After a hard day, Melbourne Convention Bureau’s Rebecca Elliott deserves a meal out in one of the city’s top spots

My Day

5.45am: My alarm goes off and I immediately want to hit snooze or change it to a more reasonable waking hour, but instead I’m up and dressed and ready to hit the gym to get the day started.

7.00am: I’m home and getting ready for work, while simultaneously catching up on local and world news on The Today Show and checking Instagram and Facebook – I must have a mix of topical issues and celebrity gossip.

8.45am: Coffee in hand I arrive at work and check through emails, media clippings and my task list for the day and choose which I am going to tackle first. Most of the time it’s the follow-up phone calls I need to make, chasing people on items such as ministerial attendance at an event or an outstanding media release.

10.00am: Time for some editing. Most mornings I will have some copy I need to approve for a newsletter, a piece of collateral we’re producing or a media request. If it’s not too big a task I will sit at my desk and do it or if it requires more concentration I will take it into a quiet room.

11.00am: I meet with my team and go through our work-in-progress document. I manage a team of three including a communications co-ordinator, marketing executive and graphic designer. With major events coming up such as Business Events Australia’s Dreamtime 2013 and the MCB-owned Asia-Pacific Incentives & Meetings Expo (AIME) the to-do list is somewhat large. It requires maximum collaboration between the team to ensure we manage our internal and external stakeholders on their roles and responsibilities.

12.00 noon: It’s back to the desk to check emails and update the task list.

12.30pm: I meet with my colleague from Business Events Australia and we go to lunch with the chief executive officer of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival to discuss the media roundtable we are holding as part of Dreamtime 2013. The idea is to showcase to the media that Melbourne’s major events calendar is a lynchpin for business events, specifically incentive travel reward programmes.

2.00pm: Back to the office to check those pesky emails and update the task list.

3.00pm: I put in a call to our PR agency to discuss the various requirements for Business Events Week, which is being held in Melbourne from Monday 17th February to Friday 21th February, and is designed to showcase the value of business events to the national economy.

4.00pm: If there are no more meetings then it is time to action some more of that task list and update again for the next day ahead.

6.00pm: It’s home time, or rather time to meet a friend for dinner at one of Melbourne’s fabulous restaurants.

Rebecca Elliott, Communications Manager, Melbourne Convention Bureau