As promised here is an update of what I have been up to during my work experience at The Conference People, on the 21st of April I had my first experience of a live event as I attended the eBay University in Coventry.
On the Friday it was the start of a long journey with the team up to the Ricoh arena which is home to Coventry City Football club and has impressive conference facilities and hotel accommodation. I was surprised at how massive the ground was and how much it had to offer as a conference venue. http://www.ricoharena.com/. The hotel rooms lead double lives, as by day they are executive boxes for the games, which gives them striking views of the stadium. However not much of my time was spent in the comforts of the hotel room!
After setting up on arrival we were soon off for a dinner in Coventry town centre with the TCP staff as well as members of the eBay team. It was a nice evening getting to know all the people involved in the event, and it was definitely the calm before the very busy storm that was to follow.
The Following morning I was up and ready for 7 am to help organise the final touches needed to help the registration run smoothly for when the day begun at 9 am and I was put in charge of one of the very exciting tools which goes by the technical name of ‘zapper’ which would be used to speed up the process of registering the delegates. From then on it seemed non stop all day, with the team ensuring that all the exhibitions were running smoothly, keeping the speakers to their time limits and running up and down with a microphone during the Q and A sessions.
It was interesting to find out new things about eBay and how important it is to so many people. There am I thinking eBay was just a place to flog a T-shirt or other such item that you no longer wanted but there were people who literally run their livelihood from the site, making a far more useful and important tool than I first thought. The eBay exhibitions cater for everyone, from the beginner to the more advanced seller, making it the perfect event for everybody. http://pages.ebay.co.uk/university/
The day rushed passed very quickly making my first event experience a very blurry one and the following nights sleep, very long, but it was a brilliant introduction into the event world in action and I look forward to the next one and also learning more about what goes into the planning of such an event in the months beforehand.
