During the International Days, which took place at the Artevelde University

College, I attended 3 guest lecturers. The first one was given by Holly Cybulski
and the subject was "Rolling out the Red Carpet: Keys to Event Management
Success". The second seminar which give more insight into Chinese companies
and internet in China, was given by Esther Meulebeke. The last lecturer was
Herman Leijdersdorff and he came to talk about the restructuring of his university
and how they tried to implement new ways of working.
As I said before, the first seminar was given by Holly Cybulski and was about
event management success. She started off with a small anecdote about an
event she planned with a famous actor in order to get some media attention for
his new movie. But she forgot to inform the press that his plus-one would be his
sister, this resulted into a discussion between the actor and a newspaper
photographer since he wanted a shot of himself and not with the unknown
woman. Everything returned back to normal afterwards but this reminded Holly
that in event management, every detail is important.
The rest of the presentation was filled with the 6 most important points to bear in
mind when planning an event.
1. Why factor: Every event that gets organized needs to have a goal, people
need to have a reason to be present. But you also need a reason why you
are spending so much money.
2. 10% rule: Always be prepared that things can go wrong, therefore you
should keep 10% of your budget aside for unexpected things.
3. Virtue is in the details: Every event is different because the needs of the
clients are not the same; therefore you should do an in-depth research
when planning.
4. Relationships: Everyone present at an event should be treated special.
5. Dream team: You have to make sure your team can work without you and
that they know the hierarchy of decision making.
How do you know your event was a success? You should look at the goal, if for
example the goal was to raise money for a charity, you should look at the amount
of money collected.

Reflection:
This was in my opinion the most interesting seminar, beforehand it was doubting
about the topic but the speaker was so passionate about it that everyone stayed
focused. I very much liked the fact that she kept referring to business related
cases, for example when she said every event needs a goal, she said that in the
business world this could be making profit or looking for brand awareness.
Afterwards I realized that even though she was talking about event management,
all 6 important things to bear in mind when planning an event are also very
important in companies.

The speaker of the second seminar, Esther Meulebeke, lives in Belgium but has
lived in China after her studies. She talked about Chinese companies expanding
and why certain websites are banned in China.
Chinese companies have difficulties with going global because of the wrong
image given in the media. Nevertheless the willingness to expand is still high
because they can produce on a huge manufacturing scale and they have the
Chinese dream. This dream entails getting the power they once had, back.
Because of the one-child policy parents push their children to get educated
instead of working in factories, this stimulates innovation which on his turn leads
to more intense competition.
When globally expanding, companies have 3 ways to do so. First of all they can
decide to trady up, this means that they start at a low price which they gradually
higher while improving the quality. Secondly, companies could decide to change
their business model form B2B to B2C. Lastly, the fastest way to have access to
the rest of the world is by acquiring a company.
The second part of the seminar was about internet in China. A lot of websites are
banned over there because the government has restricted and censured the
approach to journalism. They want to regulate communication because they are
afraid things can escalate quickly through social media.
But it is not because certain websites are restricted, Chinese people do not use
social media. There are a lot of similar apps created such as WeChat instead of
WhatsApp. This app has many more possibilities than WhatsApp such as
gaming, scanning QR codes, doing online payments

Reflection:
Even though it was a very interesting topic, and probably the speaker was really
enthusiastic about it, she was not really able to convey those feelings. But all by
all I am glad I attended the seminar since I learned news things about the reason
why Chinese companies want to expand and the different possibilities to do that.
During my study trip to China in June I will definitely check out the Chinese apps
she informed us about since they made me curious.

The third lecture was a workshop where new ways of working where introduced
based on the rearrangement of the university college in The Hague. Herman
Leijdesdorff is the responsible of the facility management department of that
college and took the changes upon himself. The rearrangements happened
because the school noticed that the greater part of the rooms where wrongfully
used. They noticed this after doing a research on the occupancy and utilization of
these rooms. The results were that almost every room was used enough but not
utilized which means that there are more chairs and tables present than people
using them.
After this introduction, we were asked to think about what we would at Artevelde
University College based on these 3 questions:

1. What kind of activities related workplaces do you distinguish for your own
educational working environment? What are the main requirements and
characteristics?
2. What ICT facilities do you need in the future working environment?
3. Behavior: Which behavioral effects do you expect in your organization?
What measures would you take to cope with these effects?
After half an hour we shared our thoughts with the rest of the students, we came
up with the idea to change the canteen a bit. It is a place where students come
together at any time to work or eat so we thought it would be better to have
access to it during the weekends as well and that the kitchen should be longer
open.
Mister Leijdesdorff then concluded the presentation with showing pictures of the
results at The Hague. Each staff member at the school got a smartphone as well
as a laptop, looking back at that afterwards, it was a mistake since the laptops
were not connected to the beamers and that resulted in a lot of problems. Each
classroom got equipped with a smartboard as well as a beamer.

Reflection:
I enrolled myself for the seminar because I was curious what the upcoming new
ways of working are. But during the seminar, I had the feeling that it was more a
description of the facilities at The Hague University College with as goal
attracting us to go study there. The level of English was not good either. To be
honest, it wasnt a good presentation at all.