Tic Toc Tic Toc, Countdown to the finish line, or the halfway mark, at least...

        I started the morning off by driving to Monroe in a 15 passenger van with volunteers to pick up courtesy cars.  I am sorry, but the excitement over driving Escalades, and brand new SUV's is beyond me.  I was just fine driving back in whatever car they gave me, and when it happened to be a New Tahoe, I wasn't disappointed, but by the time I got back to the office, I was happy to not have to drive a huge, expensive car, that wasn't my own.  Besides, my Acura gets better pickup! 
        Today was a lot of the same; solving some problems and creating others.  AND...Clemson is now calling OFF THE HOOK trying to get the Bid for the Meineke Car Care Bowl.  They put something on their website with several of our staff's contact numbers for fans to call and request Clemson's presence at the bowl.  What is no doubt meant to be seen as enthusiasm, has started to make work towards the ACC Championship this week less effective.  Come on Clemson,  give Charlotte Collegiate Football a break until the end of the Championship Game at least! 
        Tomorrow, Sarah and I will be meeting with Chris and the Conference about setting up for the Night of Legends.  Tomorrow night, there is a Bridgette Tatum (who sings the ACC Football theme song) concert at Whisky River, so we will probably make an appearance there. 
        One more thing...last night I had a dream about bugs crawling out of my ears.  It was too weird not to investigate on the internet.  Not shocking what I found, the bugs crawling out of my ears symbolize anxiety over an issue,  or stress over a lack of control over an issue and stress dealing with a person in authority....HMMM

Meet the Boss

        The power switched off in the Conrads house last night.  Luckily I happened to wake up but it was a little bit of a late start this morning.  I was still at work in plenty of time but didn't realize that Will Webb, executive director of CCF was going to be at work when I got there-he's on vacation this week!  Anyways, when I got there Will asked us to meet him in his office to discuss the internship in his terms.  He emphasized that the opportunity for employment at the internship's end would not be guarenteed but would be possible, which is certainly an added incentive to do impressive work.  His guarentees were that we would have a lot of fun and would learn a lot, and I've already seen these fruits in just three days.  I was excited when Will mentioned that if we ever wanted to go to an ACC game, that we just ask and he will hopefully be able to secure credentials, or at least tickets for us!  Oh, the perks of sport related jobs. 
        Will offered up a ticketing project to for one of the interns to head up and I jumped at the opportunity because if I learned anything about breaking into the sport industry while I was looking for jobs, it was that understanding the ticketing side of the biz is extremely important.  He gave me a few tickets and said "alright, just keep track of the invoice and we'll regroup in a couple of days".  My thought was, 'so, are you going to send me the invoice, orrr...".  I quickly realized that it was up to me to create my own system.  Self-starting and creativity are going to be two important themes of the internship.  Most questions that I've asked result in the answer 'it's really up to you'.  This means two things...if things go really great, we as interns can take ownership.  But if something goes wrong, with which we are involved...it's all on us.  So far, the freedom encourages thinking outside the box for me.  I'm learning that there aren't many limits; if I think it's a good idea and present it to the right people, the answer is usually 'yes', and that thinking outside the box is a good thing! 
        On that note, Sarah and I came up with a plan for contests and giveaways on our twitter and facebook sites.  One thing that we are definitely doing with the Meineke social media sites is a weekly giveaway contest.  Twitter (MeinekeBowlGame) now features "Football Friday Giveaways" and Facebook (Meineke Care Care Bowl Game) will have "Tuesday Trivia".  On each site we'll have contests that will either be trivia based or some sort of incentive for you, as a social media user, to promote our brand to your friends and followers.  Prizes will be some really cool Meineke Bowl garb and even some ticket giveaways!  ACC champion sites will feature similar promotions, but may not be as frequent as the game is smaller scale in general.  If these things interest you, then you should make it a point to follow those pages (wink, wink). 
        I don't know that i've mentioned how much I enjoy the people I work with yet.  I definitely don't feel like an insider yet (yikes, excuse the bachelor pad reference...guilty), but everyone is really great.  The group is pretty laid back, there's a good bit of humor, a bit of sarcasm (anyone that knows me, knows that I thrive in sarcastic environments), and a lot of support.  Apparently there is no such thing as a stupid question, although we all know how that goes...and I'm sure I've said SOMETHING that has left people snickering.  I'm really excited about tomorrow and for those of you who are in charlotte, I will be working a promotional event at Alive After Five in the Epicenter if you're interested in coming out to that! 
   

       

       

Orientation into Raycom

        This morning I woke up with a friend request from Michael Kelly, Associate Commissioner for the ACC-head of communications and football operations, and this job became all the more real.  The day started off with a staff picture and company luau...which was odd on a second  day of work, but also an interesting orientation with the staff.  I had no idea how many people worked at Raycom until I was standing in front of the Raycom bus, preparing to take a picture with about 40 people (don't you just love the awkward jokes people make when they are waiting around for the photographer to snap the photo?). 
        The group that I work with is a small one.  Charlotte Collegiate Football consists of Will Webb-executive director, Courtney Knowling-Events and Operations, Will Pitts-Director of Sales, and Sarah Stankavage & me-the interns.  We also work closely with a couple members of Raycom Sports: Chad Swofford- Director of New Business Development and Abby Christmas in sales.  I'm excited to work with a close group of people because it will give us an opportunity as interns to participate in almost all aspects of the bowl game and the championship game.  We spoke with Courtney at length today about how to make this internship our own and get involved in things that we are most interested in.  This means I'll be able to focus on projects that are in my direct interest area and even try out things that I am not really familiar with.  For instance, Sarah is really interested in the production/broadcast journalism side, which is something that I'm not particularly attracted to career wise (i am more interested in promotion and event management), but think it's pretty cool none the less.   Courtney does some work on the side with the Bobcats and the Panthers doing some crew work, so Sarah asked if we could shadow her and I think I will probably tag along, just to see what it's all about...and I think it would be a great opportunity to meet some other people in the sports industry. 
           As far as today's tasks went, we spent a good amount of time coming up with our plan for the social media tools we will be using.  We have facebook (Meineke Care Care Bowl & ACC Championship) and Twitter (Meineke Car Care Bowl & ACC Championship) accounts and came up with goals for the different accounts.  Goals included raising numbers of followers (100 for each twitter account...yikes!) and raising awareness of each game around the Charlotte community and some strategies to meet the goals for both twitter and facebook.  After speaking with Courtney and Megan Parete (who is a Clemson graduate, did this internship last year and introduced me to the position), we are still trying to decide whether a joint intern blog will be beneficial...especially if we are each keeping personal blogs on our own for this experience. We'll see how that turns out.  Courtney also asked us to head up the Gifts Committee for the Leatherheads...more on the committee and the Leatherheads in posts to come, but I'm really excited about the committee and working with this group of people so I just wanted to mention it!  Finally, we had a meeting with Luquire George Andrews, a marketing communications firm in Charlotte, to discuss one of the marketing strategies we will be using to promote the games this football season.  The project has not been launched yet, but from what I've heard it's something that I am interested in getting more heavily involved in so we'll see how that plays out.  At the end of the day, Chad and Will Pitts sat down with Sarah and me and explained a lot to us about the business side of Raycom Sports, sponsorships, etc...and it was a bit overwhelming but all good information to take in!  I promise that as I continue to write, I will find a way to consolidate my posts but for right now I am just too excited to leave anything out...whether frivolous or not!