DE

IAF Indonesia
Making Magic Designing & Facilitating Impactful Gatherings

Seminar
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As someone who is in charge of organizing events in a non-profit organization, the pandemic has created a new challenge for me. What was held in a small budget hotel ballroom with bad taste coffee and small bite-sized snacks has turned into a 2-hour gatherings in virtual conference platform. It worked for the past 2 months, but then the webinar fatigue, happens. 

Transitioning all offline events to online in a fast-paced time was the only solution in order to get our messages sent out to the public. However, we also compete with other organization who is having a webinar with the same objectives: get the people’s attention. The similar formats and event designs are overused,  the  attention  span  drastically  decreased  within  the  first  3  months  of  webinar  era.  My organizations rely on me to disseminate messages out to the public, but low number of participants has created a high concern towards my job. It was a wakeup call for me to keep on looking for strategic ways to send messages to the public. 

To summarize the workshop, I am glad that Marike, Mana, and Clinton connected me to other people who has the similar job roles as I am. We came from many countries all over the world, speak different languages, has different cultures, yet we are encountering the same problems in our job. What comes to my mind during the first day of the seminar: I am not alone.

There are many things that I learned from this seminar, but one thing that I remember vividly that I bring into my professional job is the objective of the event. Or, as Marike said it, begin with the end. Identifying outcomes or what we want our audience to take away from the events is the key to make sure the online events are attractive for people to participate. And the empathy map exercise also allows me to learn more about my audiences. This puts me to learn more about the audience behaviors and attitudes towards my company’s messages, and design more effective ways to connect with them.

Other than nourishing my self for my professional work, the workshop also allows me to grow personally. Through this workshop, I realized that having the right support groups to understand my personal needs and improve my self-development. It also helps me to envision my future and motivation; Where do I want to be in the next 5 years? How to achieve that goal? Who are going to be my side when I achieve this goal? These are the questions that I didn’t know I needed to answer.

Overall, I am glad that the workshop inspired me to create more meaningful events for my audience and to increase engagement with participants better through digital tools and innovative methods. I hope I can still be connected with other participants as well and keep on inspiring and motivate each other to create more meaningful events. 

 

Written by: 
Clarines Sadira
Events & Partnerships Officer Center for Indonesian Policy Studies