Posted on Fri 12 Sep 2025 at 09:19 by
Anthony Foster They say AI will take over the world but will it be alright on the night?
We've been planning Welcome Week for nine months. It has been a genuinely smooth oiled machine and, for the most part, everything goes very well with all the information you need for a great event. There are, of course, little hiccups along the way. You may not have seen it but behind the scenes human interaction has saved the day on numerous occassions. So if you want to do events for a career, here's five things you may have to deal with - AI free, of course.
A venue double booking club nights after your pub crawl that you are told about an hour before the pub crawl starts. The venue was sorted in the end with 200 very happy students ending a great night.
The bus company saying they hadn't been paid (they had!) and no drivers for the free buses to your Welcome Fair. It all came good on the morning of the event with amazing attendance for societies, sports clubs, University departments and commercial companies giving out all their freebies.
The weather not looking too good for an outside event so suppliers were contacted to move things two hours earlier, which they all did. We managed to set up despite grass being cut around us and unlocking a key to inflate the bouncy castles!
A very blusty gust of wind blowing two (weighed down) gazebos high into the air damaging a popcorn machine and spin the wheel. One gazebo blowing high over a hedge! No casualties, nor need for public liability insurance, and spin the wheel survived thanks to some well placed sellotape!
Juggling University Committees, inductions and appeals around staff and students supporting all the events, tables not being set up for our arrival, new events, last minute changes and negotiations to ensure things go smoothly for students attending. The ENSA team pulled out all the stops and (in my opinion) have done really well with 40 events to co-ordinate and the day job to contend with.
Three days of Welcome Week still to go. In years to come we will all laugh and share these stories (and no doubt embellish them along the way). We hope you have a great rest of the week and enjoy Settle In Week from Monday.
#welcometonapier