Page 75 - The Cormorant Issue 14

to be Peter Stringfellow wannabees we chose 16 members for the Purple Ball 2011 Committee. All deserve at least one early mention for their excellent and hard work:
achieved with a tour-de-force from the marketing team in the form of a video, internet and paper assault designed to saturate the senses with the Purple Ball 2011. This produced excellent initial results with nearly half of the tickets selling in the first month of sales. The next pressing matter was to taste the food and wine proposed for the event and so a PB Committee food and wine tasting was organised by the JSCSC Mess and the wine supplier Bibbendum Wines. After substantial and strenuous deliberation, the menu and the wines were finalised on the night and the proposed budgets added to the financial plan.
By Easter, the event was in pretty good shape and ticket sales had nearly reached 1000; we were very confident that with a final push we would sell the remaining tickets with ease. Cdr Steve Moor- house began a more detailed series of meetings in order to finalise the floorplan and synchronise the entertainments matrix to ensure that there were as few queues as possible for the food and drink on the evening. The original decision to go for an all-seated event but still to maintain informal dining times assisted this enormously.
As the third term pushed on, we were all buoyed when the event sold out in early May; this meant that the budget was as secure as possible and that final planning could go ahead on a solid foundation. The seating plan for the event was released at the beginning of June, the day after the hand-in of the final (and largest) piece of academic work (and the party to celebrate this). Queues of attendees quickly formed in the forum and for a week, committee volunteers attempted to offer guests their preferred seating option; apologies to those who were unable to get their first choice due to early demand.
A trip to the USA for Regional Security Exercise 2 once again took everyone’s eye off the ball and upon return, the Theatre War Game provided a high workload for some key members of the commit- tee. Last minute arrangements including access, car parking, taxis, accommodation etc were finalised with the Defence Acad- emy, Serco and ESS staffs. A sponsor’s VIP reception to thank them for their kind consideration was given the final touches and the JSCSC Chief of Staff; seating plans for sponsors and VIPs were also finalised. By Tuesday 28th June, the first entertain- ment contractors began to arrive and over that week the indoor streets of the JSCSC began to fill with hired catering equipment and entertainer’s props; it was all very exciting. The run up to the event was a tribute to the excellent planning of the committee and went like clockwork with personnel arriving on or in time and providing an exemplary service. By midnight on the day before the Ball, the college forum and Teaching Wing had been trans- formed by our decorations contractors and the forum was gradu- ally turned from order to chaos and back to order again.
In the blink of an eye, the event was over and PB11 was disman- tled before my eyes, with the decorations contractor starting to remove their work only thirty minutes after the and of the event and working all night to achieve complete removal by just after noon the next day. By Monday morning the JSCSC was once again ready for business and but for the marks on the grass and the smiles on the faces, arriving students would never have known about the event that had taken a year to plan, ten hours to run and a day to completely remove. Only the memories of a year’s hard but enjoyable work and the legacy of an excel- lent event with many thank you letters and laudatory comments remains; I enjoyed every minute of it.
Chair
Wing Commander Sue Jarvis
XO Operations & Coordination
Finance
Sponsorship
Drink/Bars
Entertainment
Commander Steve Moorhouse
Wing Commander Dan James Squadron Leader Rob Gue
Wing Commander Sparky Dunlop Wing Commander Chris Snaith
Lieutenant Colonel Alistair Rogers Lieutenant Cdr Jon Milsom
Commander James Parkin Commander Andy Lamb
Delivery & Protocol
Wing Commander Tom Talbot Major Charlie Howard-Higgins
Marketing
Wing Commander Ian Diggle Wing Commander Jez Holmes
Food and Catering
Wing Commander Colin Sullivan Wing Commander Rob Connor
Decorations
Major Geraint Evans Lieutenant Col David Frend
Defence Academy Representative
Squadron Leader Darren Redgewick
We started on a theme right away and after a couple of concept meetings quickly settled upon ‘Around the World in 80 Days.’ This gave us the opportunity to play to the JSCSC and Defence Acad- emy’s international connections and also provided more latitude in terms of varying decoration and food options. The Committee areas then began their own ‘huddles’ and set up sub-committees where required in order to share what was already building into a very large task, around the student body. A Defence Academy representative joined us and proved invaluable in providing a link into the Academy proper and those personnel for whom this also represented their Summer Ball for 2011. The decision was also made to hold PB11 predominantly inside the JSCSC and for it to be an all-seated event where guests could use their tables as a base for the evening. With this came the food and drink concept of buffet service with no set sittings – it was hoped that this would, with careful coordination of the entertainment, reduce queues for food and drink as much as was practically possible.
Funding quickly proved to be the critical element in the entire project and each area was tasked with providing a representative budget within the first 3 months in order that we could begin to scope the required cost for tickets and the likely interest of any sponsors. On the subject of sponsors we must thank the follow- ing for their very generous contributions to the event:
BAE Systems Breitling UK Ltd Lockheed Martin PLC Rolls Royce
SERCo
ESS
With sponsors bought into the event and an idea of budget from all areas it was possible to set the ticket price at £75. This was a deli- cate balancing act between not playing too safe so that the price is too high and tickets don’t sell, against ensuring financial viability for the event. As the pressure on the course increased, so too did the demands of the Purple Ball but by Christmas 2010 we had all of the long-lead items in hand, including the booking of 2 bands, 2 decorations companies quoting for the event, the menu for the event chosen in draft and a preliminary choice of wines identified.
After Christmas this left us starting the busiest period of the course still with much to finalise and finesse. The first task of these was to release the tickets for the event and this was
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