The Blur of the Month of June

In less than a week it will be July- where has June gone?! This semester by far has been the busiest; with going to school full-time, working part-time, doing a part-time internship and becoming the president of our PRSSA chapter I have been running around like a chicken with its head cut off! I hope to have a couple of new posts for y’all soon to make up for myself being MIA the last month {please forgive me!}

Since the beginning of the semester I have been helping plan the communication department’s Comm Day that they put on each semester. Comm Day is like a conference day on campus for all of the communication students. All of the communication classes are cancelled for the day so that we may attend this conference. Each semester there is a new theme, this semesters was “A Look at New Media”. For Comm Day we invite professionals to come and guest speak, which provides the students with great tips to prepare for our future careers and networking opportunities. The day consists of a panel discussion, three break-out sessions, lunch for the speakers/professors/students who helped/anyone else important, a keynote and finally a “meet and greet” where the students may speak with the professionals.

Up until about two weeks before Comm Day things were running very slowly, and then everything hit at once! I am glad I had the opportunity to help plan this event and I hope to be able to participate again. Now I know what to do to make things better and what can be left out.

I was asked by my professors to be the host for our keynote speakers. Our keynote speakers this semester were two young and very accomplished men from Salt Lake City, UT, Jake Black and John Dye. Those of you who know me well also know that I get super nervous to speak to people with authority, so when asked to host for the keynote speakers I was excited but nervous beyond belief! Jake and John arrive a day earlier than the other speakers so that they could speak to a few classes and mine just so happened to be one of them. I made sure to get to class early so that I could introduce myself and see if there was anything I could help with.

Right when I met them I knew that I had nothing to worry about, Jake and John are yes very successful but more importantly they’re human. You could tell that they really wanted to help us students by providing tips, internship opportunities, and being available to network.

So now that I’ve told y’all how great they are here’s a little bio on the two:

Jake Black

Jake Black is the Manager of Social Media and Emerging Technology in the Media Division of the Missionary Department at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He oversees mormon.org accounts across social media including: Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Before working for the LDS church Jake wrote for Saturday morning cartoons, comic books, magazines, DVD features books and more.

John Dye

Prior to joining Bonneville Communications and working as Director of Digital Media for the award-winning “I’m a Mormon” campaign, John served as the President of Fluid Studio, an integrated marketing and advertising firm located near Salt Lake City.

Under his leadership, Fluid grew from a tiny start-up to a viable graphic design studio and advertising firm that more than tripled in size. He has been published in a number of trade journals and publications.

John has been a longtime participant in social media realms including: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and more. He has helped numerous companies effectively incorporate social media into their overall marketing strategy.

John attended Ricks College and is a graduate from Brigham Young University, where he received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English.

Comm Day was such a great opportunity for me to participate in, I am so grateful to my professors for trusting me with the responsibilities that they did. So here are some perks from the day that I especially enjoyed.

#CommDay

I was asked to manage the twitter account! I LOVE TWITTER, which I’m sure many of you already know. Our handle was @scrollreunion {there was a reunion for our newspaper going on also in which we combined the two} and our hashtag was #CommDay. Twitter here at BYU-I isn’t very popular, but those who did participate were very frequent and they were also apart of our contest! Since the whole theme was new media we wanted to really get students to be actively involved with twitter through out the day. To encourage this we announce at the beginning there would be a competition. At the end of the day we gave out three prizes for: the most frequent tweeter, most creative tweeter and promotional tweeter. The prize for each was a flash drive bracelet {looks like the “Live Strong” ones} I think they’re pretty cool if I do say so myself!

Finding the humor is my height

At luncheon I was asked to say the blessing over our meal, so I walked up to the podium and mic, {which was on a stand so I couldn’t adjust the height} and I am really hoping that everyone’s eyes were closed because that microphone was literally at my forehead! People, I am five foot flat, is that really that short?!

After the lunch we had the keynote presentation and I had the honor of announcing our Twitter winners and introducing Jake and John. As I watched my dear friend conduct the session I realized that yes she is taller than me but she was barely visible over the podium! I just thought to myself, “no one is going to be able to see me!” When I got to the podium I attempted to be on my tippy toes {which failed miserably once I began shaking} after asking my friends who were in the audience the conclusion came to be that those sitting in the front couldn’t see me at all, those in the back could semi and those on the side saw me on my tippy toes…

Overall it was a great day {for working 14 hours}, everything ran smoothly and I met some great people!