S5E2: PCMA with AKLEA

In today's episode, I am with one of my PCMA Student Competition teams, AKELA Events! Lilly, Kenzie, and Aubrey are reflecting on their experience and providing advice for future competitors! Listen in on three different perspectives and how it has been memorable to them! 

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Transcript

Dr. K: Hello, Hello, my friends. Welcome back! Welcome to the fall. Today on our Thursday podcast, we have such a special treat. If you were listening to the podcast from the spring, then you heard that our school had two teams, two student teams that submitted event proposals to the PCMA North American student competition. And we were about to find out if we were finalists, and if we were moving on to the next round, right when summer hit. And that was the end of us recording the podcast. And so I promised then that I would give updates on socials, and then I would have a podcast in the fall. And so here we are, it's the second podcast of the fall semester. And I wanted to share some of the insights behind the PCMA North American student competition. 

So if you're new to the podcast, this competition is really about students designing the event of the future around specific topics. So students spend an entire semester really diving deep into creating a theoretical event proposal. For an event that's never happened before. It's super unique. And they plan everything from beginning to end. They do all the research, they do marketing plans and production schedules and budgets. And they do all of this they create this crazy proposal. Both of our teams both had over 200 page proposals, they were super, super in depth and they create videos, they go all out. 

And so we were super pumped that both of our teams from the University of Nebraska both made the top finalists. And so I have one of the student teams here with me in the studio today. This was the AKELA events team with Break the Mold, they scored fourth in North America, so pumped for them. And I have three of the five team members to have since graduated and moved on. But I'm super excited to get this group back together and in all honesty, we have just been like having so much fun for the past two hours, hour for the past hour, just I have no idea what this podcast is gonna sound like but it's gonna have lots of laughter It's gonna be a lot of fun. So I'm just gonna kind of pass around the mic and ask some questions. So I've kind of given an overview about what the North American student competition is, but Lilly, can you tell us more specifically about your event and what you, your group actually planned in terms of your event concept?

Lilly: For sure. Thanks for having me back again. So the event was a three day immersive transformational experience targeted towards student affairs professionals at UC Santa Barbara. At the event, student affairs professionals learned how to plan events for their students back at whatever state they're from. The unique or main experience of this event is that each student affairs professional would be shadowing three UC Santa Barbara students,. These students would essentially help these professionals empathize with them and plan and execute an event for the students. All the students who were involved would experience that plan event. And based on what the students rate it student affairs professionals would then receive that feedback and reflect on it.

Dr. K: I just totally loved the entire process your group had of coming and planning that event it started so different. And then it funneled and funneled and funnel then it funneled. And then it was just so incredible how everything worked together. And you were truly like involving a lot of things you had VR, you had special, different things that people had to apply to be at the event, like you had a lot of really cool things that you don't see at a lot of events. One other thing that was really cool about your specific event, just in terms of the proposal, you had this 200 page kind of novel about your event that you were creating and your presentation was super unique and you had comments on that from the judges about how unique your proposal was. So Kenzie, can you share with us exactly what was so unique about your proposal and maybe a little bit about that idea or, you know, the process of it. Things start Okay, yeah,

Kenzie: We did a journal style proposal that focused on the first First in perspective of our three characters, when we were writing our proposal, we also focused on how the three characters were affected by COVID-19. When we were designing the actual proposal itself, we wanted it to look like an actual journal, someone would be writing, so we included the doodles the to do list the scribble outs, literally anything that you can think of your journal would look like, we wanted our journal to look like, as the judges were reading the proposal, we wanted them to feel like they were reading someone's journal, we didn't want to just to be another proposal.

 Dr. K: And one thing that I just absolutely loved about your journal style proposal was that you really got in the details, like every character had different handwriting, and they had a different voice that was just so specific. And I know individual team members kind of broke that up so that way, you guys would have that unique voice of your character. And you were truly empathizing with that one character, the entire semester was super unique. I have a copy of it on my shelf. I'm super proud of it. So then you guys were named as finalists. And so you were invited to do a five minute pitch in front of industry professionals all around the world. And you had the option of doing it live or pre recording. And you chose to pre-record since not every team member could be at the pitch. And it was so much fun. It was y'all listening on this podcast right now. Like it was so much fun. And you chose to kind of go away from the journal style. And you did something else that was super fun and I think everyone as part of the competition would agree, judges and all the participants. Y'all had the best video, like hands down. I'm biased, but I truly think you guys had the best video. So Aubrey, tell us all about your video, your five minute pitch. Thank you. Okay,  

Aubrey: Thank you Dr. K. I also agree that we had the best video. So when it came to our presentation, we really wanted to do something different than a PowerPoint. We wanted something that was entertaining and going to be easy to follow along with. And ultimately, we just wanted to represent the hard work that we've been doing all semester really well. We just wanted to put something good out there that would just show how our team functioned. So we came up with a news anchor theme,  because it would be well organized and easy to follow.  So our basis was we had a main anchor, which I had the honor of playing, and then we would go to different new segments. So we had an interview with the UC Santa Barbara student that was onsite at Break the Mold. And then we also had an interview with a AKELA marketing strategist to go over the areas of marketing when it came to Break the Mold. And then we also had an interview with the owner of AKELA Events to go over financial and any operational parts of Break the Mold. So yeah, ultimately, this was a little stressful. But ultimately, it was so fun just to end our time as a team together and just end on a good note for all of us. 

Dr. K: So this was a process for your team. It's a process for the whole group for both teams. Now, we're a couple months separated from it. We're recording this in August, it happened in April, May. And it seems like a lifetime ago, so much life has happened over the summer, reflecting back looking at the big picture, right, there are certain things that just stay with you. And maybe you forget the minutiae. Maybe you have to go back and review stuff, but there's stuff that stays with you on that bigger level. So when you're reflecting back, what is the biggest thing that you personally learned during the PCMA process? and Lilly I'm gonna pass it to you.

Lilly: The team that you have around you matters so much. The reason why I say this is because I feel like there are a lot of people who essentially live with the idea like, “Oh, I hate group projects, I hate group projects”. Because why you're that one person who's like doing all the work and even if you delegate the task, no one does the work. So you got to do all of it. But my team, I'm so proud of my team. I've been so happy. Granted, there's a lot of stress, but we're all stressed, so it's fine. But this team has given me so much Love and memories that I don't think I could relive any more.

Dr. K: Well, I can definitely agree that this team and the other team, but this team has given me a lot of memories as a professor, as a mentor, as a life coach, as a friend. I have a lot of memories. I have a lot of memories of this team. So Aubrey, what's the biggest thing that you learned during this process?

Aubrey: That is a wonderful question. Um, without going into too much detail, higher education was always a challenge for me to wrap my mind around, I didn't really understand the purpose in it. And I really only did it for my parents. What PCMA and Dr. K, and this team has really done for me, is they have shown me that I have a voice and that it matters. And thank you, everyone's crying. Um, for so long, I felt like nothing I said was worth anyone's time. And that was the biggest lie that I could have ever told myself. So yes, though, this PCMA process was a process. Um, it really just pulled out so many characteristics and qualities in me that I didn't even know were there. For example, I really found that I had a passion for storytelling, I love writing. And I knew that was somewhere deep inside me. But this competition, and this team and the people that surrounded me, for this last semester, really pulled that out of me and fostered a creativity in me that I didn't even know was there.

So, so reflecting back, the biggest thing that I learned is definitely just be confident in your voice. It doesn't matter if it's right or if it's wrong. The people in this program that people hear they care about you and they care about that voice. And that is the beauty of teamwork is that you can build on one another

Dr. K: Well, Aubrey, it would be completely lying if we didn't acknowledge the fact that we're all crying here and listening. You saying this is very sweet and sentimental, and I can't make eye contact with you right now. But I know Kenzie, you have a hard, hard life to follow up Aubrey. But I have faith in you that you can do it. I know you can. Because it's really about your personal experience. And we never compare personal experiences with each other. So what was the biggest thing that you learned?

Kenzie: So I'm going to touch on like two different points. First one going off of what Lilly said, I hate group projects so much. I'm always that person that does everything because that's just who I am. But through this, I learned that I love working in teams. And I love it because you have just so much more creativity with teams, and it sparks more ideas. And when you work in a team, one idea can just become an amazing idea. And I love teamwork now, and I love working with teams. And like I honestly cannot imagine working by myself on anything ever again. And I know it will happen and I just have to get through it and I want teamwork to be in my life for the rest of my life. But kind of going off of what Aubrey said was sometimes you don't realize what people are actually going through. I learned that just the whole last semester, you don't actually know what people's lifes are. So don't judge a book by its cover.  Just keep an open mind and always be willing to lend a helping hand. And just love everyone and and also know that you're loved and people like want to know if you're not doing well.

Dr. K: I can remember so much at the end of the semester, we were having kind of a post-con meeting. And that was a 13:09 big thought about this experience was just that you could have friends for so long for so many years that you don't feel that close to but then you have newfound friends that you've only been doing a team with for a couple months, but because you're in it and you're so in it and you're working on this common goal together, you really form like tight bonds that are tighter than just time could have. So Kenzie, I'm gonna start with you on this one. So you don't you know, get stuck after Aubrey again. Looking back, we've talked about the things we've learned, but if you can change something about this experience, what would that change be?

Kenzie: I think what I would change is I would not have taken this, I would not have taken a huge course load of work last semester. I was fine, though, because I had a team and I could rely on them. And I could say, hey, like I'm really struggling right now. can't do this, like so i think if i could change anything is like realizing that I needed to ask for more help, and more time off and not taking on as much. And I'm still learning that to this day. And I'm hoping that will not be this semester. 

Dr. K: So Lilly, I'm gonna ask you the same question. I'll make Aubrey go last because she said she loves the storytelling and the empathy. And I  don't want to cry quite yet. So Lilly, what is something that you would have changed about your experience in the spring.

Lilly: So my experience was very similar to Kenzie. So I was on the podcast prior before talking a little bit about my background, biology, yay. And so being in this field now, with events, I want to do all the things everything, I want to absorb as much information as I can. But with that, I also had a standard for myself, I wanted things to be a certain way that fit my perfectionist mindset. But because of that, it affected me actually giving out tasks and have faith in them to actually do so. So when I collected all of the tasks that I had to do, and putting myself on a higher standard than it had been, than what the bar actually was, I was affecting my own mental. I spread myself so thin that because I wanted to not only be proud of myself, but prove other people around me that I am worth it to be in this.

Dr. K: I just hope that for all of our listeners out there, you just can feel just the passion, but also the love that the vulnerability, the authenticity. And it's just so incredible to watch these amazing individuals grow and evolve. And watching, I know I talked about Kenzie’s evolvement, and nobody has evolved as much as Aubrey. And so Aubrey, you don't make me cry. Aubrey, what is something that you would change about your experience in the spring? And hopefully not your teacher.

Aubrey: Oh gosh. What was really unique about PCMA. And just honestly, the event industry in general, is that you essentially get to choose your own workload. And what's so unique about working within this team is that we all were really able to focus our time around our specialties. So as I mentioned before, I really found a passion within writing, and I was really able to foster that through our proposal. And ultimately, it just comes down to knowing your teammates, these people want to invest in you, they care about you. And that takes boldness you know, and knowing your line, knowing what you're able to contribute, shows just emotional maturity. And I think that's something we're all figuring out as college students is what is our line, what can we contribute? And this really stretched us all in that area. But ultimately, we came out the other end as not only better students but better people. So with that said, if there's anything that I would change about the spring, it would be to say what I need to say sooner and get to know the people around me right from the get go.

Dr. K: All right, so last question. Thank you all so much for your time. So this is a unique year, because the PCMA North American student competition is always held in the fall every year. And it was supposed to be in the fall last year, but because of COVID, it got moved to the spring. And this year, we're having back to back competitions. So there are competitions being held in the fall. So what advice, now that you've gone through the whole process from beginning to end, what advice would you give to all of the other teams that are competing this fall? And I will forward this podcast to every single one of their faculty advisor. So what other... what advice would you give to those other teams?

Kenzie: My advice would be to designate an hour, a night, a day, a weekend, however long you want to sit down with your team, throw out some ideas and build upon them and truly think outside of the box. Because that is that's how you make a amazing event. And that's what PCMA student competition is all about. It's outside thinking, and just truly designing an amazing event that someone, that nobody has ever heard of, like think outside the box as much as possible. 

Aubrey: So it's a pretty much a running joke. Now within our little group that there was a certain amount of time that was too long that I did not shower or eat a full meal. So if I could give advice to anyone competing in PCMA, I would say take care of yourself, and surround yourself with people that are going to tell you to shower and bring you meals that aren't coffee.

Lilly: My advice would be time management. It sounds mundane, but human to account, you need to manage not only your academic, professional, personal well being, but then you're also to keep into account, you're working with potentially four or three other schedules, who are as involved and who have their own lives behind that. And if you want a healthy, happy, very memorable experience, you're gonna have to work really efficiently and try to move things around. Just so not only you have a good experience, the project is good, but also just being okay, for your own overall quality of life.

Dr. K: So true. I would say your team was super unique at the beginning because you had four extraordinarily outspoken type A personalities and one person who never talked. I would say it was so interesting to see you guys kind of not sure who to take the lead or you all wanted to take the lead and then by the end of it, you were all just such a cohesive unit. And it was incredible. Thank you all so much for your time today to come into the studio to record the podcast. I am so excited and for all of our listeners, if you're coming to PCMA Convening Leaders in Las Vegas, all three of the lovely people that you heard on the podcast today will be there and you can reach out and we will get you all connected. They will also all be at IMEX in Las Vegas in November so you can get some autographs and meet your famous podcasters it'll be so fun. So as always, dear listeners, thank you so much for taking the time to make the time. We do not take this lightly. Time is the most valuable asset that you have and we appreciate you giving some of it to us. So with that we will talk to you next Tuesday.