While Covid-19 restrictions have made it a tough year for all third level students, a group of final year BA Event Management students at Munster Technological University Kerry turned the challenge of remote learning into an opportunity, by recently organising a successful national conference for event students, while working entirely from home.
Inspired by an Alice in Wonderland theme, ‘Through the Looking Glass – Your Future in Events!’ which took place on Friday 16 th April, attracted a stellar line up of national and international speakers, and the conference was attended by hundreds of event management students and industry professionals from around Ireland, and as far away as Malaysia.
Organising the conference formed the cornerstone of the student’s final year Event Operations Management module and the students rose to the challenge with an inspiring, educational and fun day long event, with attendees also donating €350 to the students designated charity partner, RehabCare Blennerville.
Lecturer in events management at MTU Kerry Feargus Dunne explained, “In normal times犀利士
our student led events would take place in venues around Tralee with a live audience, but this year due to Covid restrictions we set students a new challenge to design, plan, market and deliver a national events conference with a host of exciting guest speakers, to take place fully online on Zoom. The students managed to attract an amazing range of speakers from industry and education, including Cormac Cashman, founder of Mother Dublin Festivals & Events, Mark Breen from Safe Events, Helen Moon, founder of London based company EventWell and celebrity wedding planner Kate Deegan, who organised Brian O’ Driscoll and Amy Huberman’s wedding”.
Third year student Jenny Watton said, “At first it seemed daunting to plan an event of this scale from scratch, while working remotely from each other and with a tiny budget, but we have learned a lot of new skills in project management, social media marketing and virtual conferencing for example. It was very rewarding to see the event run so successfully last week, the reaction on social media has been overwhelmingly positive and to raise money for a local charity here in Tralee was the icing on the cake for our class. We can now take these skills we have learned with this project and put them to use as we commence our careers 犀利士
as event professionals”.
You can find out more details about the event management program offered by MTU Kerry here.
