If you’ve followed my blog very closely, you notice Chaktomuk Short Film Festival (CSFF) has always been my annual highlight. For me, its new edition brings about new challenges. In this post, I’m going to share with you with five, which may benefit your event management skills or life experience in general!
- Briefings and Debriefings
If you are a seasoned event manager, these two tasks should come in as your second nature. Of course, a briefing helps everyone on the team stay on the same page while a debriefing allows us to pick up practical lessons for our next stages of events or life. This year, we managed to put them into practice around 70% of the campaigns we conducted. By the fifth outreach at Cine Hub, most of our crew managed to fill up the gaps of each other for probably the smoothest session in CSFF.
2. Commitments mean Action
Like in previous editions, some volunteers came in only to plug themselves to our momentum. The others would remain dedicated to our cause from the beginning till the end. After our wrap-up session, they turned out to be either the most learned or outstanding members of their own leagues. If you are a volunteer reading this story, I encourage you to put in your 100% in whatever cause you care about. If you can’t, maybe it’s not for you!
3. Risks and Consequences
As much as I love “teaching people” practical lessons, I tend to let them do what they find missing in our arrangements. This year, most of our leading members were given that “power”. As highlighted in the above challenge, without commitment, the power may be put to rest! Still, this risk I took was calculated on the basis of how critical its consequences might prove. Consequently, I’ve learned how far those members can go and so have they!
4. Inconsistency Vs Flexibility
If you work on content creation, be it artworks, photos or videos, consistency counts from one to another, especially based on an organization’s visibility guideline. Until we reach this common ground, both our Sunflower Film Alliance members and CSFF volunteers had to go through some trials and errors. Yet, my hope is for them to comply with those standard terms while remaining open to creative ideas or flexible elements.
5. Teamwork still Matters
I’m not sure how much all our crew of the 12th edition understood. Nonetheless, by the time of our closing, everyone seemed to complete their duties, as assigned and seen fit. The big difference was for us to circle up and verify each other’s role in each assignment. The reverse effect was also reflected when a leader or two was left behind and ended up doing all their junior colleagues’ jobs!
All in all, every CSFF edition teaches me new challenges, lessons, and, above all, opportunities to grow this endeavor and myself in professional terms! For those effects, I appreciate those of you for having helped build such film momentum in our intimate film community.