Explore UT Mega-Post Part 4

So with a few weeks passed since the event, I feel like I can finally analyze what lessons Explore UT taught us without falling victim to my crazy emotional responses.
Explore UT was the first time I was part of organizing something more labor-intensive than a dinner party. I think. Nothing else springs to mind, anyway.  Dinner parties are fairly straight-forward. You decide to have a party, you decide when, you decide on the guest list, you decide what food/drink to provide your guests (and how much to spend on them). You are in control. And still, it can be frustrating. Some people who said they were coming are no-shows. Uninvited guests show up. Food burns. Someone ends up being allergic to the pine nuts your great-aunt Angie's chip dip. But unless you're hosting a dinner party for the Joint Chiefs of Staff or your future in-laws (whom you've never met), these obstacles are but minor annoyances, unlikely to change your friends' opinions of you or whatever you may represent. Furthermore, you are firmly in your own domain. Everything is "known"--you are familiar with your house, your kitchen, your friends...
The planning of Explore UT was quite different. We had to contend with a lot of unknowns. We had only a passing acquaintance with ALA staff, besides Keepin' it Real leaders and our professor.  We had no familiarity with the event or its organizers. We didn't know the kids that well, either; what they liked, if they'd even come. We didn't know how much money we had to spend, or, more accurately, we didn't have any to start out with. We didn't have control over timing (a few more months to plan would've been nice) :-). On some level, we didn't know if we were going to be able to pull this off.
We had no choice but to fumble through things as best we could. Of course, we were able to gain information to fill some of the gaps. We trolled the Explore UT website extensively. We polled the kids about which events throughout the day were most interesting to them. We threw together a fundraiser and submitted a budget proposal to the Dean's Office.
Ultimately, I think we did the best we could with the information and time available to us. In the process, we learned some valuable lessons for next time--if there is a next time.
Lesson 1. Communication is key. This is a fairly obvious concept. What's not obvious is that every person we interacted with had their own communication system and preferences. The person in charge of Explore UT parking arrangements was reachable only through a third party by phone, but responded reasonably promptly by e-mail. Some people we contacted for donations simply never returned calls or e-mails. We suspected the van rental place screened our calls as we sought to get a special discount on van rental (no manager is out of the office that much).
Lesson 2. Sometimes the best info you've got isn't good enough. Despite our constant monitoring of the Explore UT website, and perusal of the booklet provided the day of the event, it escaped our notice that some events required getting tickets ahead of time due to their popularity. Even in hindsight, I really don't know how we were supposed to know that. Having encountered this phenomenon once, I ventured ahead of the group later in the day to ensure that we'd be able to attend the chemistry demonstration as planned. I spoke to a young man who was running the demo, and he assured me that no tickets were needed and if we arrived at the classroom 15 minutes before the start time, we'd have no problem getting seats. That, of course, turned out not to be the case. I don't blame that young man personally. It's just that we got information from the best source we could think of and it turned out to be bad info.
Lesson 3. Communication is key, part 2. It's nigh on impossible but vital to keep everyone involved on our end on the same page. This, I felt, turned out to be the major weakness of our efforts. The six of us communicated relatively effectively through hours-long class sessions and hundreds of e-mails. Miscommunications were relatively minor and remedied before they became disastrous. Communications with ALA staff were a different story. We might ask for a form to be e-mailed to us in person during Keepin' it Real on Thursday, and send follow-up requests by e-mail, text message, and e-mail, and finally get the form weeks later. We'd be asked questions in person that clearly indicated that staff had not been reading our e-mail and text updates. We later found out one staff member had given us their "brush-off" e-mail address, which the person never checks. Conflicting information came at us from every corner. We ended up relying most heavily on the staff that we could actually communicate with, which resulted in skewed information, but we didn't really have much of a choice.
Of course, we could have done better. We could have been more "in your face" during the "meat" of the planning, rather than having one face-to-face meeting at the very beginning and one face-to-face meeting at the end. On the other hand, we could barely get in touch with staff to arrange those meetings, so maybe having more wouldn't have been feasible.
Next: Explore UT Mega-Post Part 5: the Conclusion. Phew.