December 15, 2020
The MMU Cyberjaya Editorial Squad recently conducted an interview on 18 August 2020 with our counterpart all the way from the Melaka campus. The purpose of this interview was to gain insight on how the Melaka Editorial Squad handled online events and how they have been doing during this pandemic. We were given the honor to interview none other than the President of the Editorial Squad (20/21) itself, Suwaathee Nakkeeran and the Vice President, Heshvienie Vijayaratnam.
Q: How has being the president of the Editorial Squad been for you during this pandemic?
A: It has been more stressful because now everything is online and I have to adapt to different ways of learning things. It was a learning process for me to get used to things. Even in my studies, there seems to be more work than before now that classes have shifted to online learning.
Q: Have you conducted any events since quarantine started?
A: So far, we have done our Annual General Meeting.
Q: What is the process of conducting online events?
A: We communicated with a lot of people involved, firstly our advisor and then our members. We contacted our members via Whatsapp and we conducted meetings through Google Meet at least once a week. Each head of departments updated us about their tasks and their progress.
Q: How has the reception been?
A: It was good and frankly exceeded our expectations. Our AGM was even joined by some of our peers and a few other club representatives.
Q: What are the challenges faced in organizing online events?
A: Reception was definitely our biggest concern. Especially when our events were conducted online, it is difficult to ensure the audience’s engagement. We could not force them to turn on their webcams. Other than that, internet connection was another thing.
“We had two people to get ready with their devices in case one person’s connection was facing issues, the other could step in.”
– on how the Melaka team overcame their biggest online event challenge
Q: How did you overcome those challenges?
A: We wanted to do something different for our club’s AGM. We had our very own “X Factor” to uplift our event. We had live performances like singing and guitar performances by our members. That definitely attracted the crowd more. Regarding the issue of internet connectivity, we had a back up plan just in case anything bad happened. We had two people to get ready with their devices in case one person’s connection was facing issues, the other could step in.
Q: How did you promote these events?
A: We relied a lot on our social media. Days prior to our AGM, we posted announcements and posters about the performances. Our head of social media conducted a quiz on our page just to keep people wondering what was going to happen. We tagged many people just to spread the word around.
Q: How did you evaluate the success of events?
A: Since we are a small club, we take our AGM seriously. Right after it ended, we did a post-mortem with our members to see what went wrong or right and any room for improvement. Due to our nerves, our event ended earlier than planned. We also received personal messages for participants about their thoughts and feelings after the event and we took into account their messages.
Q: What are the skills needed to organize online events?
A: Basic skills like presentation and technical knowledge are very important. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the audience can definitely see it because everyone is staring at the same screen. Good promotional skills are also needed to inform the audience and reach out to people.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
Q: How was it like working with the team? General opinions on online events vs. physical events?
A: There’s nothing better than physical events in my opinion. There’s so many things about conducting events like setting up the venue, taking pictures, meeting people face-to-face. These experiences are hard to be copied with online events. We lose genuine human interaction like those small inside jokes and the act of eating together with your team. Communication is also affected because it is harder to persuade people and make them understand if there are any conflicts.
Q: When this pandemic is over and we’re back to the things used to be, would you still conduct online events?
A: We would still conduct more physical events. Online events are not suitable for our club because of the numerous communication problems and mishaps that we faced. Online events can still be conducted but perhaps maybe only one or two events.
~ Muhammad Nur Raziq
MMU Student Press 