Final Week Of Internship

Well... I am in the final week of my internship, and I am sad to be leaving. This has been the best experience I could have asked for for a senior internship. Throughout the summer, I learned a lot about the variety of different aspects that are included in Sports and Entertainment Facilities as well as festivals. There are an abundance of departments that must work together to pull everything together. Recently, Kroenke Sports Enterprises put on the Mile High Music Festival. This week we evaluated the festival and spoke about what should or should not be done for next year. After the festival, I thought it would be over, but there is so much more work to do before the company starts working on next year. During our evaluation I had to do a stagehand overtime analysis. Because the festival is such a compressed build, 37.99% of the money paid for stagehands was overtime hours. That is an unbelievably large amount. We have been brainstorming ways to prevent this from happening in 2010. I have also been working on completing different tasks at the Pepsi Center before I am done for the summer. One of these tasks is something as simple as dressing room evaluations. But if the artists that come to the venue are in dressing rooms that are not up to their standars, then they become upset. It is important that we do not make this one of the factors that may make an artist unhappy. Greenday will be my final concert on Saturday, and then my internship is through. With the harsh times of the economy, I will not be offered a job with the company in the department that I have been working in. I will be applying for an available sales position, but hopefully I will be able to find a job in event operations in the near future. Hope everyone else had a great summer!

Mile High Music Festival

Over the last three and a half weeks, I have had the opportunity to be the Production Assistant for the Mile High Music Festival. The festival was a two day concert that accommodated fifty bands. Some of the bands were Tool, Incubus, The Fray, 3OH!3 and Wide Spread Panic. Being the production assistant was a great opportunity because I was able to learn about all of the aspects of producing an event so large. The event took two weeks to set up, and one week to tear down. It is amazing how much work is put into something that is only going to last for less than 48 hours. Although it was hard work and extremely long ours, I had a wonderful time and learned a great deal. Shawn Stokes, the production manager taught me a lot. He mentioned that if he could offer me a paid position with the company, that he would. Unfortunately there have been too many layoffs, and there aren't any positions available. If you have any questions about some of the things that I learned while working at the festival, then let me know. I have decided that this is definitely the industry for me.

Layoffs

So as all of us know, the economy is horrible and it has been extremely hard to find a job. I thought I would share this with all of you because of what is being done at the Pepsi Center. 30 people from facility operations have been laid off. Because of the layoffs, other employees are required to pick up the slack. After completing all of my internship work yesterday, I was asked if I would help paint. The entire production department (which I am the intern for) was required to paint the loading docks at the facility. I helped paint and watched some of these people work so very hard. What does it take to keep your job in such hard times? Have any the places you are doing your internships in taken a hard hit because of the economy? If so, what have the employees had to do to ensure their jobs are safe?

Nuggets Playoffs

I am at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, home of the Nuggets. They were in the playoffs so I had the awesome opportunity to work at three of the games. I am the Production Intern at the Pepsi Center so I worked with Rhino Staging and the production manager during the games. We were in charge of the half time entertainment. It was awesome because I was on the court making sure that the mascot got disconnected from the harness after he was done repelling into the building. It's too bad that the team didn't make it to the final series of the playoffs. It would have been awesome to work at those games as well.