-meet-up-celebrations/ http://www.lczajkowski.com/2008/06/26/4th-july-face-to-face-meet-up-celebrations/#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:31:52 +0000 Laura Czajkowski http://www.lczajkowski.com/?p=80 Right, twitter, bloggers,nutters, really anyone who really wants to come along for a few beers and maybe a nibble or two come along. When…. Suggested date is July 4th, though if anyone thinks this isn’t a great date, shout now or forever keep quiet! If there any Americans to come along! We’ll help you celebrate!

Where…. next issue…. We met at O’Neills the last day, very nice. But let’s try somewhere new. I’ve suggested The Bull and Castle. Nice place, spacious, does their own brews and beers from all over the place. It’s different :)  We’ll just have to get ellybabes to bring the balloon along to mark the spot!

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Seeing as I do like to help students out, (formerly one and all that) 2 day pass for €35 is available if you mention my name while booking them! Spell my name right!!

This is TC (I may get shot now)

The Charming and ever so polite Mr. Breen, and yes we did spray his hair with red paint!

Finally to answer the Question on the car……… Poster paint comes off in the rain, acrylic paint does not That’s what was used. To get it off requires elbow grease, power hose and a credit card to SCRAPE it off

Finally did I mention how good sports we are, how we get behind our team, and in certain cases, when we’re down a letter, take one for the team

So we get a text saying our ferry is now leaving at 6:30 instead, balls! We were the first crowd due to go back, except, Maire gets  a text saying her ferry that she’s due to get the next day is now going same time as ours. Most strange. Getting the paper work out, she went red. Turns out. She’d in fact misread the 24 hour clock, so than fuck in her case she got a text or she’d have missed it

Down to Pembroke we went, joined the queues at 4 am! lordie! Only time I’ve ever been up at that our is when I’m falling in home from a club! We don’t get on board till close to 7am. Roughest crossing known to man! Green faces does not cover it! DYING! We get to Rosslare. Well outside of it, nice captain man tells us, nope can’t dock, too dangerous, lets just sit out here on the windy nasty sea and get greener while he waits to see what he’s told to do.

……………………… We wait, in the end Captain of the ship of the green passengers says fuck it he’s not waiting any longer, it’s now close to 11am, and we are going to sail up to Dublin port……

More time on the nasty ship I’m dying at this stage! choppy choppy waters, people walking and falling over, no it’s not the drinks fault this time it’s the sea! Except for kids, they could run everywhere and remain standing, resilient little buggers.

We finally dock in Dublin port. In a port that’s not able for our ship, we get towed in. We’ve to REVERSE off the ship for a bit do a U turn and drive off! Yes only in Ireland do they encourage folks who’ve not slept in day to attempt to reverse off a ship! I’m back in Dublin at least. Short trip along the Quays. Home. BED

We’re planning next year already! FLIGHTS this time

Did I mention over whelming! The game was intense, the first twenty minutes was like we weren’t awake! Then we woke up and were in control! Much roaring, yelling, screaming and pointing was all done. Anyone who goes to watch a game and sits their quietly is bloody weird! It was the final for feck sake! Tense match! Fecking brilliant. Down to the second half and it was bloody close! 16 13 final score. WE WON!!! I’d seen matches on TV before of this scale but never been. It’s really emotional!

From the start we’d followed them. It was a great way to send Declan Kidney off! We were the champions for the second time in three years! That’s some achievement. Back to the streets we went! Back to the side of a pub and got more beer to celebrate! The day was early we were going to celebrate true Munster style and educate those around us.

All the photos to explain one of the best weekends I’ve ever had with some of my best craziest mates ever (yes they are on crew also ) are HERE have a giggle! Do we did.

So there we are all ready to go and head into meet the rest of the loons. We’ve gone from nutters to loons, as the rest of them are doing the same! Trusty Mr. Satnav now knows the way in, and brings us to our destination. As we drive along the motorway with the car painted, flags flying, the horns sound, the sound and horns get louder the closer we get to Cardiff. Road diversions are in place and we take some random other turn, but satnavvy gets us there.

Ok, now the sight before me is one of pride, shame, and utter disbelife and also hilarious. Only a photo can explain it. Yes these are my utter lunatic friends. We’ve arrived. Jumping onto the jeep!

So I did mention earlier about ticketmaster being a tit! Do you have any idea how many Munster people are in Cardiff, never mind the amount of Welsh folks, oh and a few French thrown in for balance( though not that many). Bloody hell it took us nearly the bones of over an hour to track down the ticket master office. We basically circled the stadium, through all the people in the streets to get our tickets. Feck sake! We got them though. That’s all that matters. Let the relaxing begin.

Should point out, through all of the running around the stadium the looks we got, saying that, a lot of folks dressed up. But we did get a lot of photos taken with many random folks, and even the French TV who asked who we thought would win! Most amusing! Which did add to finding the tickets as we were stopped every 3 minutes.

Cardiff is the most relaxed city I’ve been to. Maybe it was the weekend that was in it. The sunshine. Thousands of Munster folks over here, and again the token amount of French supporters. But bloody hell it was fantastic. Pubs were so packed that they had no problem in folks going to off licenses stocking up on drink, and drinking it outside on the streets. Neither did their police. So we drank. Were merry, and waited till we could go to the stadium and roar! Not that we weren’t doing that already though

We finally made our way to the stadium. OMG! MASSIVE! The sea of red was overwhelming! We were there! Let the game begin.

Now for those of you who use satnav’s and found them to be helpful, yes I will agree except for one thing. They don’t always want to bring you to where you want to go.  As you can image we were all shattered at this stage. Up since silly o’clock and boat ride over. We plugged in our address into Mr. Satnav, and headed towards our destination. It was looking good. It got us to the village and one line of the address we chucked in. However, this is where we end up going around in circles for the next half hour close to pulling our hair out. We’re tired. Cranky. Want sleep. Shower. Food, and to get there. We’re at the street name according to our satnav, but no hotel. Up and down the road we go. We’d even printed off AA road map directions as a back up, so between the two you’d think we’d be there!

Finally, I pick up the phone and ring the hotel, give our location and some landmarks, she giggles! Seemingly that road was closed years ago, we need to go out up left, and around and down some other road! feck sake! So AA please update your maps and Mr. Satnav learnt our destination and SAVED IT!

Arrived checked in and some of the lads went to sleep for a bit. Got up later and headed into Cardiff to meet the rest of the nutters. Tom managed in his most ever charming ways to get the barmen to make 10 pints of Jellyfish for us! for £55quid in TOTAL, not each!  Should point out, CARDIFF IS REALLY REALLY GOOD VALUE!

Deciding to be good people and not be broken the next day, plugged back in our hotel address and went back there and rested for the big day ahead, after all, it had rained and the paint needed to be touched up and we needed to be in early the next day as we’d to collect our tickets. Turns out no matter how many times you pay (twice) to ticketmaster to get your tickets delivered they thought they’d like to add some fun to our day on Heineken cup final day to go collect them!

Jellyfish!

We eveuntally were in another queue to embark on the boat. Turns out, Coxy and myself really should not be allowed to ever get the fidgets. Coxy had paint. We had free time on our hands. Our car needed to be “Done Up” So that’s exactly what we did. Painted the car with paint!As you can image the strange looks we got. the music was blaring to the Frames, and Journey! We had paint brushes in our hands, blue and red paint was being painted on the jeep. Folks got out of their cars to watch. Kids were pointing, mothers were warning not to even dream about thinking of doing the same thing.

We were getting into the swing of things Short ferry journey over and were in Pembroke. Disembarking off the ferry, the horns were blaring. The tenstion was rising. Munster had arrived Wales. We were coming to take it over for the weekend in good spirit. Everyone was in flying form. Our jeep was still getting stares from folks and the cars beeped even more when they saw it drive past. We were going to enjoy our trip no matter what. Tensions were rising high, we were there finally, after months of planning, watching the lads play. We had followed them, gotten behind our Red Army!