[Kid Inspiration]

So our events coordinator Elizabeth Barry has written to all the key leaders involved in Kidsong World last week the official debrief email!

So in the interests of having something to write I shall take it upon myself to post an excerpt of it here online…

Because if I am going to put so much effort into writing the thing, it would be great if more than one person could read it

Kidsong World 07 - The Kids part of Hillsong Conference.

Conference Debrief

Event Overview: Four days/five nights. 9am-3pm. Two rallies each night; 4.30pm and 7.30pm, lots of kids!

Overall Impression: Easily the best Kidsong World so far in terms of organization and actual running of the event.

Area of Debrief: All media for conference, Worship and Creative Arts, Morning and Night Rallies (Primary Age and Preschool).

What Worked:

• Centre video screen on the main rally stage. Really helps to bring atmosphere with a huge screen on the stage.
• Trading Cards - Kids were so pumped to collect the entire set of Kidsong World trading cards (14) that they were heard to have sold them to other kids.
• Musical in the morning rallies was a HUGE success. Pulled off a great experience of all of the kids. Following the four characters each day was cool and the media was absolutely top-notch.
• Night rallies created a great buzz. The late night talk show feel was a win. Having a couch on stage to ‘interview people’ and the desk to sit behind (Leno, Letterman etc) was a really cool look. Then using the couch as a ‘best seat in the house’ idea for two kids each rally was a real winner. Next year we need snacks and chocolate for those children. Maybe even a palm branch being waved above them.
• Max and Melody show for the preschoolers was great.

What can be improved:

• Production (TV TD/Lighting/Sound FOH and TD) - we need to find out oversights of areas before conference and meet with them. Having dialog with each team leader would be hugely beneficial, especially the day program where production is needed at different times ie. Paddington and Downes teams.
• Pre-conference roles and structure for W&CA. The outworking of who will oversee the team and who will roster team members. We need to make a simple flow chart for the way the team will run next year.
• Reinforce name tags - so many fall off and get broken. Either look at a different style of name tag or find a way to replace each morning the sorrier looking ones.
• Plan/film our media (eg. Musical video clips) at least two months before conference. The filming of our media wnt well, but the editing took a lot longer than expected. All we need to do is move filming schedule up a bit.
• Get trading cards professionally printed. Build on the success of theseand make them business card size and professionally printed.
• Revamp points system… maybe even get rid of it. Each year we divide kids into four teams and ‘compete’ to be the best team over the week by getting points. Maybe its time to do something different.
• Make sure we communicate the need for the coms on stage for communication between stage managers, producer and MC. We fluked it this year getting them in the right place, lets do it deliberately next year.
• Make sure our stage design is communicated and we see a floor plan a month out from conference. Again we fluked the stage setup.
• We need to rehearse the preschool Max and Melody Show like the primary age musical. A couple of dress rehearsals over a short amount of time, pack them into one week, not do smaller rehearsals over many weeks.
• Make sure we have enough media for all venue. Need to have spare copies of everything, and if possible only give copies out to the teams. Label each DVD/CD on the case as well, so we know how many we need to get back.

There it is! Part of the debrief, of which you may understand not much at all, but hey… even if you find it a little bit insightful, let me know in the comments.