Hi there!
Finally, this is the first Sunday I can spend lounging at home after a relatively tight February.
Well, what did I have on my February plate?
“Run to the fire, don’t hide from it.” – Meg Whitman
First of all, I had several joint projects with several tenants to manage which meant there were proposals, meetings and negotiations involved. I can’t tell what they’re about since the deals are still in progress. All I can tell that they shall be interesting and they will hopefully add and interesting benefit our customers! 🙂
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And then I had 2 gathering events, on February 14th and 21st at the usual venue, The Dyandra Convention Center. Every month, the company where I work holds a customer gathering event for the entire Surabaya branch. The event is managed by 2 branch, one branch manage the venue, rundown and talents, as well as the car display while my branch manage the marketing communication area of the event (by the way, I guess I haven’t mentioned, I work in a Japanese automotive dealership, Auto2000, which is a part of Astra Group).
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Though now it already becomes a routine, the preparation is pretty much relentless. First, we figured out what promotion tools design to convey according to the gathering’s theme. Afterwards, I ordered our designer to come out with the design drafts (we have an in-branch designer). The bosses would decide which design they approve of  (usually it takes 2-3 times of revisions) and then I would see it thru the production phase, which meant monitoring the production process in order to assure that the production would finish according to schedule. For a gathering event, we created invitation card for our customers, a venue backdrop and a FB/IG post sized design to be made viral.
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While waiting for the production to finish, I distributed the viral campaign to the sales team to be uploaded on their social media accounts and promoted to the customers. Also at the same time, I had to do an RSVP call for the customers that were invited to the event. Every branch was ordered certain target for customers’ attendance & sales number at the event. Since my branch was one of the branch in charge of the event, it is without saying that we had to achieve the designated target and that’s why the RSVP call was a crucial step. The RSVP call itself usually took about half a day until two days to finish, depending on the number of customers invited. This time, it took me 1 day to finish the RSVP call.
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After the production was finished, the invitations were distributed to each branch and I collected the customers’ list from all the branches to be combined and used at the registry desk on the event. Also we had to prepare for gimmicks: like fishbowl, lucky dip, dummies etc to be brought to the event.
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And then we had our parent company’s 61st birthday ceremony on February 20th. Let’s just call it HUT 61.Â
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This year, our branch got to be the host of the event (I bet it’s because our branch has the biggest office among other Astra Group’s in Surabaya hehehe), which meant there would be a ceremony attended by around 300 people from varied Astra Group’s business division that the parent company holds. It was a formal ceremony, almost like upacara but without the flag ceremony and it would also be followed by casual dinner in a buffet setting. Afterwards, there would be a technical meeting for table tennis & futsal tournament as a part of HUT 61 celebration.
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Oh, and to add the excitement and the adrenaline rush, my boss just told me about it on Thursday, February 15th. There was Chinese New Year holiday on Friday 16th and then I had a day off on Saturday…. and the vendors were having long weekend off too! See this is why my vendors called me Roro Jonggrang.
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For the HUT 61 event, we co-managed it with one other branch (The HRM Branch) and we shared preparation details for the event. On our side, we had to set the venue and properties needed, prepped the sound system and video projectors, rundown and video slides, as well as do rehearsal. Kok hampir semuanya yah hahaha… but it’s okay, I enjoyed it!
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We had preparation meeting and rehearsal on Monday evening with the whole event committee. The rehearsal closed at around 7.30 p.m… afterwards I finished the final rundown for the HUT 61 as well as another rundown and preparation for employee assembly in the morning (it was basically the same formal ceremony in order to celebrate the HUT 61 but only for our branch’s employee in the morning).Â
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I got home at 10.30 p.m. and arrived at work the next day at 06.30 a.m. for the morning assembly.
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After the morning assembly, I finished my customers’ follow ups quickly, did a little preparation for the Gathering event and then on to the HUT 61 preparation.Â
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The guests were started to come around 3.00 p..m. But before hand, together with Erlina, the CR from HRM Branch we checked on the final preparations: printing out the cues for the upacara, checking on the food vendors (we did not use a catering service, instead we were using traditional food vendors like bakso, soto, angkringan, etc), coordinating the office boys to set up the upacara and the dinner area properly as well as setting up the seating for tennis & futsal technical meeting afterwards.
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The ceremony started a little bit late, around 04.30 p.m. since the guests were late due to traffic jam and my office being in the far western side of Surabaya. It’s like going to Pondok Indah area in Jakarta I guess.
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After the upacara ceremony, guests & VIPs went straight to the dinner area. Around 06.00 p.m. the technical meeting for tennis and futsal tournament started. The futsal TM took place in the showroom area while the tennis TM took place in the service lounge area.
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Guests were starting to leave around 06.30 p.m. and I went home around 08.30 p.m. after finishing some stuffs and preparing for tomorrow’s gathering event.
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So yeah, that was pretty much how my February went. Quite a handful of events in such a short notice. Yes it was exhausting but on the other side I like the rush of it mainly because I can explore the other sides of my interests and karena kalau nggak ada event-event yang cukup besar dan mendadak seperti ini, boring juga ‘kaaan kalo cuma mengerjakan job desc sehari-hari!
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We created a short video documentation for the upacara event and I will link it down below (as soon as I have found the file hehehe).
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