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