Event manager’s dreams are destroyed

My colleagues and I are working our butts off trying to get things up and running for an event we’re holding at the beginning of July. We will present all of our school projects of the last two years.

Even though I like all of the projects, my personal favourites are a mobile math rally,  who am I (now and in 20 years), and an IRL advent calendar. The reason I like these projects is because the school children get to go outside of their classrooms, beyond the restrictions of their curriculum and the boredom of frontal instructional methods, to discover the world around them.

I always thought that I would like to be an event manager. I was under the illusion that it might be something that I would be good at. Let me tell you, it really is a lot harder than it looks.

At the moment we are trying to get the website up and working both in German (40 projects) and English (dito), do the layout for forty handouts and print up a total of 1600 copies, layout and print 40 posters, print out quotes from the teachers and students, print out extra photos, work out the layout of 55 pin boards, make up a 200 photo slideshow, makeup eight large ceiling banners, set up a technical schematic for the event, write and send off invitations, make up a schedule, and get our graphic designer the information she needs to complete a hundred-page brochure.

And, do you know what… nothing works! Printer drivers, Windows/OS operating systems, system administration rights, software programs, software versions, task coordination, document versions, and people’s temperaments… are never ever compatible. I think I am going nuts.

Then, just to make myself feel really miserable, I browsed through Oprah Winfrey’s site on her Legends Weekend. I look at her party planner, Colin Cowie, and can totally understand why he is so neurotic. It’s not as they portray him on the show as being gay or British (though he is now an American) that makes him neurotic, but just because he has so many fricking things to see all day long, and none of the square pieces fit into the round holes.