Management students execute 'Riddim and Booths'

Marcia Rowe, Gleaner Writer

The early Saturday morning showers did not put a damper on the enthused members of the University of the West Indies Open Campus introduction to management class.

The physical appearance of their graded project rivalled any professional. The use of brightly coloured fabric to claim space on the lawns of the Mona campus gave them "excellent". However, the areas of weakness may result in the final grade for the Camp Road-based group being "fairly well'.

But what exactly is this project? Terri Harrison, a member of the class and the marketing manger of the final aspect of the project, provides the answer: "It is a class project for students who are currently registered in the introduction to management class. A part of the course is to plan and execute an event. So we come up with quite a few ideas."

The final result was to have an event that incorporated a fair and a concert featuring upcoming artistes. It was given the title, 'Riddim and Booths'. And the group of 31 students seemed to have successfully moved their project from conceptualisation to perspiration, on Saturday.

A thrust stage, flanked by tents, was strategically placed to form a quadrangle. Each tent had products and services, such as health, food, clothes, a VIP lounge and one reserved for three schools participating in the group's ECO Competition. The winner of the competition was Camperdown High School Fashion Club with its solar dress. The two other participating schools were Donald Quarrie and Dunoon Technical High. Their entries came from the schools' engineering departments.

So while the group may receive an A+ for the 'Booths', there were weaknesses in the 'Riddim'. These were noted by Chris Benjamin, the innovator and lecturer of the 10-week course. "Well, I think that the fashion show was very good. But the music part of it was a little on the weaker side," he said referring to the concert.

And while performers like Kei Dubb, Deborah Pottinger, Chozen and Adena Palmer gave a good account of themselves, the gap between items was long.

Benjamin shared his thought. "I think, overall, they did not pay a lot of attention to the marketing side of the event. It is something that I will have to speak to them about. And so that affected the audience turnout."

But Benjamin also registered the good. Having been there since they started the project; he thought that they had done fairly well. And in reference to the physical appearance of the venue, he said he was a bit impressed by the work that they had done. He also explained that the course takes students through the seven steps of an event: planning, scheduling, budgeting, public relations, marketing, implementation and evaluation.

But what have the students learned from the exercise? The Gleaner spoke to Harrison at the end of the event. "For everything you do, you should also have plan B, plan C, plan D and, if possible, plan E. We had a backup plan but it fell through. We were hoping that the rain would not have impacted so much on what we were doing. But it really did, because we got a lot of cancelations. And we put through the contingency and when the sun came up, persons came back on board and it threw our programme off a bit," she said.

However, she was heartened by the positive response from a few booth holders who were impressed by their effort. Overall, she thought that the project turned out quite well.

On the other hand, Gillian Glen-Walker, head of the Jamaican UWI Eastern Open Campus, believes that the course is also an outreach programme for her institution. This is so as the projects often incorporate a charity component. Proceeds from Riddim and Booths will go towards a cancer-related charity.