And The First Day Is Over (Orientation + Reception)

Wow, where to begin.

After being briefed on everything today I needed a run to process all that was happening.

Lets start with orientation. This went from 2-5pm and we meet all of the interns, the people responsible for setting up COLAB, and a lot of powerhouse names in the Portland creative industry. To name a few: Jeanie Coates, Ryan Buchanan, Ed Herinckx, Frank Grady and Kent Lewis.

I have to say that I am STOKED for COLAB there is an amazing energy that seems to stem from such creative collaborators. Everyone is here to help the interns succeed. They are helpful, friendly, and seem genuinely interested in who we are as individuals. It is evident that attention has been paid to the interns expectations for this program. Knowing that the professionals were just as excited and nervous as I am helped calm the nerves.

In addition to the interns working at their respective agencies we will be working on a client presentation that will cover the creative work we produced for a marketing/PR campaign. Every Friday we will be working within our teams to finish our presentations. Our client is going to be Sameunderneath . The goal is to create a marketing/PR campaign that sheds awareness on the owner's desire to educate the world about his philosophy, that despite the markets and stereotypes we group ourselves in, everyone is "the same underneath".

Ryan Christenson is a passionate, amazing and respectable person. He is the founder and owner of Sameunderneath. I will never be able to do his words justice, but he is defiantly one who tops my personal inspiration list. His pitch to us today relied solely on storytelling. He gave us his life story, his inspiration behind the Sameunderneath brand and his ten year goals both personally and professionally. He is devoted to developing a curriculum that teaches social studies and history on a more accurate scale. He is also passionate about politics and wants to spread awareness to today's youth. His speech was an inspiration and left me anticipating this Friday where the teams are meeting for the first time to work on our campaigns.

The interns were broken up into two groups. We had our first task of naming our teams.
My team is made up of:
Heather Schwartz- Account/Project Manager
Melissa Casillas- Designer
Whitney Bard- Designer
Megan Nuttall- Copywriter
We approached this task by coming up with a list of commonalities between our group members. Creative, control, opportunity, ladies, curiosity, multi-tasking and classy are a few words that we came up with. After a round of lame names, we decided on Lattice. "Supporting the Growth of Fresh Ideas." The idea behind this is that we work as a team to foster creative ideas and without all of the necessary members we wouldn't be successful. Just as a lattice acts as a support system for plants, we act as a support system for finishing the tasks that have been set forth.
The second team is comprised of:
Kimberly Karalekas- Account/Project Manager
Mary McPherson- Account/Project Manager
Christine Vo- Designer
Luke Rolka- Designer
Bryan Davidson- Copywriter
The came up with the team name Kiwi which is subject to change in the near future.

After networking with the professionals in the room we all headed off to Grand Central Bowling.
Here we were given drink tickets (Christine Vo and I got kicked out of the bar after hardly even stepping foot into it, but eventually received our virgin strawberry lemonades) and all headed down to bowl for a few games. First it was the two teams (Kiwi and Lattice) against each other and the professionals divided up into two teams against each other. We split into mixed groups after the first game and enjoyed more networking and the get-to-know-you questions with everyone.

Overall the day was a lot of fun. I am even more excited to continue my experiences with COLAB. The group of interns is amazing and the companies are as well.

You can look forward to A LOT of documentation that I am sure will be streaming the web throughout the next six weeks. Each intern has been asked to document our lives throughout the internship to give an insiders perspective into COLAB. This was called "The Shotlist" which includes: Agency Footage, Friday Footage and Footage Guest-Starring Portland as a Character in the Internship. Check out Christine's and myself's first video blog.

Tomorrow I start at my first agency, Ascentium. I am looking forward to learning about their culture and how they operate.