Samantha Morris

Responsibilities

During my time with the Des Moines Arts Festival (DMAF), I was in charge of three main categories; Entertainment which consisted of 24 total performers/bands on two separate stages, 26 Food vendors throughout the Festival site, and the Community Outreach Program (COP) which hosted 20 non-profit organizations. For each of these categories, I had the opportunity to create everyone’s contract, collecting their paperwork/fees, and being the point person if they had any questions or needed to make any changes to their contract. When we got closer to the Festival, I ensured that each of these groups had their load-in/out map and were prepared for the Festival on June 24-26. During the Festival, I had two key roles; first and foremost, I oversaw the COP, ensuring they had everything they needed and were interacting with all the guests that came to their booth. In addition to the COP, I was able to help the other departments, such as bringing sandbags for a food vendor sign, vacuuming any rainwater, or ensuring that staff had water during the heat wave. Post Festival I have been working with these three groups to obtain any last fees, send out pictures from the Festival, and make the overall Festival's final report.

Accomplishments

When I thought about this question, I wanted to come up with something specific, like making contracts or putting pieces of the event together; but the one thing I kept coming back to was the relationships that I built with non-profit coordinators, food vendors, volunteers, artists, and so many more.

Learning experience

The greatest lesson I learned was that it's all about the details, which will stick with me throughout my career. When creating an event such as the DMAF, every little detail has to be correct, or something could potentially go wrong. For example, contracts. If you are working on a contract, you need to ensure details such as the date, payment amount, time, or any other detail are right. Another small example would be to ensure that you have enough tables and chairs when hosting a meeting.

What advice would you give?

I have two main pieces of advice. One, don’t be afraid to speak up. If you have a question, ASK IT; if you have an idea, SAY IT! You would rather ask a question and be right than assume you have the right answer. This also plays into the idea of say it, you never know, maybe your new idea could help save time and money (two vital things in the Event Industry). The second piece of advice would be to always lend a helping hand. In the Event industry, everyone is a team, don’t be that teammate who isn’t willing to put in the work or assume that there isn’t something else that needs to be done.