Analysis of the organizer of the event
Before the first meeting I was very concerned. We had never done anything like this before. I felt like I was drowning in the amount of preparatory work that I needed to do before we can start. It was difficult to make people understand what we were trying to do. It was difficult to raise interest and to find participants. It was even difficult to find moderators-lecturers. I was anxious and overwhelmed.
After the initial tough times, I was back on track when the possible lecturers finally started replying to me and giving me their agreements to participate in the project. I also found the participants for the first meeting. We seemed to be on our way.
Then we started having new problems. All the large rooms were booked on the day of our planned meeting. I had to find a solution. After some thinking I came up with a plan. We would do the meeting before the library was open and could therefore use the open service area. This required a lot of labour in the early morning hours but it was worth it. I felt that I had worked hard and had focus again.
On the day of the meeting everything was well with the lecturer and the Estonian group. We had trouble with the Russian group. They were afraid to participate in the discussion because they were worried about their Estonian language skills. This made me feel sad for them and worried for the success of the meeting.
Luckily our lecturer was very intelligent and asked good questions. She made the meeting interesting despite the lack of contribution from the Russian group. I felt respect for her ability to manage an event.
After the meeting we got very positive feedback from both groups. Even the Russian group felt that they would take part again. I felt accomplished. I felt a bit better about organizing the next meeting. But the issues with this one made me feel a bit of worry and doubt.
Report of the event
| before_the_next_event_-_talk_to_me__i-report7.12.15.pdf |
