Blog #4- Week 2

 This week has been off to a great start. Last week, I took the careful time to learn and study the different areas of the Cleveland Sports Commission Organization, and this week I am actually in the office to get hands on with my project! I have already learned so much by being here and a lot from meeting with one of my mentors in person, Matt Sajna. On Monday we sat down for handful of hours and got to review some actual planning documents from previous events that the organization produced. I was absolutely amazed by how much went in to producing an event, tracking it from the brainstorming faze to the dates it actually happened. There are so many different parts that are necessary in order for an event to successfully be put on. Last week came in handy for me here because I had insight into how each different area functioned in the bigger picture and all worked together to produce an event. I was particularly interested because as an example, we looked through the planning documents for the NCAA DII Swimming National Championship, which was hosted at Spire in March of 2020. There was a lot of twists and turns with this however, because the Covid-19 Pandemic hit in the middle of event and caused it to have to shut down. However, it was interesting to see how adaptations were made in the eyes of that, showing that you always have to be on your feet and deal with change as it comes (even unexpectedly). It was also really interesting to dive into the financials of the event. It is really hard to be able to estimate the exact amount of money that everything will cost, so it is important to use your resources in order to help make that guess as accurate as possible. For each different area of the event, for example: hospitality (food for athletes and officials), equipment, merchandise, workers, etc. there was an estimated amount of money that would need to be spent to provide it. Then I got to see how much was actually spent; sometimes it was more than the estimated amount, and sometimes it was less. This ended up being okay though because if some where higher and some were lower, that left some wiggle room for it to even out. Although this was only one part of the planning, everything had its purpose and it was such a cool opportunity to go behind the scenes and see the other side of things that I usually wouldn't think about at an event like a swim meet.