Doubling your bean bag order at the last minute is always a good sign that your outdoor event is going to be a success, which is exactly what happened for Melbourne University’s Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (FEIT) Endeavour Semester 2 Exhibition on Wednesday, 19 October, when a rare and welcomed sunny event day arrived! While this was the sixth Endeavour Exhibition the JTPM team has produced since 2018, every event is slightly different, bigger and better than the last, with graduating students showcasing their innovative and impressive final year projects to industry professionals, family and friends. The day culminates in an Awards ceremony, recognising some of the stand-out projects and students of the year with various prizes including the People’s Choice, Department and Industry sponsored accolades up for grabs. This hybrid celebration was held online via - allowing overseas based students to join in, and on-site on the University’s South Lawn for the Exhibition and Wilson Hall for the Awards. With 130 projects on display, 412 students involved, and more than 2,000 attendees we needed plenty of space set up several large marquees for students to share their projects and set up areas to connect and network with one another and their guests.
Despite having run the event many times before, planning began about a year in advance and then really picked up in June/ July, requiring a total of 800 hours of combined teamwork to deliver the final event. Having the venue so close to the office certainly was convenient, reducing the amount of travel and OOO time when it came to site visits. Being able to bump into the venue almost five days in advance on the previous Friday was also really helpful, providing plenty of time to get everything just right. This also allowed students to bump in from early Tuesday morning and helped create a sense of excitement and anticipation around the campus in the lead up to the day. Divided into two parts the event kicked off from 10:00am - 3:30pm where the Exhibition area was open to the public, while the 5:30- 9:30pm time slot was reserved for the industry viewing and Awards.
Well done to the core event planning team; Taylah (Comms & Awards), Heidi (Operational Logistics), Chloe and Opal (Project students), and thanks to Will for supporting in the morning and Angeline, Melanie, Emily and Erin for helping at the Award - like a well-oiled machine, working seamlessly together! Event highlights included getting to check out all the awesome engineering and technology projects and hanging out with our favourite Melbourne Uni mascot, Barry the Bear, but our lawn chill-out zone was also pretty popular - offering funky beats from a live DJ, free coffee courtesy of Airwallex and comfy bean bags to kick back and soak in the sunshine, not that we got to do much of the relaxing of course… A couple of special mentions:
Open Air Events – absolute professionals when it comes to installing marquees
Microhire Melbourne - awesome AV and IT support at the Awards
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