Meetings

This past week my work load has really been ramping up to get ready for the Jazz and Blues Festival coming up April 4th and 5th. It will be interesting to see how many people attend as Country Thunder and the Tempe Music Festival are the same weekend! In addition to my heavier workload, I've also been able to attend 2 extra meetings this week.
First I went on a walk through with the company responsible for the children's area- namely the inflatables. they have a pletohra of different attractions- and you don't really know what they're going to bring out to the event until the day of. I learned about some of the things that need to be considered in order to place the inflatables. For example, they wanted to bring their most popular inflatable out (which they'd only recently determined by counting the # of tickets turned in at each of their attractions) that happens to be enormous, but it couldn't be in front of any stores, and they didn't want to put it next to the giant bike arch being erected by the Arts Commission as that would make that area of the event way too heavy. There will be a second company at the event with a euro bungee in the same area and it was also interesting to see how the inflatable company looked out for the euro bungee company and made sure they had a good spot, etc- even though they're technically competition.
My second meeting was a production meeting with the guys in charge of audio, the company providing and rigging the power, two other girls from special events and the company in charge of the scenery for the stages. It hadn't occured to me but putting the 4 different entities in one room allowed everyone to talk, work out any potential issues and pave a path so people will be familiar with each other when the event is actually happening.
Meetings can be a bit dry, but you get a lot done in a small amount of time and it really promotes cooperation among companies, departments, etc. Next blog, I'll fill you in on the projects I've been in charge of this week.