The Event started with participants meeting near the Cactus on Forrest place from 10:30 AM, this was a great meetup location because the Cactus is iconic and very easy to locate, some sort of sign for identification would have helped for those who are new to the committee and may not have known anyone already there. Due to some participants been a bit late and we ended up starting the event at about 10:15 AM. We were then assigned to 4 teams at random, with executive committee members as the leaders of each group. In our newly formed teams, we were given an hour and a half to complete the puzzles of the scavenger hunt, based at different locations around the city. The puzzles were a great way for us to break the ice between our fellow team members and the commute from one location to another was a good time to talk to each other and build our friendship.
After the completion of the scavenger hunt we met back at the Cactus and from there used various methods of transport to get to UWA. The group of people I travelled with did not include anyone from UWA, therefore we had some trouble finding our way to meetup location. When we all arrived at the meetup location in UWA, at around 12:30 PM, the pizza was served, with enough quantity and variety for everyone. In addition to this drink were also available, ranging from water to soft drinks.
The planning section of the event commenced at around 1:15 PM with an introduction to 2 tools members of the YP use to stay organised and on track as a committee, Slack and Trello. Slack is a messaging server that allows the creation of channels to discuss different topics rather than just a single message thread, this can be beneficial as it prevents a single messaging thread about a topic getting clustered with other topics. This has already been implemented within the Curtin IET on-campus committee. Trello is a tool to help keep the track of the progress, deadlines and requirements for upcoming events, this seems like a great tool to keep everyone on track and on time. The Curtin IET committee has not yet implemented this, but I’m sure it will be set up and used within the next few weeks.
The remainder of the event was focused on planning and discussing what events we would be undertaken in the coming year., this was a great opportunity to bounce ideas off fellow committee members to test the viability of our ideas and to even improve on it. We were also able to hear ideas, from other on-campus committees, that could be beneficial to the Curtin committee.
My take home from this event was very positive, I was able to learn more about other committee members, and the city, discovery more effective ways to communicate and plan for events, and I was even able some great ideas on how we could run things better at the Curtin IET.
