It's been a fairly quiet week at the Festival this week with no Committee meeting. I think it's just been a week where for most people it's been a little on the backburner, myself included. Everything seems to be plodding along - people are talking to who they need to be talking to, we're having meetings, still seeking more sponsorship etc.

My primary concerns remain money and personnel. There are some promising sponsorship avenues that we're going down, but still no indication about whether or not they will come to fruition. I'm feeling a little tense about this as we're steadily approaching the six-month mark (it's about a week away) and I feel it's perhaps time for us to consider alternative means of fundraising. We're still about $20,000 short of our minimum target, and of course if I had my way I'd prefer to go over and above the minimum!

And personnel. We're looking for a curatorial intern, two marketing interns and an event management intern. I'm desperate to fill these positions asap, particularly the marketing positions as we need to roll out the marketing plan asap. I also feel that I really should be involved in that process, but at this stage I'm not - particularly with the curatorial intern, who definitely has to be someone I can work well with and trust. I'm going to raise this with my boss and see what she says.

We had a meeting with a potential sponsor the other day. I was present along with my boss (the Festival Director and President of the Committee) and another committee member, as well as the prospective sponsor. It was a slightly excruciating meeting. I have no idea why I was present as I could hardly get a word in when it came to explaining the program. My boss tends to over-elaborate about everything to do with the Festival, which in a sponsorship meeting I feel is a bit of a problem - you should present the sponsor with a clear and concise vision of the Festival in a couple of sentences, and then just as concisely explain what you can do for them and what you would like in return. This is never what happens, and I think that's incredibly problematic. What ends up happening is that my boss keeps talking with the other committee member interrupting, and neither myself nor the sponsor can get a word in, or even make a lot of sense of the pile of information that's being fired our way. The most frustrating part is that I don't feel that there's a lot I can do about this - I can hardly say to my boss 'oh, by the way, maybe you should be more concise with sponsors?'

But I feel fairly on top of my load of the work - although that's about to change. I have a meeting in about ten minutes with my boss to talk about a few things - budget, artistic program etc. So I'm sure that, next entry, there'll be a lot more to talk about.