VMARKET’20

VMARKET’20 was a virtual event conducted and organized by KTDI’s JKM. When I heard of this concept of opening a virtual market, I was instantly intrigued to the fact that we could be a medium for sellers to expand their small business. Moreover, the sellers are all students from UTM which may struggle due to not being able to sell as much because of the current situation. I was well aware that businesses are affected in a way because of the pandemic and this event was a great opportunity to boost the registered sellers’ business. Thus, I challenged myself to participate the event as a crew to help out.

• Communication Skills

There was a lot of communication going on. The activity unit crew was supposed to keep in contact with the sellers. Every time a new seller is registered, we were supposed to keep them up to date in the WhatsApp group made specifically to manage the sellers. As participants, they had a lot of questions and we had to make sure everyone was well aware of the flow of the event. Thus, making us communicate a lot with the sellers in order to be able to grasp as much information about their business before blasting and promoting them. This helped us develop our communication skills.

• Thinking Skills

Before we settled on how to start promoting on the Telegram channel made for buyers and sellers, we were told to think of efficient and effective ways to make sure the event was well accepted by the audience. There were ideas on how to make it more attractive and that was when we start suggesting lucky draws, giveaways and even polls to be done throughout the event week to keep the buyers engaged. This had tremendously helped us develop our thinking skills.

• Leadership and Teamworking Skills

Before having to deal with the sellers, we were divided into groups of three. We had to help each other out while dealing with the sellers. This really helped us improve our leadership as well as our teamwork skills. It was not just about managing the event together, but there were times where we had to initiate things ourselves and start taking lead on small matters because the others are occupied with another task.

This event aims to sell a variety of items categorized into three which are food, fashion and others. Sellers will register to participate and the crews will assist them respectively. The crews would be posting and promoting their items in VMARKET’s official social media, Instagram as well as in the Telegram channel. As I was one of the activity crew, I was responsible of the food category along with two other members. We had to communicate with the sellers, understand and familiarize ourselves with what the sellers’ sell before putting photos, videos and descriptions on a Google Drive file to ease our work especially when the multimedia unit may need them to post teasers on Instagram. Throughout the ten days, we were in charge in posting and promoting their business via Telegram. We also had to make sure there are no redundancies to benefit every party especially when there are a lot of sellers selling similar food. Last but not least, there were lucky draws and giveaways as well. Buyers could stand a chance to win coupons while buying from the registered sellers.

This was my first time actually being part of an event as a University student and I was excited to learn new things from it. I was not let down by the result because the event certainly did benefit me in many ways. Firstly, it tremendously improved my graduate attributes. I was able to enhance my soft skills by communicating, working in teams, leading, thinking and time managing throughout the event. It helped me in a lot of ways and put me in places I never imagined I would be in. It was a challenge to be making impulse decisions in order to not make the participants wait for long which helped my critical thinking at the moment. There were also times that I had to take lead since other members were busy at the moment or simply initiate tasks for it to keep progressing. This was when the time management skill comes in handy since we were all students and had other things to do. However, I have come to realize that I was the one who put myself in the position. I went through interviews to get the role and it was fully my responsibility to manage the event the best I can. I could not just simply put the work aside just because I could not multitask. It was at this point where I felt like managing events have its pros and cons. The cons being not having much time for myself if I was not good at planning my time. Nevertheless, the pros still outweighed the cons and it was very beneficial to take part in the event. All in all, it was a splendid experience. It was a good first step for me and I see myself participating in more events like this because of the great things I obtained through VMARKET’20.