Just recently, Perak BN Youth organized Street Fiesta in conjunction with the UEFA Champions League Finals that saw Barcelona played against Manchester United on the 28th May 2011. Of course, without any doubt, Barcelona won. Woo hoo! But that my friends, is simply another story. Today I’m writing about the event itself, Street Fiesta – what really happened throughout the preparations.

Tri-Silver Holdings Group (TSHG) took charge of the whole event as the event planner. The men behind TSHG are Mr Megat Shahrin Hamdan and Mr Azman Bakri. Many might not know this but Street Fiesta was their very first event. TSHG is known for managing Perak News.com – an online news resource which covers issues mainly in Perak.

The Press Conference was held on Friday, 20th May 2011, exactly a week before the actual event. I understand that the staff of TSHG only got to know about it on Wednesday, 18th May 2011 and began all the preparations immediately. During the PC, I was asked to be the Emcee/Host on that day and I accepted it politely.

During the PC

On Monday, I was “kidnapped” by TSHG for a week to help them in promoting the event as well as to invite participants to participate in the competitions that they were organizing.On Tuesday, 24th May 2011, the flyers had just arrived and only then we could give it out to public. While I was sitting, waiting for a meeting to start on Tuesday evening, I looked around and everyone – from the big bosses to the black ants on the floor were very busy working like there’s no tomorrow. Well, it’s no surprise that they only had less than a week to settle everything and I said to myself it is nothing to possible for this event to happen.  Honestly, I was scared that this event might not even happen. Why? Please continue reading.

My task was to help especially with inviting celebrities to this event. The budget for celebrities was RMXXXXX. Sorry, don’t think it’s appropriate for me to publish the exact amount here. Let’s just say it’s the same amount you pay for the downpayment of a new Honda City. *Cough*  Nonetheless, by pulling some strings, we managed to get few celebrities who were willing to work within that budget (thank God for that) The next thing that got us feel like shaving our heads were the participants of 3on3 Basketball and Street Dance. The Street Soccer rego form were selling like hot cakes.

 

Personally, being an experienced organizer myself since my days in Penang, I can say that the preparations were done in very last minute. When organizing a huge event like this, the minimum time frame that you need is AT LEAST a month before the actual event. That’s the time when you publicize the event, invite people to come, promote to organizations as well as getting sponsors. I still remember back in ’08, I was part of the organizing committee of Occupational Safety and Health Intervarsity Debating Tournament or popularly known as OSHIDT (pronounced as Oh Shit!) which was one of the events that I handled. Specifically the program secretary (or sexytary as my friends called me for some reasons which I don’t know)  it took us more than 3 months to organize this program. For the record, it was our very first intervarsity event thus making it our first newborn baby. Though it wasn’t the same as Street Fiesta, but every event planning has the same basic. To those of you who remember, i did mention this in an article I wrote sometime last year. Click Here to read it again (Refer to paragraph 4) So as I was saying, it took us more than 3 months to look for sponsorships, participants, accommodation, food and runners. Alhamdullillah, our baby was a huge success. Not that I’m saying Street Fiesta wasn’t successful but just keep on reading.

 

That week, I followed Ikha and Lynn to schools to invite them to participate in the competitions. First we went to Sam Tet School and wanted to meet the Principal to invite their students to participate in 30n3 Streetball Comp. Instead of meeting her, the Basketball teacher came into the school’s office and met us. I must say, the teacher wasn’t pleasant at all. She was harsh and unladylike. She gave a lot of excuses yadaa yadaaa. She told us that we need to get an approval from the PPD. Without any questions. we went to PPD but unfortunately no one was there due to SUKMA’s closing ceremony rehearsals at the Stadium. It took us awhile to decide whether or not to wait for them and we finally decided to just go on with it.

 

Fast forward to Saturday, the day of the event. We started on a late morning and everyone was so busy and the Malays call it “kelam kabut” But I know, deep down inside everybody was excited and can’t wait for the event to start! (I know I was)  When the sun was a little bit to the West, the program kicked off with teams registration. The secretariats were running around getting things done. At around 6pm, the Townhall Meeting started. I think that the Townhall Meeting was a great idea but sadly there were no positive response from the crowd. Other interesting sites at Street Fiesta were the Inflatable Wall Climbing, Ladies Uptown, and exhibition booths participated by Jabatan Pertahanan Awam, Yayasan Bina Upaya, Polis Diraja Malaysia, CIMB Bank and many more. My gig started at 9pm when I hosted with Abg Black, a local deejay to pull the crowd to have fun and participate in other activities that we have.

Abg Black and I at the centre of the stage

 

The center of attraction would definitely be the live Finals match between Barcelona and Manchester United on the big screen. Starting midnight onwards, the crowd was getting bigger and bigger by every minute. My job finished at 2.30am and I went straight to my room, showered and went to bed. All in all, here comes my conclusion.

 

Despite having to organize a huge event under an extremely short period of time, the organizer TSHG did a great job. Not really a fantastic and superb job but hey, great is good enough already to pull off such event. Two thumbs up to the Big Bosses, Mr Megat and Mr Azman and to all the secretariats for their hard work and sleepless nights. There’s always room for improvement though and I believe you can pull off any other event anytime. I have faith in you!

 

This is Nisa Dottie signing off (for now)

Roger and out!