SPEAK up!

Yesterday was the launch of my university's debate club dubbed ‘SPEAK!’.

The event went great! New members that signed up were more than 200% of the initial numbers – and I thought the event was about to go bad!

None of us had any experience on how university debate was like. I myself have not done any debating since junior high and that was like child-debate! Thank god one of our connections from UiTM was glad to help. Big help actually. He brought a whole team from KL and they were very very good! I felt something I haven’t felt for such a long time – competition. And I love it!

Our small team had only THREE DAYS to prepare everything and that was the weekend! Approvals, Publicity, posters, guest list, refreshments, venue booking, transportation, restaurant reservation for VIPs, program tentative, extra performances, photography, registration procedures etc…etc…etc and I can’t believe we actually made it!

I’m lucky to have the chance to work with these very dedicated people: Mo, Nikki, Neysa, Laone, Thato, of course our President Nana and those I couldn’t recall, Thank You. I wouldn’t have worked as hard as I did if it wasn’t for you guys. You showed me what hard work is like, something I have been missing for nearly two years!

Over the weekend, I was grateful to have the whole house for myself…again! A peaceful environment to work in. Since I was working under publicity, I made up an online banner to promote the event, spread the word all over facebook, Yahooed and MSNed everyone in my contact list, put up a post on my faculty’s Google group, emailed 300 students and made a temporary website! As a result, my web host thought I was spamming people so they cancelled my account. Now, one of my self-hosted design blog is dead! Probably going to re-launch the site when I have the time.

The thing paid off, people actually talked about it online and I even received a few compliments for the posters I designed:

Thanks, it was actually Mo’s idea for the whole committee to go around school last Friday looking like that to promote the event. A day later, I thought, why not use the image to promote it online. But time was short and we didn’t have time to gather and make a photo shoot so I had to put only myself in it. Contrary to popular belief, I did not shoot the photo in a studio. What I did was set up my DSLR on a tripod, and shot myself against my living room wall. It’s funny to say but this is actually the best mugshot of myself LOL.

Anyway, what was more wonderful is that later after the event, some students approached us to know the details of the club because they weren’t able to go for the launch.

Had work does pay off but this has to continue. Ahead, the challenges the club will face is big and there’s still a lot of work to do. With the holidays coming up, I’m afraid that the members will lose interest when school reopens this August. Let’s just hope not.