An honest review by our wonderful intern Meg

As the final year project at university, I have been tasked with organising a THEM Conference alongside other students. This event gave me the opportunity to gain more experience in event planning, but also taught me more about the highs and lows of this industry.

The theme of this year’s THEM Conference was employability. To deliver the best possible experience to the students, we had to think of activities and workshops they could participate in during the day. As much as I enjoyed watching this event come to life and delivering all the activities on the day without delays or any major problems, not everything went smoothly in the process of planning it.

Finding the venue, confirming the attendance of the guests, securing sponsorship and refreshments, it all takes time and can be stressful when waiting for a response. The first idea that everything would get booked quickly got completely crushed when just booking the rooms for the conference took more than a month. This is also a constantly changing industry, so last minute adjustments had to be made in order to deliver the event. Even on the day, two speakers had to be switched as one did not get to the venue on time.

So, event planning can be rewarding and bring a lot of opportunities to learn and grow as a person, but it is also stressful and can take a very long time to confirm anything, and it should not be taken for granted :)