COLABORATORY From an Intern's Perspective

The End

2008-08-27T22:02:00.000-07:00

Now, that it has already been almost two weeks since COLAB ended I am updating the blog. Sorry for the delayed response to the conclusion, but for some reason I found myself busier after COLAB finished than during. Weird how that happens.

The final presentations from both Kiwi and Lattice were awesome! It was evident that both teams put an incredible amount of effort into their work, and came out with really CREATIVE ideas for Sameunderneath.

Despite some doubt that the intern's had during the 6 weeks, Ryan was actually told to pick a winner. Lattice was the overall winner, go team! After a series of questions (mainly of the audience addressed to both the teams and Ryan), back and forth between what Ryan liked from each team, and an anxious group of interns Ryan decided on Lattice.

Winning was exciting. Even better though is that Ryan invited both teams to his marketing meetings in Septemeber and October to help him make a game plan. It was nice of him to honor both teams and all of their hardwork.

Probably the coolest thing about that Friday was the presentation. As many times that week that we dreaded the upcoming presentation, it definitely paid off. There was a room full of professionals watching our work, our lives, for the past six weeks. There was no better way to finish COLAB than to present. I've never worked so hard on a pitch before and the reward was sheer amazingness. Special thanks to PAF and Jamie for the flower cookie :)

COLAB was the best thing I could've done with my summer. I've talked to a lot of people about the program since it has been over and I can't wait to see what happens next year!

To The New Group, Livengood | Nowack, Ascentium, Anvil Media, eRoi, Fish Marketing, HMH, Grady Britton, Asterix, CMD and Portland Advertising Federation THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE OPPORTUNITY!

To everyone at the agencies THANK YOU for all of your advice, input and friendship. Meeting such a diverse group of people enriched the COLAB expereince.

To Ryan, thanks for the shopping spree and having such a cool company as Sameunderneath to work on. I'm lookign forward to the upcoming meetings.

If you care to read my current blog on life outside of COLAB check it out.

The Finale

2008-08-20T09:28:00.001-07:00

Lattice's final presentation for Sameunderneath.

Hazelnut Tech Talk Episode 6

2008-08-12T00:52:00.000-07:00

My and Megan's COLAB experiences reiterated to Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo.

The Fifth Week in Perspective

2008-08-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

Mon-Wed. Anvil agency time.

Thurs- Heather and I double team at Ascentium working on the marketing plan and presentation. Remote work for Anvil

Fri. About 9 hours at Coates Kokes

Saturday- I had to break from COLAB to try and finish my reading assignments for humanities, about 9 chapters of the Scarlett Letter. 1/4 the book left before Tuesday night. Also volunteered with Heather at Bite of Oregon for the Livengood Nowack "Eat Your Berries" table.

Sunday- More reading for Scarlett Letter. Team Lattice spends a solid 9 hours at Studio Bard beginning wrapping up all things COLAB. Michael Bard helped us make a kick-ass documentation video! 8 page newsletter design for Print Production. Study for Print Production midterm.

All-in-all very productive, exhausting, but fun.

Second day at Anvil

2008-08-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

Finished up another project that they had me working on, this time optimizing a press release and updating some social media sites.

Anvil is a super laid back company. There are about 12 employees plus Hallie, the Vice President and Kent, the President.

This agency is the farthest from traditional advertising that I have experienced through COLABORATORY. None of the employees have a background in advertising, but their day to day work heavily influences the online appearance of their clients. In a sense, Anvil's work is its own form of advertising, not as blatant as radio, TV or print yet still has the same intentions of increasing a client's customer awareness.

Anvil has an open atmosphere. There are three groups of desks where the employees sit to hammer out their work. The lunch room is stocked with communal food, and is replenished college roommate style.

Everyone is really nice and dedicated to their work. Kent and Hallie do a good job balancing out work with fun by planning group outings sometimes such as boating or snow machining.

The things I have been learning:
meta tags
keywords
optimizing, and all that it entails
analytics
ad words
month end reports
Google (but a ton more than the search component)
breadcrumb navigation

Welcome to Anvil. Their special numbers are 250, 8, 5 and 2

2008-08-04T18:12:00.000-07:00

If anyone, other than Anvil employees, can guess what those special numbers are congrats to you!

Today marked the first day of my last agency. Crazy how fast four weeks can go by.

My time at HMH was a blast and a great learning experience. Out of all of my three agencies HMH offered the most traditional agency experience. I was exposed to radio, TV, print and interactive. I was able to attend a press check, which was definitely an experience in itself. There were three major things I took away from that experience.

1.) HMH pays incredible attention to detail that definitely shows through in their award winning work.

2.) The printing industry has a large amount of waste "make ready". It was sad to see the stacks of hundreds of sheets of unused paper grow every time there was a slight color change in the ink. For the printer to register the change it had to make about a hundred copies. That means that all of the paper and ink was wasted. The printer will try and re-use the flip-side of the paper as scraps, but there is still an incredible amount of waste.

3.) When going on a press check always make sure to have a production manager and an art director present. The production manager goes by an image that was already approved. An art director has the advantage of working with that piece from beginning to end, so they know exactly what the color is supposed to look like.

Apart from the press check I spent majority of my time job shadowing Nathaniel Charlton an Assistant Account Executive. He told me the ins and outs of being an entry level AE. He had me working on a project to research social media avenues that would be appropriate for the internal Digital Evolution Team. At my last day, I gave a presentation to the office (including a person from their Charlotte Office) that described my findings. I'm not going to lie it was a little nerve wracking, but more exciting than anything else.

At Anvil, Hallie had me jump right in and take ownership of one of their projects. I am re-writing copy for search engine optimization. I don't have any experience in SEO or SEM, but I understand the context of its use. It will be exciting over these next two weeks to learn the practicalities and how to apply them. Because the point of SEO is to make certain keywords appear in the copy for a certain % of words, by the end of the day those keywords seemed unrecognizable as a word because I had stared at them all day.

It sounds like there are quite a bit of projects that will keep me busy at Anvil. I think they will all be very beneficial too because I will be learning the tactics of SEO and SEM from a group of professionals.

HMH Culture

2008-07-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

It's taken me a little while to figure out how to accurately describe the HMH culture.

There is a little bit of a backstory to this one. Ed Herinckx. the President, started out as an HMH intern 25 years ago and has stayed with the company since. To add to the structure there are partners who have also been at the company for a number of years. New employees starting at HMH have an honorable figure to look up to; someone to aspire to be. It not just simply climbing the ladder, it is climbing the ladder and following in Ed's footsteps. HMH has a lower turn-over rate than a lot of other agencies, and I think that could be because of the example Ed has provided.

The culture of HMH is like the small cozy, winter town of Punxsutawney Pennsylvania from the movie Groundhogs Day with Bill Murray. The people are genuine, dependable and at times slightly predictable. Office banter aside, their work is nothing short of inspiring. I immediately took notice of their attention to detail and impermeable client relationships.

The View From HMH

2008-07-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

Going to work from Ascentium to HMH is like traveling halfway across the world. The environment, type of work and employees are drastically different.

I created this quiz for the agencies so read on and see who wins at each round. (one point awarded for the winner for each criteria)

Round One:

Who has the better office space?
Criteria: location, open vs. cube like, decor, view, snacks, conference rooms.

Location: The winner...HMH (sorry Ascentium, but I know you'll agree with me here) HMH is located downtown right off the streetcar route. It is a super convenient location.

Open vs. Cube like: The winner...Ascentium. HMH has individual offices for most of their employees, and very little open space. Ascentium operates with cube-like desks. After experiencing both environments I found that I prefer the open feeling. To me, it seems to provide more of a community feeling to the office at large, and eliminates any office space jealousy.

Decor: HMH takes all. HMH has some elements about their office space that are more like what I refer to as Advertising Architecture. Each individual office has a glass door and windows that provide a light open feeling. Ascentium had few windows and they were only on one side of the room. HMH also has a pretty glossy (Lattice members will appreciate that description ;) front entryway.

View: Another win for HMH. Operating downtown you just can't beat the view of the Willamette River and Mt. Hood.

Snacks: Ascentium wins this one. They have a full kitchen stocked full of goodies and beverages thanks to Heather for providing them.

Conference Rooms: HMH wins this one. They have nice, decorated, clearly labeled conference rooms. Ascentium's conference rooms aren't bad they are just simply rooms with tables and chairs.

The overall winner is HMH with four points, Ascentium with two points.

Round Two: Work
Criteria: medium, clients, process.

Medium: The winner for this category is hard to pick. Ascentium is largely an interactive focused agency who doesn't do print work at all. HMH is more of a traditional agency offering clients work in print, TV, radio and also interactive. Overall i'd say its a tie. Working at both agencies has given me an understanding of what its like on the production side for each medium. It seems that print is more busy work and interactive is troubleshooting.

Clients: Ascentium takes this one. Not to diss either agency, but I personally find the clients of Ascentium more exciting. HMH does have great clients too, but less that intrigue me. I will say that HMH has profoundly long lasting relationships with their clients which is truly admirable.

Process: Ascentium gets a home run because they have a lot less actual "paper" that gets transfered between employees because their work is digital. HMH definitely has an effective system in place for transferring jobs between employees though.

The overall winner is Ascentium with three points and HMH with one point.

Round Three: Employees
Criteria: age, sex, family feeling

Age: HMH has been in business for a long time and because of that they have a lot of employees who have been here for 10+ years. Ed, their President has been here for 25 years! It says something good about the company seeming how there is low turnover rate. Ascentium's creative department is fairly new to the Portland area, a little over a year, they also have low employee turnover rate, but their employees are generally younger overall. Who wins? So far, Ascentium because by the end of my time there I was felt a sense of belonging. I've only been at HMH for three days so far, but have meet some great people.

Sex: I'm stereotyping here a bit, so I apologize. HMH seems more female dominate where Ascentium seems more male dominated. I believe this comes from the nature of the work. Ascentium has a tech and digital focus naturally drawing in more guys. HMH is more traditional bringing in people from all backgrounds. Who wins? It's a tie. I don't think there really is clear winner because it doesn't matter to me if there are more guys or women working in an office.

Family Feeling: Another tie. Each agency is definitely close knit. It is encouraging to see that within both very different atmospheres the employees are proud to work where they do and are supportive of each other.

The winner: Ascentium with three. HMH with two.

Extra Bonus for HMH:

They have an intercom system! No idea why, but those have always intrigued me. Brings back memories of elementary school.

Goodbye To Ascentium

2008-07-20T16:46:00.001-07:00

This last week was the end of my time as Ascentium's Portland first intern. To re-cap I really enjoyed my time there. The buzz word these days is agency culture; what is it like to work there? At Ascentium everyone is productive, but that doesn't mean boring. There is a fair share of agency humor around the work place.

While at their desks, people IM, e-mail or yell out across the room at each other to get their questions answered.

	Chris Wong is the resident Project Manager who has taken to carrying around a golf club and nerf gun to enforce deadlines.
The overall culture is laid back. There are people who wear jeans and sweatshirts to work and then there are those who wear slacks and either a nice polo or button up.

I did learn the number one rule for attire is to keep a nice, neutral shirt in the office because you’ll never know when it is needed.

A few of the ongoing jokes noticed over the two weeks...

The dry erase markers and erasers keep disappearing from the conference rooms. No one knows who is the culprit, but they have their ideas. Jokingly a plot was made to gather a bunch of markers and erasers and pile them under a co-workers desk. Some have taken to keeping their own personal supply at their desk.

Mason West has been coined the agency recycling agent. He has posted notes on co-workers computers when they leave them on all night. He removed all paper cups and plastic spoons from the kitchen and replaced them with ceramic cups and silverware. At the quarterly meeting he addressed different ways that the office as a whole could be more conservative when it comes to sustainability.

Employees have taken to decorating their offices with pictures of the family, random artwork and whatever else can be found at a typical desk. Mason has the rhino records which he specifically bought to decorate his desk when he first got the job.

Overall, Ascentium was a great introduction agency for COLABORATORY. It is definitely a company I could see myself working at in the future. Thank you to everyone at the office who helped me, gave me advice and allowed me to work there for the last two weeks. It was great to meet everyone and I hope to see you again sometime soon.

Next stop, starting tomorrow, HMH.

The End of The Second Week

2008-07-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

So I wrote this blog Monday sitting on the bus. Not really sure if it was a good idea to flaunt the computer or not, but Bram reassured me by saying to act like I was on my way to a $50 million pitch and all would be good.

I spent a lot of my last week at Ascentium job shadowing Chris Wong Project Manager, and researching the Target Audience for the Sameunderneath project.

With job shadowing Chris I learned more to the in’s and out’s of a PM. The most valuable advice to take away from him was to create lasting relationships with clients, which allows for potential new projects. It is important to seal the deal with clients so that they prefer to work with your agency whenever any projects may come along.

Aside from the advice from Chris, things were slow at Ascentium my last day. Some people were out of the office. About half way throughout the day the Wii was broken out. I think it had hit that point were things were at a good stopping ground and people could re-group through various creative outlets.

Christine Vo and I over our weekend trip to Seattle brainstormed the idea that instead of the teams (Kiwi and Lattice) breaking apart for the entire six weeks to develop their own projects we thought it would be more beneficial to collaborate as one team and bust out the research. We asked our teammates and everyone is on board with Luke, Kim, Melissa and Bryan highlighting good points to consider about research being specific to the team’s project. With a plan in place to address these problems we got our group Basecamp account created and began sharing research.
The following are the reasons why we thought it would be a smart idea to collaborate during the research phase:
more time to work on executing our creative outcome
opportunity to get to know each other better,
work with a more diverse group than we are now
see how a larger agency works
the finished designs would be better for the final presentation

Another part of my last week at href="http://ascentium.com/fp/Default.aspx">Ascentium was a 101 for Customer Relationship Management with Christpoher Bates. You can watch the first half of that video here. Sorry it is only half the camera unfortunately died.

Here is the chaotic, but understood whiteboard diagrams to go along with the presentation.

There was also an interview session with Kevin McViker, Managing Director for Ascentium. I had the chance to talk with him about the day-to-day aspects of his job, educational and professional background and his favorite parts of working with Ascentium. That video can be viewed here.

To top off the second week, we had a productive second day of the team project. After about six hours of being cooped up in one room, with a short lunch break, Lattice decided we needed a sixth opinion on our ideas thus far, and chatted with Mason. By the end of the day we were ready to get out in the sun, but were also able to create milestones and to-do lists. Each team member is now acting in their respective roles and the project is making considerable headway. I think this weekend will serve as a good rejuvenation period.

I would put some of the content online from our Lattice meetings, but unfortunately due to the mildly competitive environment we COLAB interns are facing, the content of our pitch is to remain confidential until August 15th.

In hindsight of the first and second week, all I have to say is “My, how six weeks is hardly anytime at all, but serves as a great opportunity to really jump into an internship carnival that has become known as COLABORATORY!”

SUPER BUSY

2008-07-15T22:11:00.000-07:00

Alright,
Here's the thing. I don't have the time to blog today or probably tomorrow. Who knows maybe not until the weekend. I'm just being honest so I apologize for the wait. I need to focus my attention on the Sameunderneath project. It seems there is a lot of organization that needs to be done.

I do have the text versions of the blog ready to upload but they correlate with pictures which take far too long to even try uploading right now.

They will get up soon though.

Random pet peeve a million versions of the same damn thing...

Creative Briefs
Business Plans
Creative Work Plans
Marketing Plans

This stems form school where it seems every quarter I get ANOTHER outline for creating such a document. I think its time I just write my own outline and use that for all my projects....in a perfect world that would work

Sameunderneath

2008-07-13T23:53:00.000-07:00

As part of Lattice's research for our project we visited the Sameunderneath store on Mississippi. Enjoy these pictures.

Look it is the Sameunderneath logo above lattice; it must be a sign!!

Go Team Lattice!

2008-07-13T23:33:00.001-07:00

Why Team Lattice you may ask?
Please watch

It's taken me awhile to post about this last Friday, the teams first work session. Overall it went really well. Lattice made some considerable headway in our project for Sameunderneath. The dynamic of the team works really well. Megan is super adorable and sweet. Her communication style is easily understood by everyone in the group.

Whitney and Melissa are going to work great as our two designers. They are both eager to get started. It was funny, throughout the brainstorm session they kept asking "Well, what do we get to design?", or "So, when do we get to design?" It is great to know that they can't wait to get there hands busy designing. I am excited to see what their style looks like.

Heather is pretty much awesome! She took notes the entire time and e-mailed them immediately to the whole group after our meeting. She is going to be a great organizer for the team! I can't wait to see how we finish the task at hand.

From our first week I think it will come together easily!!

Pictures From Ascentium

2008-07-13T23:20:00.001-07:00

What COLAB Means To Me

2008-07-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

I have said a million times over that COLAB is an amazing experience and opportunity. What I have neglected to do is to define what the experiences and opportunities mean to me besides the obvious of agency experience, chance to enhance my skills and networking, there is a deeper meaning to COLAB.

I have aspired to be an account manager in the creative industry since I was 17 (2 1/2 years). By this time, I had already ruled out Interior Design because I hated it after a class I took at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I knew that I wanted to work in a creative setting but also knew that I didn’t want to be responsible for creating the design work. I would tell people this story and never knew that the position I was describing had a title. I looked online at a number of different colleges that would teach me the business of creativity. I was disappointed after awhile because it seemed every school offered either a creative education or a marketing/business/mass communication education, which was far to broad for what I wanted. It wasn’t until I came across The Art Institute of Portland when I found where I wanted to go for college without a doubt. My parents took a trip with me from Anchorage to Portland to attend the AI open house. We wandered into the Advertising room where I immediately felt I was in the wrong place because all I kept hearing was, “We teach you how to create, we teach you how to draw, we teach you how to blah blah blah.” Nothing about business or management. Feeling disappointed, I meandered into the Design Management room just in time to hear Alan Murdock (Program Director for Design Management and Design Studies) explain almost word for word the career I always described as my ideal. At the end, “this is what account managers do”. SOLD. I now had a title to my ideal career. We stayed and talked with Alan for awhile, the entire time my excitement growing. All I needed to do now was graduate high school, say goodbye to my friends and family, my home and move to Portland where I knew no one. I was scared and excited at the same time.

Being in school (and Portland) for two years and going through all the experiences of moving away from everything familiar, I have grown as an individual. I now appreciate the creative side to the industry a lot more than I did before and I don’t take every effort to avoid design. I actually enjoy it.

So, how does this relate to COLAB? Well, COLAB is further enhancing my appreciation of design and creative work, and placing me in professional real world environments where exceptional work is done. But to me the most beneficial aspect is that it is giving me a chance to work under Account and Project Managers, giving me solid experience in the field, and helping me achieve my ideal career path.

For me, in one sentence the experience and opportunity of COLAB is allowing me to take the next step in becoming an account manager.

More on Ascentium

2008-07-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

I apologize for my post, “Day 1 at Ascentium”, I may have seemed ignorant in saying the internal/HR department when in actuality it is the Infrastructure team. I was completely off on this. Instead of internal and HR work they offer consulting services to help businesses set-up and manage their desktops, software programs and internal communications. I am sorry if this is still not an accurate description of what they actually do. I haven’t had much time to talk with them yet but should be getting the chance next week.

Second, I apologize for not having posted in several days. I’m not going to lie. I have been taking some free time after work to lay out by the pool, golf and just relax trying to process all that has been going on.

So, what has been going on? A LOT is really the best description. Ascentium is becoming a second (sixth if you consider all the places my time is divided between) home. I enjoy the atmosphere and the people a lot. My favorite part so far has been the enthusiasm for new clients and the company’s growth over the last year. I’ll be sitting at my desk (actually it’s someone else’s desk) and then I’ll hear a call out, “Meeting in here who wants to be a part of this project?” I like that dynamic it offers a nice segway into the “forget about it stage” so often mentioned in the creative process.

A lot of what I thought I knew about Account Management/Project Management isn’t entirely accurate, taking into account that every agency operates differently. There is a lot more interaction and collaboration between managers and creative. Its not merely managers creating timelines and task lists, it’s a combined effort between what happens in the meetings and the discussion that takes place afterwards.

I attended the Quarterly Meeting that served as an Ascentium 101. I learned a lot about the company as a whole, and it was a nice to see everyone outside of the office. I was able to interact with people from departments other than creative.

I’m not going to lie, some of the tasks that I do at the office are not glamorous. Not that I was expecting that, because there are always the things that people hate to do at their jobs. I have worked on task lists, brainstorm meetings, research, PowerPoints, meeting minutes and updating internal lists. Even from these tasks I have learned about different methods to produce the lists in an effective and easy to understand communication tool.

I have also learned a quick lesson about video files that was more aggravating than anything else. Ascentium’s video camera creates movies in a format that is unrecognizable to Quicktime 7.5 and iMovie 08’. Mason and Brian helped to try and solve this problem by downgrading to a older version of Quicktime and downloading a Mac App, Pacifist. This still didn’t work because the problem was that the file format is too old for iMovie. What ended up happening is Mason saved the file on his computer so it would be compatible with mine. Then at Friday’s group meeting, I tried to open iMovie, but, surprise, it wouldn’t work unless I had Quicktime 7.5. Odd because it worked the night before. Anyways ridiculous and a huge waste of time. (Intern’s going to Ascentium be warned potential problems could arise with video camera...)

Ascentium is proving to be a unique agency that I admire. Their different business components, Infrastructure and CRM, are intriguing to me because they are so left field compared to services that a typical agency would offer. Ascentium is a good fit for me because I have a passion and interest for different aspects of business, specifically in new ventures, ways to make a business successful beyond the standards of selling the product or service, and the variety of businesses that exist; Ascentium addresses these areas on some levels throughout their work not only at the Portland office but in all their offices. Ascentium is also tech focused, which combines with my growing awareness of tech and web 2.0 possibilities.

In summary; Ascentium experience to date= GOLDEN.

Thoughts on Improvements for COLAB

2008-07-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

It seems that their is a hidden animosity between the teams just because we have been placed in a competitive situation. The intern’s get along great and we are all learning about each other and from each other, but because we all want our ideas to come out on top and show off our talents their is a slightly tense atmosphere between the team’s during the Friday brainstorm sessions. Since our projects involve a lot of research into the target audience and Sameunderneath as a brand, the teams are going to probably spend the first two weeks doing almost entirely all research. If you think about it between the teams that is four weeks of work time spent on research that could have been shared between the teams allowing more time for concepting and design. Also, with eliminating the competitive aspect the intern’s have a chance to really get close to everyone rather than just their teammates. I think, without the competition, the overall quality of the final pieces could turn out to be more polished too. Just a thought to ponder when thinking about next year’s COLAB.

Some Insights From My Second Day

2008-07-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

It is still amazing that people can sit so quietly and productively at their desks all day cranking out the work. I have noticed that there is still a lot of friendly banter and interaction between everyone which is great and helps build up the team momentum. There is light, instrumental, background music streaming from people's i-Tunes. As far as the insights. There have been many instances today that have shown me that the things taught in school are actually applicable to the real world and there are some things that can be thrown out the window.

I sat in on a conference call client meeting today. Just a small group (David L., designer, Annelisa Z., PM, and Mike D., Creative Director who wears multiple hats. The meeting showed me that there is a lot more designer-client interaction than I thought there would be originally. Naturally it makes sense to have the designer present their work because they are the most connected to it and will be able to give an honest spiel of how the design pulls together.

After lunch with Mason, and briefing about the day so far, I was given a little insight into the PM role. Rarely do the PM's stay late into the night. When people do stay late it is usually designers who have a lot of production work that has to be done by the designers. That is just what it boils down too.

I am really loving the sense of collaboration that exists between the departments. People dropping in on each other to talk face-to-face when something is really important.

One point that I am taking away from today so far is, no matter how much you plan schedules, budgets and hours for a project, with a single phone call all of the preparation work can be blown over leaving a lot left to do.

Just from mere observation there is a serious dislike for many of the software applications used in the office.

Mason's big discovery today. "What does FTW mean?!?!!?" "For the win", was the general consensus here.

Day 1 at Ascentium

2008-07-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

Lets see. Today was my first day at Ascentium! I’m not going to lie the worst part of the day was the commute out there. According to TriMet it should take about 77 minutes (form downtown Portland) by multiple buses, max and streetcar. Yikes 77 minutes!! Thanks to Matt Vogel, who graciously offered me a ride, I didn’t have to stress about not knowing where I was going, bus transfers and all the hassle of Public Transportation. Theoretically by car it should take only 19 minutes. Planning to arrive fashionably early we left at 8:20 and arrived at Ascentium at 8:57. Traffic in Tigard is a royal pain!

Enough about that though. I absolutely loved it at Ascentium. The agency is located at the Lincoln Center, a pretty nice looking building.

As soon as I walked in the door I was greeted warmly by Heather, the admin. queen! She was super nice and gave me a folder FILLED with paperwork (NDA’s, W4’s, W9’s, Intern Agreements, etc...) That took very near an hour reading all the fine print and signing on the dotted lines.

After the paperwork was completed Heather gave me a tour of the agency. The agency is basically divided into three sections, well four. There is the internal section where the employees who handle the Internal/HR work have their desks, the office supplies are also stored in this area. There is the entrance where the front desk is (Heather sits here) and behind that are a series of conference rooms. We are talking real world, wooden tables, leather chairs, projection screens and wall-to-wall windows conference rooms!

To the left is where the business development employees sit. They have a nice layout of desk and the area is well lit. In the back is where the creative employees sit, in the dark might I add. This is where I spent most of my day.

After talking with Mason West, copywriter, for a bit just touching base and going over what my next two weeks will look like I was ushered into a brainstorm session.

By this time I was stoked! I actually got to sit in on a brainstorm session with people who cared about my opinions and suggestions! This was the real deal!! The brainstorming was for a local technology company who is starting a special collaboration website for IT people. I was really enjoying the group dynamic. I felt comfortable chiming in, and to really top it off, THEY LIKED MY IDEAS! This was definitely a confidence boost for the rest of the day.

After this I went and worked with a Project Manager, Annelisa Zander, who had me update an attendees list for a recent event hosted by Ascentium. This consisted of an Excel document of numerous names, titles, addresses, e-mails and phone numbers. The problem was the list had been updated by several different people so each name on the list had several incomplete entries. It was my task to sort it all into one entry per name with the completed information.

I was also given a task by Mason to start trying to organize all of the COLAB documentation pages. As you may know, the interns are required to document their experiences at COLAB. There is an average of six pages per intern so it is quite a mess for anyone trying to follow it all. Don’t worry though a fix is underway to make it easier to follow everyone’s experiences.

I took a break to capture some pictures of everyone hard at work. Trust me, people were working hard all day. Every time I looked up from my corner people were sitting there (some rocking out to their choice of music) hard at work. It was really cool to see everyone so focused. Ascentium gets my kudos for being a productive place to work!

I then followed Annelisa to the “Resource Meeting”, a weekly meeting for Project Managers, Engagaement Managers (a new title for a manager that I had never heard of before today), and other managers to discuss the current projects. This included wether or not things were behind schedule, who needed more resources to stay on schedule, who was over budget, and which teams of employees needed more hours or projects for the coming weeks. I thought a meeting of this type was super beneficial, especially with my experiences of working with students. Projects fall behind schedule all the time and it would be nice to have the opportunity to work out schedules and resources to make sure that everyone is (and has the capabilities) to stay on focused and crank out the work.

After this meeting I had the opportunity to sit down with Mason and a designer to discuss some points of interest for the Sameunderneath project. This was a helpful brainstorm session (look for the video coming soon) because I was exposed to new points of view. There were new angles to the project that I hadn’t considered before.

In all I’d have to say it was a great first day. I am jazzed (zazzed...lol) to have the chance to work at Ascentium and am really looking forward to what lays ahead.

Tomorrow’s agenda looks like:
6:30am: Buzz..Buzz Wake Up!!
8am: meeting at Freemont and 15th for a carpool to Ascentium (yay people to share the commute with)
9am: Depending on traffic, hopefully arriving at the agency
10am: Client Meeting
12pm: ish Lunch
1-?: Working, collaborating with team members, networking, brainstorming, who knows but I am sure exciting things will happen!
The rest of the day: documentation and hopefully a workout

Wake Up Call

2008-07-08T23:32:00.000-07:00

Pictures...

2008-07-08T00:35:00.000-07:00

Look for pictures tomorrow. I can't find the cord for my camera. There should also be a flicker page (or something of the sorts) for all interns to post their pictures.

And The First Day Is Over (Orientation + Reception)

2008-07-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

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.

And So It Begins!!!

2008-07-07T01:52:00.000-07:00

I realized that in my first post I didn’t provide the information of all the agencies involved with COLAB. There are ten agencies (enough for each intern to work at their own over the six weeks), they are:
1.) The New Group
2.) CMD Agency
3.) Livengood Nowack
4.) Grady Britton
5.) Ascentium
6.) Asterix Group
7.) Anvil Media
8.) HMH
9.) Eroi
10.) Fish Marketing
In addition to these agencies, every Friday the interns will be meeting as a group at these different agencies:
1.) Henry V
2.) ID Branding
3.) Pop Art, Inc.
4.) NORTH
5.) Coates Kokes

Tomorrow starts the long awaited COLABORATOY!!!! (I guess technically, today starts COLAB but since I haven’t slept yet we will just say tomorrow)
The first day the interns are not actually going to work at the offices, instead we are attending the orientation and reception. These should serve as a chance to meet with the fellow interns and all of the people who have worked so hard to make this amazing opportunity possible. Our first day at the offices will be Tuesday July 8th.
I have a feeling that the orientation will be very inspiring. I am envisioning some kickass presentation that briefs us on the tasks that we will overcome throughout these next six weeks; not the tasks at the individual agencies but of our team projects. From the information I have gathered the interns will be split into two competing groups to prepare a (branding, advertising, marketing, viral, guerrilla, creative, etc...) campaign to promote a local brand.
It is time to draw on all the things learned at school and through the endless hours of studying and apply them to the tasks that await.
I for one can’t wait to get started!

The Application

2008-07-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

An internship in account services is almost unheard of in the advertising industry. Lets face it, who wants to put a student in with their clients, a setting in which all the deals are made; where the agency sells their services to the client. Can you trust the inexperience of a student?
One day, determined to make the most of the Career Fair at The Art Institute of Portland, I run into an account manager from Grady Britton representing the COLABORATORY internship offered for Summer 2008 by Portland Advertising Federation. After talking with her about the opportunity that COLAB offered I was stoked. I had to work that afternoon and presented the opportunity to my bosses and told them I may need six weeks off for the summer. They didn’t quite understand all that I was trying to explain, but they could sense my excitement. The rest of the day went by in a blur as I couldn’t stop thinking about how exciting it would be to get accepted.
After writing, editing, editing, and editing the application (special thanks to Bram Pitoyo @brampitoyo for his help with the layout of the work samples) I was ready to mail in the application. As soon as I dropped it in the mailbox there was a very slight feeling of relief and an even stronger feeling of desperation. I felt that at least one more chance to edit the application probably would’ve been a good idea. It was like an OCD obsession I had with making sure everything was exactly how I wanted to present myself.
Now started the long waiting period (extra long since I found out, right after I mailed my application, that the deadline for submissions had been extended).
The notification deadline came and went and I hadn’t heard anything. By this point I was feeling pretty bummed. I figured that I hadn’t gotten in so I was trying to figure out what my next plan should be. Then I heard from a friend that the notification period had been extended for another week! I still had a chance of getting in! More waiting.
I was at work when I saw a missed call from Hallie Janssen from Anvil Media, INC.letting me know that I had been accepted into COLAB and I needed to call her back immediately to accept the invitation. STOKED!!
Since then, I have eagerly, and somewhat nervously, anticipated the start date of the internship. As the date draws nearer (July 7th, 2008) I have received the COLAB survival guide that told me I’ll be working at Ascentium for the first two weeks, then HMH, and then Anvil Media, INC. From what I have researched and heard through others, all three agencies have varied personalities and produce exceptional work. I am really looking forward to working with these agencies, experiencing their different cultures, getting my foot in the door and, as students like to say, getting real world experience.
Check back as I will keep you updated on the experiences of my amazing opportunity this summer.