Impact Communications the third

Today I walked into Impact excited to get into some work and make some event magic happen.

So walking into the back gate I felt comfortable, like I had been there for at the very least months not days. It was the first time that that Oscar, the resident dog, didn't bark at me at all, in fact he greeted me with affection. It was relaxing being able to sit at my desk and have casual "how was your weekend" water cooler conversation with Tobias who sits at the desk next to me. Meesha had a breakfast to go to so she wasn't in when I got in. It gave me good opportunity to respond to a couple of emails that I didn't get a chance to respond to earlier, as well as get a bit of a catch up on what I had done last week including following up on how successful the launch was.

When Meesha got back I enjoyed a change of scenery. I bunked in her office with her for the day, which I found more productive. Unfortunately the event managemen1t game wasn't as magical today as it can be. Applications for abstracts for the Road Safety Conference have been closed and accessed so part of my task list for the day was data entry of all the reviews of the abstracts, which is great when you can't read a persons hand writing. It wasn't a terribly strenuous activity but I'm aware that it's something that needs to be done and reading the abstract reviews was quite enlightening.

However, there is only so much data entry that one can do before risking losing all of ones hair so I broke it up with a couple of other things that would help Meesha and the other Impact crew out. She had asked me to do a little research into possible Industry Associations that would benefit their company, so I did and I put it together in a spread sheet so that I can fill more in later and so that it will be easy for her to have a look through to see what has  the best options for them. In between this I continued looking at options for entertainment for the National Road Safety Conference dinner and then before I knew it it was time to leave, with only one stop over to make.

So Impact Communications is the venue booking agent for the Mt. Eliza house in Kings Park. At present Frasers is holding the house somewhat hostage for their functions but it is still available for Impact to book out. So Meesha took me out to the house to check it out while she showed it off to a girl planning to have her wedding there. I though it was useful for me to see the house, particularly since I had no clue that this place existed.

After today I look forward to going back in next week and seeing what else I can do at this company.

Bullying, an evolutionary redundancy

If you believe in Evolution, which I do, you could look at the way that school bullying would play a part in evolutionary terms. It's the tougher kids weeding out the week ones. This makes sense if you are looking at the world over 5000 years ago when the world was run by the physically stronger. As we move forward into the world we see less need for brute strength and more focus on the need for a more nurtured and developed mind. This is where nerdy became cool and the trend for the IT crowd came about. When we grow up we realise that pushing people around is no longer the way to get things done effectively. Within most societies Fascism has been deemed an ineffective way to run things and that it makes more sense to allow for communication from all areas of  society. Even in organisations, the manager is no longer the dictator or the business, they involve the business in all decisions and good communication is found to be key. So if we are making these big steps forward in our life, as an evolution of a community mindset why would we accept that bullying is just something that kids need to get out of their system or that it is a necessary evil that they need to experience in order to grow up, ready for the real world. In the "real world" do we accept having somebody isolated and humiliated. I believe that we have moved forward from that sort of behaviour. 

We have given our women and people of all races and religions the right to vote, the right to work in a workplace and to be treated as equals. So why should the way that our children are treating each other stay at a stand still. Well I suppose it's not. In fact it's getting worse. More sophisticated. Where the majority of school yard bullying was physical and performed by the big boys picking on the little boys now it is easier for kids to do it to each other over social media pages and text messaging. Now most culprits of bullying are girls and they attack with psychological warfare. The strongest and smartest of minds can be attacked simply by one little girl starting a mean page about a student and asking her friends to hit like. Think about all of the great ideas that we would be missing out on because the smart kids in class are pushed so far as to withdraw from sports, withdraw from their piers, withdraw from school and even withdraw from life. How many inventions will these children have lost the confidence to discover?

It's difficult to stop children from bullying, we all have the: "kids will be kids" mindset, but that doesn't make it OK and it doesn't mean we should accept it as a necessity of life.

So don't let your more evolved counterpart be squished at a young age before he can find you a cure for cancer.

Moving into the real world

Walking into the office on my first day of work experience was daunting. Who knew how an office of public relations professionals would react to a 23 year old who is trying to find some footing in a new industry. Well I can tell you, fabulously.

Impact Communications specialises in event management, public relations and integrated communications. They are currently putting together the WA Road Safety National Conference, which they organise every year. This is a 4 day conference which includes a conference dinner where they usually organise entertainment that makes an impact.

On my first day I was introduced to the company and asked to look into a few entertainment options for them. This was a great opportunity for  me to settle in and do a bit of research and start to make some phone calls. After being kept busy for a while in doing this as well as chasing up some pits and pieces that they wanted to have for the conference I was dragged down to what they call "the shed". I felt like this was my initiation into the company.- On a hot day trudging around in their big storage shed to see what campaigns they get involved in and what they have for those campaigns. Going back to the office it was all about following up on responses to emails and making phone calls for quotes etc. Not as glamorous as you might think.

My second week of work experience felt possibly less successful. There was a little more to follow up from the last weeks correspondence before going down to the UWA University Club to set up for an event.

On Friday the 18th of March The Office of Road Safety and The Government of Western Australia launched a new campaign to encourage people to slow down on the road. On this day Impact hosted the launch breakfast. On Thursday the 17th was a rush around to finish up the organising for the event. Getting an introduction into what goes on in setting up for an event and just how useful it is to have contacts in the industry for when things may not go to plan or for when last minute changes are made.

All in all so far I am still hoping to get my hands a little more dirty as far as my work experience goes, but it has been a great fulfilling experience for my first two days.

Hire me not my gender

"I'm always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians."

John F. Kennedy

Dear Editor,

I have always been an advocate for women’s rights and I believe that everyone should be considered equally for a job whether they are a man or woman, or of any race, so long as they can perform the job equally well. So when it came that we may have the opportunity to promote a woman as the Western Australian Governor I thought “why not, I’m sure a woman can do the job equally as well as a man.” Then I came across some articles that got me questioning.

Many people have written articles that tell us “It’s about time Western Australia got a woman Governor” or that “Western Australia needs a woman Governor.” Comments like these intrigued me. I wasn’t sure if I had missed an area of the job description of the State Governor that implied it was better performed by a woman. I delved further into some of these arguments that strongly supporting women in the role as Governor in hopes of finding out what basis they had to form such a strong opinion. For the most part I found them lacking any foundation for an argument that suggests a woman would be more qualified for the role. One editorial in Perth Now seemed to focus on previous women in powerful roles in WA such as Edith Cowan who was the first woman elected to an Australian Parliment, when she won a seat in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, in 1921 and Carmen Lawrence who became our first female State Premier in 1990. From this writer’s point of view Western Australia has been a "trailblazer in politics." So I asked myself: why is it so important that the position of Governor in Western Australia be held by a woman? Equal Opportunity Commissioner Yvonne Henderson said: "There's no lack of good candidates and I hope the Government does go ahead and appoints a woman just to send a message that women are as competent and are able to do all the same sorts of jobs that men do. And I think the time has come when people are pleased to see women occupying these positions." I would have thought that, if ever, when our country appointed The Honourable Julia Guillard as Prime Minister this message would have been sent.

Is appointing a woman to send a message really the right decision, or is it tokenism? In New South Wales Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir, AC was sworn in as Governor of State in 2001, in Queensland Her Excellency Ms Penelope Wensley AO was sworn in as Governor of state in 2008, and Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce AC was sworn in as Governor General of the Commonwealth of Australia in 2008. With two out of seven State Governors already woman and our Governor General also a woman, Australia is certainly not afraid to offer these roles to women. However, when does it stop becoming equal opportunity and start becoming about evening the numbers? Perhaps we should also consider the person’s race, there certainly aren't enough people of Aboriginal decent in government, or possibly look for those with disabilities before appointing a State Governor.

Arguing for a woman as Governor purely because “it’s about time” isn’t taking a step forward politically; it’s taking a step backwards. Where female CEO’s earn, on average, two thirds of their male equivalents, Australia should stop trying to focus on sending a message and let companies and employers recognise that if a job can be done equally well by a man or a woman then they should get equal opportunities in that position. If women start to be promoted to even up the numbers and appear more politically correct then we are in the danger of having people in a higher position of power when one wasn’t earned. In a workplace this would result in less faith in the company, and if we start doing it for our Governors it could result in Australians having less faith in their Government.

To be sent to:

Sam Weir, editor at the Sunday Times:

weirs@sundaytimes.newsltd.com.au