We, as business students, are very concerned with success and how to measure it, but also with the impact we can have. We obviously want this event to be successful and here are our goals and how we plan to measure our success.
Main Objectives of the Event
The event aims at educating business students on drug addiction in general as well as the policies around it. As future managers and entrepreneurs, they have the ability and the knowledge necessary to bring a new perspective on drug addiction. They will have the opportunity to learn and understand why drug addiction is a disease and why treating it is economically viable, all religious, political or personal beliefs put aside. This event aims at filling a gap on a topic that is hardly ever discussed in class or in textbooks.
Desirable Outcomes
A website will be setup so participants can contribute their ideas afterward. The point is to keep the discussion alive and having a brainstorm so even more ideas of new policies can be generated. Having business students getting involved in their community in order to help reduce drug addiction, and directly help drug addicts is also a movement this event would like to create.
Measuring the Goals and Impacts
There is three parts as to whether this project is successful, one is before the event, the other one is during the event and the last one is after the event. The ultimate way to measure the success of what has been done before the event is whether or not the event can get people to fill the 120 seats. To measure the success of the event in itself, surveys will be given to the panel as well as the students so adjustments can be made for future years to come. Finally, to measure the success after the event, the website will be the main, but not the only, tool being used.
We think those goals and measurements are realistic and attainable, if you disagree please use the comment section to butcher our rational.
BWiles
sunnyhoshingchan
changmai
mattbaril
Since your target audience will mainly be business students, I wonder if you plan to connect the drug addiction issue with business practice theories and look for solution from business perspective? Will the education be general or tailored specific to business students? Thanks!
Hi Arita!
We want to be specific to business students and bring an economical perspective to it. Of course it wouldn’t be merely about economy, so we want to also present the topic from many different perspectives, always keeping in mind our audience made of business students.
Our possible partnership with The Economist would also help us to be more focused on the business/economic aspect of it.
do you think that media coverage may also be a potential measure of success?
Hey Jason,
It definitely could, the only problem we had with this measure is how to come up with comparative numbers. Should we make a count of the number of articles published about our event, or just the mention of our event in media in general?
Also, since this is the first time such an event is being organized, we have nothing to compare ourselves to. So we do believe media coverage is essential and could be a measure of success, but at this point we can’t really measure ourselves with it since we’re lacking a comparison and a clear definition of what media coverage would be.
Thanks for sharing your ideas with us!
As a fan of event marketing in general, I think your idea is great.
Since the goal of your event is to ultimately come up with a concrete solution to drug addiction, is there a possibility that at some point, your event will have to be evaluated/”scored” on the creation of effective programs to tackle addiction and in turn those programs’ direct impact on people who are addicted?
Thanks
Hi Hannah!
Our event will be evaluated by the students themselves and the panel. We don’t really expect students to evaluate the effectiveness of our creation of programs/policies, but we do think that the panel would be critical about it. Money is a scarce resource and the panel is made of people close to the drug addiction and are very critical when money is wasted.
Otherwise, I guess it’d be a good idea to have someone external to the project to evaluate how we do. I’m not too sure who could do that, but if possible, it would definitely be a good idea!
Thanks =)
Very thoughtful and carefully planned approach in order to achieving the set goals. The website would definitely create a platform to share the knowledge and fact about drug addiction among the target audiences, eg, business students. Surveys would very much get the response and feedback from the audience about the event, but to measure the successfullness of the event via the website only would be a hard aspect to judge.
That’s very true. That’s why we see measuring our success as a combination of many measure and we don’t want to rely only on one measure. We see the website as a way to figure out how many people we really touched and made want to be really involved in drug addiction.