Rain, floods, postponement and tips in rescheduling your events


-------------
Weather Advisory No. 5
For: Low Pressure Area (LPA)
Issued at: 11:00 AM, 03 July 2012

At 8 a.m. today, the Low Pressure Area (LPA) was estimated based on satellite and surface data at 60 km Northwest of Ambulong, Batangas or 50 km West Southwest of Manila (14.3°N, 120.5°E).
This weather disturbance is expected to bring scattered to widespread rains over Central and Southern Luzon including National Capital Region (NCR), and Western Visayas.
Residents living in low lying areas and along mountain slopes are advised to be on alert for possible occurrence of flashfloods and landslides.
The next update will be incorporated in the public weather forecast at 5:00 p.m. today while the next advisory will be issued at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow.

(photo and info via http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/ )
-------------------

I received two notes already about these events that are postponed for this week because of the heavy rain and flood around the metro. I’m glad that they postponed it so early and we don’t know yet if we will have a good weather in the next coming days. We don’t have any typhoon today and its just a low pressure area that moves slow and formed  with big clouds above us here in Luzon, you can see in the satellite image provided by PAGASA that the low pressure area hit us so hard and let’s pray that it won’t become a typhoon.

Classes and offices are cancelled today in some affected areas in Luzon, some parts here in Manila are flooded and I know that there will be big traffic jams in EDSA and also in small roads of Manila. I was suppose to cover an event in Festival Mall today at 4pm, but the dark clouds and heavy rains are threatening me and then I decided to stay home and finish all of these back logs. Crossing floods are okay for me because I can get another route to reach my destination and avoid other floody areas, I just don’t like the massive traffic that will let you rot for hours seating inside the vehicle and get hungry. I experienced so many times been stuck in traffic and we’re just so lucky that we arrive home in one piece. Traveling from Cavite to Manila and vice versa with traffic is like a limbo in hell, that’s why I chose to stay here at home and log online.

I’m very thankful that our event organizers are kind to move their events to another schedule, I know its hard to re-schedule and the pain of contacting all of your participants, its okay if you know your participants, but what if you don’t know a hundreds or thousands of them?  We are lucky that we have Facebook, Twitter, blogs and sms to informed us right away if there are sudden changes of time and schedules of events. I already experienced the hassle of re-organizing and moving a BIG event to another week, yeah, the Typhoon Ondoy hit me hard that year and I’m glad everyone uses internet and all our participants helped me in passing the message that the event is postponed and move to another schedule.

If you are organizing an event and you want to move the schedule in a later date, all you have to do is:

1. Post an update and announcement in all of your social media accounts – blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube and etc.
2. Inform them that you are concerned about the safety of your participants and also about the weather conditions that let you decide to move yur event to a later date
3. Post status updates regularly to inform everyone that your event will no longer push through
4. If you have contact numbers of your participants, message them one by one or in a group sms blast message.
5. Best thing is to apply a 1 day unlimited text in Globe or SMART, they have those unli txt subscriptions, you can update all your participants any time within the day.
6. If you have a Facebook Event Page, just log in to your FB account and message all your attendees in one message blast
7. Ask your event participants to help you deliver the message and post it in their social networks.
8. If you have amposter and other collaterals, try to update it quickly and upload the new schedule and venue
9. Monitor the weather news, watch TV, listen to radio news and be aware of any update about the weather.
10. These tip can help you, but not all can move their schedules, others paid the rental of the venue in full and can’t move their schedule to due to other activates booked to the venue, try to talk to the venue provider if they can consider moving your event to another schedule, and if ever they don’t allow it, then that’s a go signal for you to find another venue.. I know..hassle talaga, but its better to have good attendance and safety for your participants.