Event planning evaluation: The Chingay Parade

Event planning evaluation: The Chingay Parade Event Introduction Background We would like to do a detailed report that based on our findings on event planning and event evaluation process of an event. The event we have chosen is Chingay Parade. The Chingay Parade was firstly introduced in Johor Bahru in 2006 and it is a street parade event also a part of the celebration of Chinese New Year. The parade stretches go as far as 15km throughout the city of Johor Bahru, about 145 groups usually lasts from mid-afternoon to after midnight with an organized row of lion dances, interesting performances including dancing, singing, decorated parade floats and so on. First, we would like to explain why the event is called ‘chingay’. Chingay has two characters; Chin and Gay is the Min Nan dialect (including Teochew) for the Art of Decorating. The deities as Chingay Parade have rarely reffered to Johor Bahru residents as annual parade. This name is mostly used by the non-Chinese speaking public; probably due to the non-religious fancy parades in Penang and later in Singapore. Although the decorated floats and painted Chinese folk-characters are part and parcel of this annual parade, the main theme actually is the procession of the Five Deities from the five main dialect-groups of Johor Bahru. Thus for a Johor Bahru resident, especially the Chinese-educated, this annual parade is always pronounced ‘You-Shen’, which meaning the Parade of the Gods in Mandarin, rather than Chingay. As the historical of Chingay Johor Bahru, the Chingay Parade has been held for more than 100 years. It is celebrated on the 21st day in the first month of the Chinese Moon-related calendar and the event attracts thousands of people every year also as part of the Moon-related New Year celebration and as a predictor of peace and richness for the coming year for the town. Besides, Chingay started as a birthday celebration of Chinese gods, whose statues were taken out of temples and paraded around the city. In the belief that they will then provide plenty blessings to the people. Johors Chingay has heavy religious importance, where all parades begin at the Old Chinese Temple in Jalan Trus (Johor Bahru). Chingay procession was held in celebration with the birthdays of the Chinese deities or the procession of the Goddess of Mercy (Guanyin). It was held to worship and enjoy with the deity. Today, the JB Old Temple has five main deities for the five main dialect-groups: ‘Yuan Tian Shang Di’ or ‘Tua Lau Ya’ for the Teochews, ‘Hong Xian Da Di’ for the Hokkiens, ‘Gan Tian Da Di’ for the Hakkas, ‘Hua Guang Da Di’ for the Cantonese and ‘Zhao Da Yuan Shuai’ for the Hainanese. On the 21st day at about 7 in the evening is the grand parade, all the devotees and those with designated tee-shirts of the respective associations will then enter the Deities’ Depot to lift their respective deities for the night parade. This will be accompanied by troupes of opera characters, musical bands, lion-dancers, dragon dancers, decorated floats, stilt-walkers, big-headed dolls, giant flags and many other groups to entertain the town-folks who by then will line along the entire route eagerly awaiting the deities to pass. The order of the procession is always predetermined. The first deity to lead the parade will be Zhao Da Yuan Shuai of the Hainanese clan, followed by Hua Guang Da Di of the Cantonese clan, then Gan Tian Da Di of the Hakka clan, Hong Xian Da Di of the Hokkien clan nd the last to round up the back is the main deity Yuan Tian Shang Di of the Teochew clan. Event Planning (Definition) In general, event planning is the process of managing a project such as a meeting, convention, birthday party, exhibition, conference and so on. Event planning includes money-planning, beginning and building on timelines, selecting and reserving the event sites, buying permits, planning food, coordinating transportation, developing a theme, arranging for activities, selecting speakers and keynotes, arranging for equipment and facilities, managing risk, and developing backup plans. As event planner, event planning means consists of coordinating every detail of meetings and conventions, from the speakers and meeting location to arranging for printed materials and visual equipment. Besides, Event planning begins with figuring out the goal that the sponsoring organization wants to accomplish. Planners choose speakers, entertainment, and content, and arrange the program to present the organizations information in the most effective way. In addition to that, event planning is the energizing art of planning people and activities in order to create a show that creates memories of a lifetime. Designing and producing an event, whether its a meeting, related to big business event, fund-raiser, tradeshow or any other event, is in many ways almost the same as directing a live stage performance. Event Planning (Important) Event planning can help event planner to know what is the contribution should be and how to achieve event purpose. It is an important point to make sure that the event will be successful. It also can help planner to identify their event goals clearly and make planner decide clearly and concretely what the event need to do and can affect the social that organization wants. Event planning also can help planner make sure that understand their goal and what they need to do to reach event goal by involving target consumer in the event planning process. It can make planners all work in a goal-oriented way more than in a loose way where planner just respond to issues and cries with not clear event goals as well. Besides, event planning can helps planner to accountable for what they do. It is a consequential point, event planning can help planner or organization decide what is the best to use resources including hired people, equipment, time and other, so that will help planner and organization most significant contribution to achieving their purpose. Last but not least, event planning important in lays the basis for event organization to asses and evaluate their achievements effectively. Event Evaluation (Definition) In general, event evaluation is analysis of the efficiency and efficacy of such events using a range of empirical methods. Event evaluation measures investigate impact at all levels. In apart from that, event evaluation is the process of critically observing, measuring and monitoring the implementation of an event in order to evaluate its results (Bowdin, 2008). Event Evaluation (Important) Event evaluation, as well as event planning cycle, it can help event organization and event planner to identify how they can improve and correct what they are achieving, event organization and planners also can take action to build on successes event and repeating failures in next time event. Besides, effective event evaluation process enables event organization and event planner to use what they learned from their experience to improve what they are achieving in the event. In addition to that, event evaluation is necessary to make event planner and team-mate more efficiency and effectively before the next time you organize an event. It is all about finding the mistakes and learning from them. In apart from that, evaluating help event planner gets feedback from attendees and participants, discovering the best and worst bits of an event to know if the event achieved its original aims, or how it could be improved for the next event. Moreover, evaluating shows volunteers and staff the value of their work and the impact of the event on the community. Some funders may require evaluations to be conducted, to show value for money as well. Event Planning Process Objective, visitor, place Chingay is a cultural Chinese New Year festival, so that the visitor of the event will be Chinese. Location of the Chingay Event held in Johor. Through history, after World War II, this activity spread to the south of Peninsular Malaysia unconsciously, that is Johor Bahru. Johor Bahru Chingay is commonly known as â€Å"Chinese New Year celebration part 2†. There are a folk saying on Johor Bahru people that â€Å"Chinese New Year never come to end if no celebrate Johor Bahru Chingay†. In addition, since the Chinese living in Johor majority. This annual event is inextricably linked to the Old Temple at Jalan Trus.to organizes Johor Bahru Chingay Celebration with five Chinese dialect groups also called as Parade of Deities. Based on the size of the number, this event plan in outdoor so that can accommodate more participants. Time, date, content The Chingay is conducted in the first lunar month from 18th to 22nd (5days). And which consecutive 3 days from 19th to 21st are running with the main activities. In the morning, when the gong decorated with sacred flag bearer of the team will be deemed to walk and jingle of the gong in the entire parade route, this represents to â€Å"wash the way† before the festivities begin. On the first day on 17 February 2014, here is a light up ceremony at Xing Gong. It is a provisional places that deities choose. It can provide more spacious place to believers to pray. For the second and the third day, there is a street cleansing and mounting of deities on holy sedans followed by a small drum music parade and deities leaving the Old Temple carried on holy sedans. The location is from Johor Old Temple to palace. Thereby completing the centuries Chingay for three consecutive days of Overture. On the fourth day, activity held in the evening at 7pm. It is a busy streets walk of Johor Bahru from Xing Gong and walk around the Xing Gong. The distance of the line is about 8 kilometer. The town-folks are accompanied by decorated floats, lion-dancers, troupes of opera characters and so on. Lastly, 22nd February is the day of deities return to their Divine abodes, after this Johor Bahru resident will feel that they had finished their New Year. Promotion+ Sponsorship All the source of communication have been use. The organizer, Tiong Hua associations started to promote Chingay. As Chingay is an on-going parade, it has its own website. Besides this they also create a Facebook page welcoming for people to join. In the page, they listed out all details and the history of Chingay. For those who have questions, they also willing to give answers and the information will be update on time. In the other hand, the organizer promote the event through newspaper. Meanwhile, there will be banners and posters at anywhere in Johor. In addition, There also have media conference helped them publicise. For people who may not be able to see any information on others way, TV stations are another alternative for people to get Chingay information. Chingay is a recurrent activities, so not too much publicity, people will get to know about it. Based on the relationship between people, word of mouth also became a tool of mass media. In this event, people who participatin g were dressed in several different styles and different signs of T-shirt which are provided by the supplier that are Carlsberg, Tiger and Country Garden Danga Bay. Thus, the vendors can use this event to advertise their products. Accessibility Due to the wide range of activities involved, the number of participants more, even at night parade, it is easily lead to the accidents. In order to avoid the occurrence of such outside bruised and protect the safety of participants, the organizer had invite the medical staff to assist. The organizer also prepared a resting place for the participants. Event Evaluation Chingay parade event is a successful event in Johor Bahru, Malaysia due to it has a lot of foreign and Chinese people will join in this festival event every year. In this festival event, it affect a lot of benefits impacts as well as the cost. In benefits, social and cultural impacts in this event including broaden people’s horizons because it has the festive atmosphere with stilt walkers, lion and dragon dances, acrobats, and dozens of decorated floats taking to the streets amidst the clashing of cymbals and beating of gongs and drums in this event. In this current issue, planner also try advantage a lot of new technology element inside this event so it will attract teenager joining this event. Another benefits in social and cultural impacts are revitalising traditions. Due to this event is a traditional festival event, it can promote our traditional culture inheritance to next generation as well. In addition to that, this event can increase Malaysian pride as well because have a lot of foreign know this event and it can let foreign know about our traditional culture. The positive political impacts in this festival event are this event can let our social cohesion. This event purpose is unity ‘Teochew’, ‘Hokkien’, ‘Cantonese’, ‘Hakka’ and ‘Hainan’ all of these Chinese people during 19th century. In this current, also can let other race people know about Chinese religion so it will increase Malaysian cohesion in the country, because everyone will respect different race religion. This event also will attract foreign tourists come to join in. It can increases tourists visit or travel in Malaysia so that we can earn and increase a lot of foreign money. On the contrary, this festival event also bring negative impacts in environmental which make a lot of environmental damage and pollution in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Due to the reason which people are going for a 15km around Johor Bahru, the participants will throw rubbish at the street and make noise. Besides, it will disturb residents around the city until midnight and this event increase traffic jam as well. In the political negative impacts, event organizer cannot calculate their budget in this event. Their budget come from donation and find a lot of sponsorship. If the year has financial crisis, they will get the donation less than last year and let the event lead to failure because they need a lot of money to be the cash float. Last but not least, it has a political negative impacts which are lack of accountability. Event organizer cannot predict the accountable of the amount of people who will join in the event and will make event organizer easily loss control of the event. Recommendation Evaluations often make recommendations about how a program can be improved, how the risk of program failure can be reduced or whether a program should continue. Based on the environmental negative impacts as environmental damage and noise disturbance, we can increase participant awareness about the knowledge of 3Rs which including reduce, reuse and recycle and everyone has responsibility to make sure the environment is clean. As traffic jam problem, we can encourage participant to achieve a sharing car plan with others or taking the public bus instead of taking private car. Chingay Johor Bahru can solve the noise disturbance problem by considering to plan the event not ended until mid-night for next year. Furthermore, due to the political negative impacts which are lack of accountability, the event organizer can do a survey form on social media first, understanding total how many people will participate the event before organizing and planning the event. Last but not least, the event organizer should planning the financial report first before finding a sponsorship to record how much they need to spent to control their budget. REFERENCE LIST What is event planning? Available from: http://institute-of-event-management.com/what-is-event-planning> Event planning. Available from:http://www.etu.org.za/toolbox/docs/building/webplan1.html> Johor Bahru Chingay. Available from:http://johorkaki.blogspot.com/2014/02/johor-bahru-chingay-2104-johor-kaki.html> Johor Bahru Chingay. Available from:http://festivalsandevent.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-joyful-celebration-chingay-parade-2012.html> Look on the Bright Side | Bartleby, the Scrivener Look on the Bright Side | Bartleby, the Scrivener The world is full of all sorts of different people. The differences are really what keeps the world revolving because of all the different ideas that comes from these people. But even though the world if full of all different types of people it isnt until you look closer that everyone is actually a lot more similar than one could image. Two stories that were a part of our English 202 class, Look on the Bright Side and Bartleby, the Scrivener look completely different from the titles. But as we learned about these stories we found out that the authors of these two stories happened to write about similar things even though the stories were punished in different centuries. The quote Dont judge a book by its cover is true because this paper shows that the similarities seem to out-weigh the differences. Dagoberto Gilb had been raised in a broken home and had attended college but could never hold down a white-collar job. Since Gilb could not keep a job he had worked odd jobs as a skilled carpenter and decided to keep a journal about his experiences. The language that was used in Look on the Bright Side was simple and conversational like. Gilb explained his thoughts in a way that one to comprehend and actually find something in common with (Charters 451). Actually some of the conversation in the book was similar to some of the conversation my parents would have at their home. Bartleby, the Scrivener was the longer of the two stories. It was about a man who owned his own business and was looking for a new employee. He ended up having troubles with his new employee, Bartleby, and had to figure out how to deal with the situation. The narrator had to attempt several different strategies to try to get Bartleby to leave and/or quit but nothing seemed to work. The story Bartleby, the Scrivener was written by Herman Melville who had never attending college and actually grew up working on a whaling ship. He had written several short stories about his experience on the boat and actually said that a whale shit was my Yale College and my Harvard(Charters 877). Melville had chosen to write this story because he was trying something new with his writings; his previous writings had failed. The language that Melville chose to use was sophisticated and educated and the sentences were longer, almost to the point of run-ons of the narrators thoughts. This story was defiantly a little bit harder to get through reading and some of the parts had to be read twice to fully understand. Even though these two stories have differences there are a few similarities that can be found within them. For instances both stories deal with someone trying to find a job, details about different characters that the narrators come into contact with and characters that the story has in common. The following will describe the similarities of each story. Looking for work seemed to be an issue in each story. In Look on the Bright Side the narrator was the one looking for job to support his family. The economy was bad and the narrator had been laid off from work because his job had gone bankrupt. The narrator made the mistake of not trying to find a job right away because he had been laid off before. He thought that he was taking advantage of having a break from work and going on vacation with his family, but that was obviously not the right decision at that time because at the end of the story he was still out of work. In Bartleby, the Scrivener the narrator was looking for help in his office. The narrator was already a successful scrivener and had already employed a few men that he had been working with him for years. I feel that the narrator made his mistake in the story when he went about finding office help the way he did. Instead of the narrator setting up interviews for the position and placing the most appropriate candidate he placed an ad in the paper and waited for a reply. Bartleby showed up at the narrators office one day for the job and the narrator continued to ask him a few questions about the job. Even though the narrator was hesitant about hiring Bartleby because he seemed shy he thought he would give Bartleby a chance. In most situations I dont think that the employer would hire someone that they werent too sure about. Great detail mentioned in both stories about the people that each narrator had come into contact with became the second biggest similarity. In Look on the Bright Side the narrator seemed to give greater detail about the people who were not directly involved in his life and less detail of the ones who were. First there was Mrs. Kevovian, who was the narrators landlord. He described her as being ignorant, nasty, and hard to communicate with(Gilb 452). The narrator described her to be this way because he has mixed feeling about her trying to raise the rent. The next person was the lawyer, Mr. Villalobos, who the narrator described in a way of being a fake Yassir Arafat. The narrator wasnt to sure about the lawyer because he thought that the lawyer was helping the wrong side. The main two people that were described in great detail were a bum across the street from the library and a man named John. The bum was introduced as being loud and then his physical character was described. He look ed like Einstein with a great, long beard and had hair like a wise man(Gilb 459) and his clothes were a mess as if he had not had a chance to shower in years. John was sketchier and talked nervously and jerked without pausing. He opened up to the narrator without hesitation; it was as if he was just happy to have someone to talk to. In Bartleby, the Scrivener the narrator gave great detail about his employees such as what they wore, how they looked, and even what their personality was like at different times of the day. The narrator had worked with his three employees for many years, he knew everything about them. He even knew what mood each employee was going to be in at what time of the day. This story went into even greater detail about each person that the narrator had come into contact with; it was if nothing about a character was missed. It seemed as if the author of the story wanted the reader to really get a feel for the people that were in the story and then he eased into the main point of the entire story. Lastly, I feel like I found each story had a little bit of craziness within it. The craziness that appeared in Look on the Bright Sides was towards the end when the narrator was outside of the library and John had came and sat by him who reminded the narrator of a hippie and then there were the bums across the street who were either rolling on the ground or yelling at the top of their lungs. In Bartleby, the Scrivener, Bartleby seemed to be the crazy one to an extent. He came into the job giving a loyal feeling to the narrator and he worked as hard as he could. Then Bartleby began to move into the office while continuing to work hard. The employer asked Bartleby nicely to leave the office after his work shift many times but Bartleby never ended up leaving; he had even found a key for the office and acted as if it was his home in a way. By the end of the story it took the law enforcement to remove Bartleby because a new employer had taken over the building and he still refused to leav e. Bartleby had only wanted to do what he wanted to do and it did not matter who was asking him for help or a favor he would either not responded or say I would prefer not to. I dont understand why anyone would want to stay in the office that they were working at, it almost made me wonder if Bartleby had done this with previous jobs. In each story the men went about dealing with their experiences in a different way. With the narrator in Look on the Bright Side he tried to stay positive as much as he could, he was always looking on the bright side. He knew that he had to find a job, but also knew that there was not any work out there, but heavily relayed on the business agents who kept telling him that work was going to break anytime. He also had to deal with the fact that his landlord wanted to raise the rent of their home, but he could not afford it nor did he think that the house was even worth that rent. He decided to go on vacation with his family and get in a little bit of trouble for trying to smuggle some rum and narcotics. At the end of the story he ended up going to court and winning, but in the he still lost the house and had to move his family out. I think that he should have tried to find a job right away, but of course he did not know that the economy was going to turn for the worst. The narrator in Bartleby, the Scrivener seemed to be more of a push over when it came to dealing with is problem with his new employee Bartleby, who did not want to do everything that was required for the job and then ultimately would not leave the office even after being told that he was fired. The narrator was always coming up with excuses for why Bartleby would act the way he did and would sometimes feel sorry for him. But then there were other times such as when Bartleby would say I would prefer not to that the narrator would get fed up with him and want to fire him. The narrator struggled with this issue of what to do with Bartleby through the whole story. He had tried everything from at first giving him the benefit of the doubt, then to bribing him, asking him to leave, and finally he moved his entire office closer down town. It seemed that whatever his plan of action was, he just could not rid himself of Bartleby. In the end he finally came to realization that Bartleby had gro wn into his life, and now that he was in jail, because the new employers of the office building that the narrator had sold could not get rid of him, he was going to visit with him as much as possible and find out who this interesting character named Bartleby really was. With both of these stories there was a different perspective of how to handle situations. In Look at the Bright Side the narrator really did try and look at the bright side of problem that he had ran into. As for Bartleby, the Scrivener the narrator pushed his issues off dealing with Bartleby and made excuses for him until he could no longer handle it. The narrator was pushovers by letting Bartleby get away with everything in the beginning. Even though the stories dealt with two different issues they were still similar. There was great detail about each person that the narrators came into contact with, from what they looked like to what their personality was like. Both of these stories were great life lessons and should be kept in the back of everyones mind when they run into these situations in life. One, you cannot always be a push over because you are going to lose in the end and two, you should always try and stay positive and focus on the real things in life such as family and f riends, not just money. Work Citied Charters, Ann. Dagoberto Gilb. 8th. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 451. Print. Charters, Ann. Herman Melville. 8th. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin, 2011. 877. Print. Gilb, Dagoberto. Look on the Bright Side. 452-460. Print. Melville, Herman. Bartleby, the Scrivener. 878-904. Print.