For the end of semester exhibition for both SIGNAL and RMIT exhibitions I had volunteered as the production manager alongside Siobhan. We were in charge of organising and planning the events and coordinating the project by making sure everyone was organised and keeping up to date.

 We created a shared file on google docs that had our shared production management notes. The purpose of this document was to keep each other and the class up to date with tasks.

This document included…

The project brief
A list of all the students and tasks
Deadlines
A calendar including exhibition dates, meetings and submission dates
Meeting notes
Updates

This document was shared with the class and studio tutor. We requested feedback on the document, making sure we hadn’t missed any important information or any other information that our classmates wanted to have on hand.

We conducted weekly check ups on the teams to ensure they had made deadlines for themselves and to ensure that they kept up to date with the deadlines. Through endless Facebook messages we managed to keep on top of all the groups.
I made my mobile number available to be contacted at any time (within reason) to discuss any issues or queries.

 In the week that Robbie was away I organised the two classes that were on during that week and used it as a chance to get some feedback on what needed to be attended to as well as helping organise the tutorial at SIGNAL with Jordan.

In this first class I went over the production notes with the class and went over where everyone up to (This information is in the production notes).
I helped organise meetings and deadlines to create a timeline.
I organised the speakers for the RMIT exhibition and updated them on what was needed from them.

At the end of this class we decided that we all needed to become familiar with the template for signal and get a bit more information as to how to film our footage so that it fits correctly into our templates. From this I helped organise the tutorial on how to use the template for SIGNAL screens. I also filmed the tutorial and made it available to anyone who needed it.

My role as production manager became its hardest closer to the exhibition dates. We attempted to organise an opening event, with drinks, food and possible a sponsorship from mountain goat. After a few back and forth emails from the team and SIGNAL it became clear this was not possible due to various issues.

 We kept in close contact with SIGNAL staff in attainting the logo to provide to the PR team and organising the opening event.
In the end the opening event made up of a small speech and then a first viewing of the final SINGAL project- obsession.

We tried to keep good communication between us (RMIT students) and the staff at SIGNAL but had little success. We would get very little response from the staff as they had many other commitments, and when we did finally get responses they had only part of the information we needed. We worked through this through keeping strong contact with Robbie our tutor.

We kept our tutor, Robbie up to date with meetings, task and due dates through our production management notes, emails, phone calls and Facebook.

These are only some of the emails…

I also helped as much as I could with helping out the groups. I helped the PR a fair bit through printing cutting and distributing some extra flyers.
I also put a lot of effort into helping put together the booklet. Through the printing and assembly process.
Although I have developed so many new skills I also need to improve on some things also.
I certainly need to improve on time management.
I should have organised the deadlines for the booklet to be at least a week earlier, as we were making the booklets up until the last hour.
I also need to be more mindful of the personal lives of the people that I am coordinating. As sometimes exterior issues come in the way of their capability of completing tasks.
I need to find a way to work around it and share the load among the other students so that there isn’t just a handful of people doing the majority of the work.

 From this role as production manager, I have gained a world of experience. Being only a first year I have helped coordinate an incredibly talented group of people exhibit at an exhibition space open to the public.
This task has given me real world experience at such an early stage in my learning and has taught me a great deal about what I can achieve from this course.

 From this role (and from this course) I have developed particular skills in

Coordinating
Communicating
Organisation
Collaborating/ team work
Problem solving
Patience

I have learnt that things don’t always work out perfect and the way you planned, but I have also learnt, that it is also okay. Especially when you have a group of incredible people doing everything they can to make something great.