Two NIH exchange students in Sport Management are currently experiencing the daily life of event managers by themselves. In the course SPM 375 Internship, Dominic Buchan from England and Maxime Cointepas from France absolve an internship at the organizing committees of two big events: the 2016 Lillehammer Winter Youth Olympic Games and the 2015 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup at Kvitfjell.
Since January 2015, the two students have travelled back and forth to Lillehammer to help out the Lillehammer2016 organizing committee in a variety of tasks such as social media mapping, translating documents, designing the ‘story’ behind the YOG mascot Sjogg. As well, besides designing the torch and planning the torch tour which will go through all of Norway some weeks before the YOG, the interns built a snow park for the 1-year-to-go celebration.
Maxime and Dominic also got to visit many other winter sports events, where they arranged the PR activities for the YOG. With the wide range of tasks, they were able to engage with all departments in the organising committee.
“To do many different tasks is really good in a way because I improve various skills and I can see different side of the organization” (Maxime Cointepas, France)
Working with the actual implementation of a sport event, the two students enjoyed two week of the internship joining the organizing committee at the World Cup at Kvitfjell.
“The tasks I did were very basic such as setting up the volunteer lounge, write the press release for the newspapers, set up the finish area and other small tasks. We also had the opportunity to go to a captains meeting” (Dominic Buchan, England).
In Kvitfjell, the students learned a lot by observing and “watching the event come up from nothing”. Since the interns then already has several weeks of working experience, they could analyse on how the communication, workforce and assets utilization and effective plans were key to the success of the event.
“I believe working for something like the LYOGOC is a great starting point and will hopefully open many doors in the future for me and strongly encourage others to join the intern programme” (Dominic Buchan, England).