The semester is coming to a close!

This has been a hard semester to say the least. Working full time and taking 3 classes for the first time proved to almost be more than I could handle. However I am happy to report that I got through it. It is now time for one last final and then soon after I will be taking my first ever vacation from work. I will be enjoying 17 lovely, stress free days away from the office and grad school and will be returning fully refreshed. Just in time for the spring semester to start! It was a pleasure writing this blog this semester and I hope everyone enjoyed reading about my experiences at the Town of Fountain Hills.

When your boss announces her resignation...

When I originally signed up for this internship, it was for a one year comittment. This intrigued me and i was anxious to get some experience working for local government. Towards the end of the internship I had noticed my boss becoming more distant and she was out of the office more. Then the truth had come out. She was resigning from her position and I no longer had an internship. I was extremely disheartened to say the least. Even though I had noticed a change in my boss, I didn't expect this news. So I finished up the last week and that was it. So I got approximately four months of experience under my belt when I was expecting 12. However, with that being said, I am grateful for the time I had and the experience I did receive during my time with the Town of Fountain Hills. It has given me more communication skills and a taste of working for small, local government.

Weeks 13 and 14

My boss was out these weeks, so I was left to my own devices once again! My primary focus was to continue working on our social media management and to research ideas to increase our fan base. I put alot of effort into our social media, but i have to say we didn't have many followers initially. So we really wanted to focus on making that a priority. I posted some of our photo libraries to the town Facebook page and linked the news events from our website to our Facebook page as well. I also scheduled out tweets using our new content management system, co-tweet, for the next week.

The holiday's are among us!

I just wanted to take a break from internship related posts to comment on my excitement about the holidays. I am from the east coast where the holiday's are a big deal. The whole community gets involved in decorating their homes and even their cars! There are neighborhood contests for the best decorations and even the shopping centers are decorated. I miss that. I have found Arizona is not the same in this respect. But i have to say my favorite tradition during the Christmas season is driving around with coffee, the week before Christmas and looking at all of the decorated homes and the wonderful display of lights and decorations that reflect that homeowner's character. I am really looking forward to that this year!

Week 11

This week was pretty busy. I spent it  uploading more events to the town website and Facebook page and created additional photo libraries for our archive system. I also completed further research of Google Fiber and completed assigned town government press releases. I also learned to use Publisher, which I had never used before. The town publishes a monthly newsletter, that later throughout the internship I was asked to help with. It was created in Publisher, which was something I had to learn. It was challenging at first, but I started to get the hang of it! I also transfered our town twitter information to co-tweet for content management. This proved to be really helpful. I also researched information about the town to link to social media pages and coordinated advertising ideas to start formulating polls and surveys for town. It was a busy week!

Research, Research, Research

This week really focused on research. I primarily conducted research on the Google Fiber since the town was in the running to be part of the pilot program. The Google Fiber was a plan to build experimental, ultra high-speed broadband networks. Hundreds of communities and hundreds of thousands of individuals across the country have expressed their interest in the project, including the town. So i did research for the town to make a case for why we should be chosen as one of the communities. The town, as you have all seen from my posts is really into using social media. I also spent the week researching more ways the town could be promoted through social media vehicles for the economic development department. I also managed the events section of our Facebook page.

Career advising: A wonderful experience

Yesterday I stopped by the downtown career center to seek career advising. I currently work for a job that utilizes my undergraduate degrees, but was curious as to how to make that transition to a job that would utlize my master's work. They advisor I met with had some great advice and tips. She mentioned possibly completing an internship or volunteer work, to shadow someone in the field i am interested in getting in to. With my work schedule, i mentioned that this would be difficult. The advisor had great advice on how to deal with that as well. She said that it would be really important to sell my education and highlight my course work and projects in lieu of work experience. This made me feel so much better. She also said i should start looking at job postings now to get a sense of what employers in my field are looking for, as well as start preparing my resumes so that they are ready when i need them. I thought she gave some really great tips and would highly recommend to anyone to visit the career center.

Evaluating Job Offers & Salary Negotiation workshop

I had signed up to take this workshop and was really excited to attend it. I have always been curious about how to go about evaluating a job package when it is presented to you. Unfortunately the workshop was cancelled. The facilitator did, however, leave a lot of materials with career services for me to pick up and use as resources. It included the power point presentation and a couple resource sheets and guidelines. I have to say the information is very useful. I am approaching the one-year mark at my current job and have been thinking its time for a salary increase. My responsibilities have increased significantly and i feel i perform well. The materials from this workshop provided tips on how to negotiate salaries and what you are worth as an individual to a company . This is useful when presenting your case for a salary increase or negotiationg an initial salary. Eventhough the workshop was cancelled, i think i still gained some valuable information.

When your boss is sick.....again

It was really sad to learn that my boss was sick again. This time she was out for two weeks! I wasn't sure what to do with myself exactly. Two weeks is a really long time and I was worried about her health. However it was business as usual. I worked on the town's social media pages, completed research on various topics, and completed two town-government press releases for the website. Even though I had been through this before, it was hard not having the direction I was used to. But I guess that is all part of growing as a professional.

Social media and research

This week I set up gmail account for all of the town's social media exchanges and continued research on content management systems, in particular co-tweet. We use co-tweet at my job and it is really effective. I convinced my boss that we should look in to it. I also continued researching for items on making a calendar portion of social media pages and website as well as advertising possibilities for fan box and extras on social media pages. I also created a photo library so that our department could start archiving photos of events etc. It was a busy week!

Fall Festival photo from library

Thus far in the fall semester....

I have to say, with everything going on I am beyond burnt out from working full time and the fall semester. What is really weighing me down is PAF 573: Advanced Regression. I was not prepared for the intensity of this class. Between learning a new statistical software, completing regression problem sets, and reading assigned research journals, I barely have enough time to read the text books! That doesn't even count the research project I am doing for this class on top of everything else that is required and my other classes. My research project is quite interesting to me, which has become the small flame in an otherwise burnt out candle. All I have to say is I am grateful that December has almost arrived!

Week 8

This week was fairly laid back. I worked on three town-government press releases and the town social media primarily. I also started researching opportunities for the town's economic development team. There had been alot of budget cuts and the town was facing some hard decisions. The economic development team is responsible for finding opporunities for economic growth and development in the town. Since my boss was still sick and catching up from when she was out, I was asked to help the economic development team. It was really interesting researching possible ways to bring growth and stability to the town.

When your boss is sick.....

It makes for an interesting experience the first time your boss is sick and you are left to independently do events, complete assignments etc. When my advisor/boss called to let me know she was sick that week and then listed off my assignments, I wasn't sure how to react. My first thought was that this could be my time to shine and show her (my boss) that I could be trusted to get the work done without consulting her first. At the same time, I was also a bit on edge. I didnt want to make a mistake and have the opposite affect happen! But I independently compsed press releases during that time, conducted research on social market networks and continued to improve the town's social media sites. That was a good experience to have, looking back. I am now more comfortable taking the lead and getting things done.

Community get-togethers and leisure afternoons

The Town of Fountain Hills continues to be a great example of a close-knit community. As part of my responsibilities I had to get the word out about upcoming events, neighborhood gatherings and community news in general through web and social media. These events are so important to the community, and when they are missing..the phones will ring! But I have to say there's something to be said about community involvement. Some favorite activities were "concerts in the park" where local and traveling musicians would perform for the community, movie nights, pot lucks and hot air balloon extravaganzas! I wonder how our world would change if more cities behaved this way? I welcome your feedback :)

Explorations of social media

Its really interesting how social media has taken the world over. No longer are we in the day's where we anxiously await the daily newspaper that was "hot off the press." There are some of those folks still out there, but I would call them a niche population at this point, along with magazine readers. The majority of the world is now online, hence the emergence of blogs...like the one your reading now....and online news sites and now social media. The Town of Fountain Hills, wanting to keep up with the times and its community was all for exploring new ways to communicate. I was charged with finding creative ways of relaying government information and news to the community via social media. I explored some content management options and decided on co-tweet for the town's twitter page. Its really such a useful system. Co-tweet allows you to schedule out information and plan ahead for future events etc through content management. I then linked our website to our social media outlets. In phase 3 of the Facebook fiasco, this week I created a neutral separate email account for use with the upcoming Facebook page. This way there was no conflict with my or my advisor's personal pages and the new page I was creating.

Week four

As is probably normal for most internships and work places, as the weeks went by the more the work piled on. Week four was really focused on advertising, public relations and you guessed it...social media nightmare! I completed three town government press releases that were distributed internally and posted to the website. These press releases had to do with upcoming town trips and activities, news on the fountain and its spring schedule for release. The town was trying to conserve water and had to cut down on the number of times the water shot up from the fountain during the day. I have to say, seeing as the Town of Fountain Hills is very community focused, alot of people were bothered by this. The town holds the fountain very near and dear to their hearts and any changes to the norm aren't taken kindly. However because of the need to conserve water and cut down on operating costs, over time the public sentiment lightened. I also researched advertising possibilities for the Town of Fountain Hills, their upcoming events and Facebook and Twitter mention. On that note I was still in the process of disassembling the old Facebook page and beginning to create a new page to drive people to so as to detract from the old page. However anytime anyone from the team logged in to the new page, it would cancel out the cancellation process. This is because Facebook recognized the email addresses. We then had to work with the Tech department to create a new account for us, and start over again....

Nightmare social media

One of the largest tasks I was assigned was to completely revamp the social media for the Town of Fountain Hills. This included disabling the old Facebook page that was set up incorrectly by a previous employee. This proved to be one of the hardest tasks I had to do....that on the surface seemed the easiest. The directions on actually canceling a Facebook page are not readily available and it took me a while to find them.Which I couldn't figure out why. I guess I can understand why they would make it as difficult as possible to cancel a page so they don't lose members! However for me it just made my job hard. In order to create a new page, the old page had to be completely canceled. In order to do that however, the old page had to be disabled for more than two weeks. Meaning you couldn't use the page. However during this time, there was important information that I needed to share via social networks, with Facebook being an extremely important one of those. It was really a catch 22 situation. I couldn't make a new page, but also couldn't do anything with the old page. Stay tuned for more on how this "social media nightmare" unfolds!.....

Interesting happenings in the media...

I have a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and over the year have worked as an intern for many of the Valley newspapers. Long story short, I have a soft spot for the media and I greatly understand what goes in to running a newsroom, the challenges brought on by the community and the effects privatization of these companies have done to the industry. The part that I have always had a hard time with is in regards to ethics in the media. Because the media has changed so much over the last 20 years, the role the media plays in society is very different. While on the surface the media may seem to still be that watch dog of the government, the media has become a business, where traditional business concerns sometimes trump being an " honest, truth telling reporter." I read the article from the Huffington Post regarding Rick Sanchez and his "unorthodox comments" that led to his firing. I am curious to know what the rest of you think. Given the way the media should act, was Rick Sanchez out of line in his comments and possibly unethical? Or was CNN embarrassed and let the business side of the company decide Rick's fate? Let me know your thoughts! Below is a link to the article in case you haven't read it yet.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/01/rick-sanchez-fired-from-c_n_747607.html?fbwall

Reaching out to the community

Like I have mentioned, the Town of Fountain Hills is very small-town focused, so the residents there are very involved in community activities and policies, and are active in decisions regarding the town. One of my responsibilities working in the Community Affairs department was to compose town-government press releases and post them to the town's website. These ranged from community events promotion such as senior citizens activities as well as information from the recent town council meetings and details on town infratrucutre and bugdet concerns. Residents from the town looked forward to these postings, as keeping up with the latest community news is extremely important to them.
Check out the lastest news from the Town of Fountain Hills.
http://www.fh.az.gov/news.aspx

A bit about the blogger....

I will intersperse information about myself and my internship experiences throughout this blog space. I thought it only natural to share a little about myself first! My name is Samantha (Sam) Sanchez and I am a second year MPP graduate student at the ASU School of Public Affairs. I also received my undergraduate degrees in Journalism and Political Science from ASU. I currently live in Ahwatukee, with my fiance Carlos and I work full time for the Girl Scouts as a Public Relations and Communications Coordinator. I am also involved in advocacy and government relations work, as part of my job at the Girl Scouts. That is me in a nutshell! Stay tuned for future posts about me and the insider's scoop on the Town of Fountain Hills.

My first day as an intern

When I first received the call that I had received the internship with the Town of Fountain Hills, I was extremely excited and a bit overwhelmed ; I realized I only had a basic understanding of how the town operated. Because the town is unlike most other communities in Arizona, I had a lot of learning to do. On my first day I began researching archived information, press releases and studies of economic development of the community to get myself familiar. Since I was working for the Community and Government Affairs department, it was vital that I know as much as possible about the town's communication and operating system. As part of the internship, I also had to create a social media plan for the town, as well as a government calendar of key items the public should know about. The preliminary research was extremely useful here as well. I had never seen the fountain before accepting this internship and it really is a refreshing sight! The community definitely had a small "town" feel and it was like I had driven into a different world. Check out the town's website for some background information on how it operates.
http://www.fh.az.gov/

Welcome to my blog!

This space will be used to share my experiences working as an intern for the Town of Fountain Hills Community and Government Affairs Department. You will also get to know a bit about me in the process! Stay tuned for upcoming posts containing photos, press releases and my perspective "from the inside" of the Town of Fountain Hills.