Yay, we did it!
Oh, right, it’s me, the intern.
But we had our first in person FLARE literary festival and it was great! I had some great conversations with authors and representatives of local writing organizations and overall had a good time.
It was a little intense sometimes, because even for all of my experience working and volunteering for events like this, for this one I had the most amount of responsibility. Everyone was super friendly, but since I was one of four or five people helping the other authors directly, it felt, I don’t know, more than other events. As opposed to sitting at one table doing one thing for a shift, I was there for the entire festival taking care of multiple responsibilities, which gave me an important experience which I hope to take forward to future events.
Do you want to know the key thing everyone needs to do for something like this? Communication. Being a “representative” or at least “head errand boy” means for some people I’m the one they go to to ask a question or for help. I’m not saying they ignored the actual leaders/executives of FLARE, but sometimes since I was closer they decided to ask me so they didn’t have to ask them. And with that happening, it proved the previous communication with each other was very critical to the festival. I was able to answer their questions. It’s great that FLARE is led by a group of adults with experience as opposed to, say hypothetically, an arbitrarily assigned group of college students who don’t answer my emails even when the presentation is due the next day. Hypothetically.
Now, I’m by no means close or ready to take an administrative role for an event, but this experience would help highlight the importance of communicating if I were. Although let’s be real here, how it will actually help me is when I’m the assistant to someone with “command” or “authority” and they’re willing to listen to me.
So yeah, I got some experience with the recent festival, but it is by no means complete, and I look forward to other things we’ll do in the future for more opportunities to work and learn.
John the FLARE intern