I have mentioned in a previous post that I plan to conduct some interviews with people who have successfully ran successful events, namely a patriot camp and the Springville children’s’ museum fair. I thought it would be nice to tap into the experience of people who do successful projects.
Today’s list is discussing things I need to do in preparation for an interview. Interviewers already have some preconceived ideas of what type of information they want, right? First I will want to define what key information I want in the interview and I cater my questions to fulfill that goal. I want to know how to run a project from conception to completion. I’ve done a few myself, with mixed results. Let’s see what others do with better results.

Key object to the children’s fair: How to pull it all together and organized it. The way the subject answers may provide fodder for additional or clarification questions. I plan to tape record the responses for better accuracy as well as take notes. I need to remember to type them up on a laptop as my writing is much more legible on a keyboard. My first interview is with the person who took all the minutes during the meetings. She was also my point of contact when I was asked to put story telling track together. I am hoping that if she typed up her notes, she’ll let me look at them so I can get some details on different projects that took place within the fair. Some of my questions might be:

Q: How did you get involved with the Springville museum?
Q: how it started and how was it started?
Q: what is some of the history behind?
Q: before your key role, what other roles did you have to build up to the one you currently have?
Q: what were some things that were tried in the past that you found to be unsuccessful?
Q: Often through the years an event will change from year to year because you’ve tried different logistics of running the event. What are some of your observations of why things changes from year to year?
Q: How did you begin to collect all the different volunteers for the event?
Q: what are some observations you’ve made in working with business partnerships in helping to sponsor various events.
Q: There were a lot of people who had different responsibilities. What are some of their names and what tasks did the do?
Q: what are some of your resources for chairs, tents, tables and manpower and what have you learned in working with others who are not part of the library staff?

I’ll continue this topic tomorrow.