Saturday, September 13, 2008

Date Auction 7 Days Away

Well, this time next Friday- our date auction will be over- I will be home and hopefully celebrating a hugely successful event. Nine months of planning, countless hours of phone calls, follow up phones, more follow up calls, emails, follow up emails, letters, trips- hours- days of anxiety- it will all be over. I can't even begin to tell you how anxious I am for the date auction- for the anniversary event too- but since the date auction is closer, that's the bigger worry. Everyone tells me it will be great and people who have experience in Boston events tell me that we are right on track with our ticket sales to have a great event, but still I worry. It gets overwhelming sometimes- there is an incredible amount of pressure that comes with this job. I know that everyone feels stress and pressure and I can't begin to compare myself to what others go through. But with Project Smile, everything basically falls back to me and I am solely responsible for our success and our failures. These two events are hugely important for our financial future- our stability and ability to grow. That is not an exaggeration. So when I worry about our event, I'm not simply worried about getting 300 people in the door, I'm worried about raising enough money to keep us going and justifying the incredible amount of time that was spent working on the date auction.

Anyways, enough on that? So why am I blogging on a Friday night? Well, I came home from having dinner with a really good friend and I needed to stop myself from going on the computer and obsessing over ticket sales- basically need to stop working for tonight. I missed blogging last night, so I figured it was a good time to crank up the laptop and get writing.

What did I do today? I was working on more date auction promo (what a surprise!), auction details and following up on those silent auction items promised. I found out that I need to get a cordless mic for the date auction (Gypsy has one, but we need two since we have two hosts). I thought one of the hosts was bringing one, but I made a mistake and it doesn't look like she will be able to get one. So I was trying find one to borrow- it costs $75 to rent, which isn't that much, but I really need to keep costs under control. Then I also found out I have to rent a PA system for our singers to use at the anniversary celebration- I wasn't expecting extra costs for the event, so that was pretty frustrating. I've rented one from a place in Framingham, it costs $63 and I have to pick it up and return it, so that is extra work on the event day. I need to make sure that both singers bring their mics with them, because I really can't afford extra rental charges. I know it may sound silly to worry about these small costs, but every dollar really adds up and it is all the small things that end up blowing the budget.

I was also working on getting my friends and people being auctioned off to promote our event on Going.Com. Going is featuring our event next week, but we need to generate buzz on the site by people clicking on our event AND leaving comments. So please, visit Going.Com, get a free account if you don't already have one (it's a cool site) and click on our date auction, the "like it" section and then leave a comment- you have to do that for it to count. Here is the link.
http://boston.going.com/event-377833;Project_Smile_2nd_Annual_Date_Auction

We are also on Yelp- that is a cool site too,
http://www.yelp.com/events/boston-project-smile-2nd-annual-charity-date-auction
You can go on Yelp and click on our event too to help promote it. We're also listed on Boston Fashion Week's website and Boston.Com.

Anyways, I think I should go to bed- my eyes are starting to really hurt- that's a pretty good sign that I should be asleep. I am going to stop working for tonight at least- I need relax and stop thinking for a little bit. I just want to dream of how incredible our event could be- will be.
Good night friends..

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