Is it all a lie?

I was at the Bandar Tasek Kesuma Primary School today. I was representing my daughter Ira's school's Parent & Teacher Association. Finding the place was quite hard. The letter they sent said that there would be several lectures by various parties and a launching of the Program Pemuafakatan Pendidikan – some sort of program to include the parents in the teaching- learning effort. I guess the intent was honourable but it was a very badly planned from the beginning and it left me thinking that for a bunch of people who are supposed to be educating people, the organisers of this event knew very little about passing information to people effectively.

Consider this, when it comes to public events like this, there is no such thing as spontaneity: it is all planned and if it fails to reach its intended audience and deliver its message then the planning of the occasion has failed its objective. The basic principle of such occasions are simple, if you want to reach an objective let that objective drive your entire program / plan. This is particularly true if you consider the objective to be important as this occasion was supposed to be. Certainly you can include other "sub-events" into your main plan but the objectives of these sub-plans cannot be more important than or as important as the main one. This is particularly true when the different sub-events comprising the whole occasion may have elements that contradict one another. This was what happened this morning.

Firstly, the event was held on a day when most of the high schools in the district, if not state, held their progress report day. Many parents had to go to the children's school to pick up their progress report. Consequently, may PTA representatives had to be late including yours truly. From the number of cars arriving around the same time I did, I think many other parents were the same. This also meant that there was a definite shortage of parking spaces.

Secondly, the launching was held at the place where a Hari Usahawan Muda was held (young entrepreneur day), which was good in the sense that the parents could divide their effort: one parent takes the children to the games etc and the other goes to the lectures. However, this arrangement also ensured that there was loud music blasting away in the central compound of the school and effectively drowning out the voices of the speakers on the first floor (American second floor). Hence I left after a few minutes.

I would strongly recommend these organisers to read up on their project management.