Cinco de Mayo

Well I have been sick unfortunatly and not able to make it to the last two days of work, but I am here today, which is also my last day.
I have learned how to do so many things during my time spent interning at the chamber. I think that this internship was very valuable and I would definatly recommend it to others who are looking to spend their time actually doing important things. The entire staff at the chamber are very friendly and helpful and I will miss working with them.
At my next internship which is this summer I will be working at Box Talent which I am also very excited for.

4/19/2010

Schmooza Palooza is coming up on April 27th and theres lots to do!
I made a survey in surveymonkey.com which I am familiar with doing because I have made surveys for my public relations research class. The survey was an exhiitor survey to be given after schmooza to the hundreds of exhibitors. I prepared packets to give to people at schmooza. Another major portion of my work today was working on the core to shore updates that will be put on the website. I found photos and videos and write paragraphs for each major place in bricktown. This was a fun assignment for me because I got to be creative. I also uploaded news to the chamber website and the economic development website.

MegaLunch

Today I helped the event planners at the chamber set up for MegaLunch. The event was at the Greens Country Club. When we arrived we set everything up for the event including table numbers, party favors and printed materials. Once people started to arrive, I checked in people and gave them their table rotations. The way the event works is pretty cool, everyone gets a card and the first table on their card is where they sit to have lunch, and then every couple of minutes, you switch tables according to the rotation on your card. This allows each person to potentially meet 40 to 50 people and pitch their business to them. I was in the table rotation and I was promoting SchmoozaPalooza. After the event was over, I helped clean up and then we drove back to the chamber where I helped call restaurants to see if they catered outside for a big event that's coming up. It was a great way to spend my 21st birthday!!!

Sick Day

Today I went to work but then got sick again from a previous "bug" that I had over the weekend. I feel so guilty for being sick. There is a big difference between being sick during school and being sick in the working world.
In college if you get sick, most teachers have no sympathy and tell you if you can't make it to class then too bad... you can't take the test.
At work, if you get sick, they don;t want you there because you will get everyone else sick.
Seems to me like teachers are going a little overboard in trying to prepare you for the "REAL WORLD"

SchmoozaPalooza Networking and Trade Show

SchmoozaPalooza is not your ordinary boring networking event. The event is April 27, 2010 at the State Fair park in the transportation building. Tickets are $10 each and anyone can come. There will be over a dozen restaurants providing food and each person receives one drink ticket. This trade show allows people to find out about other businesses and socialize. Different booths will have interactive games and drawings to make the event exciting and fun. Last year one of the booths had wii games to play while a different booth had a sculptor and an artist making artistic creations for attendees.

Keeping Busy

This may sound really nerdy, but I feel really cool and smart when I upload news to different websites. You have to use code to format the news content to match the other news releases on the site. I uploaded news to the chamber, economic development and greater grads websites about oklahoma city in the news. I really enjoy learning things like this because previous to this internship, I would have considered myself as computer challenged.

I have my speech ready for Mega Lunch which is April 14. Coincidenrtaly this is also my 21st birthday!! Mega Lunch is at the Greens Country Club and I will basically pitch SchmoozaPalooza to 8-10 different groups of people sitting at different tables.

3/24/2010

Well last week was Spring Break, and this week I have lots to do!! I have been working on a power point for the Total Resource Development Campaign for many days now, and today I have made the last few editions and tweaked it to make it just right. The membership packets were shipped to the Chamber instead of to the members directly, so I organized the packets so that delivery volunteers could take them out. This week has consisted moslty of organizing and filing and administartive work and less "PR" work. I am starting to realize that working at a non-profit requires a lot more dedication and team work with employees. I love how I get to work in communications but I am not stuck doiong one thing. Like the other day, I learned how to upload news stories to the Chamber web site. I would have never thought that I could post anything online besides this blog! :)

3/10/10

The Chamber is going through renovations to the entire building. The Convention and Visitors Bureau is going to move frm their location down the street, to the main building. Having a 9-5 job is making me appreciate the hours of college more and more.

3/8/10

This week at the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, I have been doing a lot of work on the lunch-n-learn Powerpoint. I have been searching through ever folder to find pictures for every event that the Chamber has in a year. I found a picture of the event that showed how many people were there and with a speaker, and then I found pictures for the same event of a smaller group of people at the event preferrably with signage in the background. The pictures will then be used in this powerpoint to show other company's advertising and fundraising opportunities for their own company. I haven't started putting the picturs in the slideshow because I needed to find two pictures for about 40 events. Some of the events have already occured in 2010, so I uploaded pictures from the events like the career fair. The carer fair was a big success this year with lots a thousand students showing up. I attended two all staff meetings this week, and even though I sat in the back and didn't really know much of what they were talking about, I did understand that the next three month are going to be very busy for the communications department.

3/3/10

It is finally March!! I am learning a lot here at the Chamber. The other day, I wrote an article about the Aerospace Summit and Expo for the Point, which is the Greater OKC monthly newsletter. The Career Fair is over, so there are no more major pressing projects to work on for that. Now I am mostly working on materials to be mailed in order to set up and get ready for the Conference of Mayors. I aslo wrote a real news release which was pretty awesome!!!

2/22/10

The previous Monday at the Chamber, we celebrated President's Day, and on Wednesday, I attended a staff meeting, read through webinars to find PR ideas for the bio conference, and I looked through photos to find one to put on the okcchamber website in the membership area. Today is Monday the 22nd, and I have been busy putting packets together for the greater grads career fair which is coming up on March 2. I also attended a staff meeting today because the marketing/communications department has them every Monday afternoon. For the first time today, I worked on gathering information for the News Bureau which is sent out weekly to chamber members.

2/10/10

Today at the Chamber, I worked on putting materials together for the China trip that is coming up soon. It snowed while I was driving to work which was interesting since I have never driven in the snow! I researched ways to make a business conference more green, which was my favorite task of the day. worked on the Core to Shore project by updating and making suggestions to add to the interactive website. The Chamber is working hard to put lots of events together at one time, which makes my work more interesting.

2/3/10

Today I checked newspapers for news about the national economy and the national real estate market. I started working on getting material ready for the chamber members trip to China. I checked passenger lists, baggage and bus lists. I then prepared envelopes with information about the trip. I compiled a list of government relations media contacts and tourism media contacts. For the Mega Lunch tomorrow, I cut and prepared materials and rotation sheets for the guests. I worked from 9-4 today...welcome to the real world.

This is my first blog post about my internship, but I have been working as a marketing intern for the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber for 2 weeks now. I am at the Chamber twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My first day consisted of attending a PRSA luncheon at NONA's called Tweet-N-Eat. A panel discussed how they used twitter to help their business. In the past four days, I have checked for relevant news in the New York Times and USA Today. I wrote a spot announcement for KGOU radio about the upcoming Greater Grads Career Fair which is March 2 at the Cox Convention Center. I have put together multiple media contact lists for future reference.