The Ticket Puzzle

There are only so many ways you can say I have been counting tickets-checking section, row, seat, section, row, seat, section row seat-doing inventory, filling out fedex labels and sending out ACC championship tickets day after day for the past couple of weeks.  There's not much to tell other than to say that I spent several 12 hour days in the office last week, eating bad food, and responding to countless emails about when people are getting their tickets.  It's almost like a a GIANT puzzle.  Every ticket package you send out with zero problems is a piece of the puzzle that fits (fan packages are easier, like the end packages), corperate packages can be like trying to piece together the flower field kodak picture puzzle if you don't have all of the elements there...or if you are missing a ticket.  When you find missing tickets, it's like finding the pieces of the puzzle that have been nudged off the end of the coffee table by the dog's nose that no one realized until you happen go to find another piece you know has been dropped.  Does this make any sense?  I think Sarah would appreciate the analogies.  We have almost completely pieced the ACC Championship Ticket Puzzle together...just waiting to send out terrace packages tomorrow (hopefully) and we'll be good! 

Ticket Hell, Judy Rose, and Clemson Tigers

        I've been in a little world I like to call Ticket Hell for the past week and a half.  We have GOT to get tickets out to ACC Championship so we that means packaging up ticket orders, putting in parking passes as needed and creating hundreds of Fedex packages.  Not too much to write about BUT Will Webb was kind enough to send us to the City Club for lunch with Judy Rose. The lunch was the perfect way to break up the monotony of the week, and what an awesome experience! Judy Rose is the Athletic Director for UNC Charlotte and one of the most well-respected figures in the profession.  Judy Rose's bio can found on the the UNCC website (http://administration.uncc.edu/cabinet/Bios/rose.html).  Most recently, she has led the efforts to bring football to to the 49ers, and with great success.  The 49ers will play their opening season in 2013!  She was also the first female to serve on the selection committee NCAA Division 1 Men's Basketball Committee.  Rose got her start as a GA at University of Tennessee and got the chance to work with legendary Women's Basketball Coach Pat Summit and they remain close friends to this day!  From their, she headed to UNCC where she started out as head Women's basketball coach and tennis coach, graduated to Head Women's Basketball coach and Associate Athletic Director, and then was selected as Athletic Director (i believe that was the order of events?!)  It was so refreshing to hear a positive, non-feminist, outlook on women in this sport profession.  She had a positive experience moving up in the profession, and seemed to offered more opportunities than she could even take (including being a finalist in the run for the head coaching position with UNC Women's Basketball...wow!).  She told us that she was treated, for the most part, as an equal to the men she was working with.  In fact, it was the women who treated her differently because she did not try to put herself into typical All-Women's sports corner.  She could not have been more down to earth and interested in our career aspirations.  Other than sports and careers we just talked about Charlotte, and she even shared with us how she met her husband...kind of just like a girl's lunch!  Sarah and I had so much fun...and I hope she did as well!
        On Friday, it was back to the ticketing grind, except without Sarah because she was getting her Side Line Reporter, which meant that I couldn't get away with leaving work early and subsequently missed out on all bu the last minute of the Belmont Abbey/ Clemson exhibition basketball game.  Luckily, I ran into Will Qualkinbush, got to sneak in through the tunnel with him, and got to hug Ryan as he was running off the court at the end of his game.  I got to talk to Susan, and all of the Basketball staff, Coach Brownell's girls, and even got to talk to Frank Smith (an assistant coach on OP's staff)!  He was very impressed with my weather appropriate outfit, as he once called me out for not wearing a jacket and breaking down my immune system, and one week later I got Mono.  Frank is starting his own drug testing company now and seems to be doing really well.  It was really great to see a member of the old staff...brought back memories!
        After the game I got to meet up with Mackenzie, Ansley Faria, and Amanda Suiter for a girl's weekend of fun!  A girl's weekend of fun got invaded by Will Sartin (I know...how many Wills can one girl know?), but it was SO great getting to spend the day with him and his best friend from home, Brooks.  It was his first game day off in his college career and I was so glad he chose to spend it with us!  Again, on Sunday I woke up and did NOT want to head back to reality.  It is so sad when you go to say "hey! I'll call you tonight and head over to hang out" and then realize that you will be in a different state in a couple of hours and that will be impossible.  I'm pretty sure this will be my last weekend out of town for a while, but these weekends with college friends have been so rejuvenating and have served as a very important reminder to me of the importance of great friends.  I wish I could see ALL of my friends...but those were some pretty good representatives for sure! 

OH YEAH!  And we beat NC STATE!!!! WOO HOO (I will be slightly less excited on the job...obviously I am very objective).  During the game, I stopped by the Raycom Truck and Jimmy (in charge of Raycom Production) gave me a tour of the entire thing!  I could tell that he enjoys teaching people about the profession that he is an expert at.  He was so sweet to do that.  I got to see what the difference is between the Producer, the Director and Technical Director's jobs.  He also showed me the audio room and I got to hear the sound that was coming in from the Parab (the job I did when I worked the game).  While we were in there, Rob (the producer) was trying to figure out which camera got the shot of Coach Steele passing out so that they could use it as a feature story for the next game.  The truck was high energy during the show, the fun, easy-going characters that I know from the offices become ALL business and have no time to joke around. I loved just getting to see how that whole thing works. 

Working and Tigers and Bears, Oh my!

        So tonight I'm going to play a little catch up.  Only because Friday was full of interesting little tidbits that I left out in the previous post.  I had to make my Friday night post short for two reasons: 1, because I had limited battery use while traveling, 2, because I had two very distracting friends in the front seat while I was trying write, and 3, because when I mentioned that I couldn't talk too much in the car because I needed to blog, Blake told me it was the dorkiest thing he had ever heard me say.  I will admit, It's a little embarrassing every time I have to say the words 'my' and 'blog' together.  So here is the rest of it...
        Friday started out as just one of those days...except a couple of hours earlier.  We had another Hood-Hargett monthly breakfast.  At this breakfast, there was no legendary Hugh McColl speaking, but there was a man named Chip Bell, a consultant based in Texas who essentially based his entire speech on customer service on his love affair with the the Jack Daniels distillery and how they keep their customers loyal.  He had some valid points, like involving your customers in your process.  Make them feel like their participation is specifically important to the success of your business.  Actively and personally seek feedback, and when you are seeking feedback, shy away from the defense mode.  Essentially, make your customer's feel like you are personally invested in them....I think.  His speech really wasn't the most memorable part of the entire breakfast.  The Jerald Melburg Gallery was the sponsor for this event, and the sponsor always has the opportunity to speak.  Mark Packer, better known for his work as the Packman- a sarcastic sports talk local radio celeb in Charlotte, has been MC'ing these events for seven years and as the MC, he must introduce the both the speaker and the sponsor.  Well, if any of you are familiar with Mr. Packer's tone, you would not be surprised that when he gets up to speak at these events, you can kind of feel the tension rise, like no one knows what he's about to say, and it could be get a little hairy.  Sure enough, it got hairy on Friday.  Mark Packer introduced the sponsor with a story about his latest trip to France, where he visited the Louvre.  He recalled the moment when he saw the Mona Lisa and said "Art, I just don't get it.  I mean that thing was tiny, and there were about 50 people standing around it!"  We got an email later that day that said the Hood Hargett Breakfast Club would be going in a different direction for their MC choice at any further Breakfast Club meetings.  A lesson in social graces for sure.  

        Sarah wasn't at work on Friday so it was just me in that big office, and I actually got a lot more done.  Will and I went to meet Mike Crum, Chief Operating Officer of Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, at the Mint Street lot where we would be designating space for a tailgate for 600 people from the CRVA.  They had a great idea to do their Christmas Party at the ACC Championship Game.  They are using the money they would spend on a big Christmas party and purchase a large block of tickets for their employees and family members instead.  The Baseball Lot is one that Will decided to purchase for the games so that we would have control over the use of it, so we have decided to use it for Tailgate space for clients like the CRVA.  Other than that, a large portion of Friday was spent on ticket programs (ones which, I found out today we might not be using).  I feel like this has been happening a lot lately.  Sarah and I will work on something for weeks, drafting it and getting it approved, and then changing it (upon request), redrafting it, changing it again, and then dropping whatever it is (upon suggestion).  I guess that is the life of the intern...use them as the guinea pig to see what works. 

       Like I mentioned, I went up to Chapel Hill this weekend, thanks to the generosity of Blake and Bridwell.  It was a nice trip, minus a couple of hours. Saturday there was this Clemson game.  Enough Said.  But on Saturday night, we stopped by Greensboro to have dinner with my parents.  Mom made Shrimp and Grits, which were awesome, and it was nice for my parents to get to meet some of my friends.  I did find myself laughing about nothing...for no reason at some points.  It was very awkward TV show moment of me, but I just couldn't help it.  I was waiting for either my friends or my family  to share SOMETHING with the other part of the group that I did not want shared...Luckily, that didn't happen too often.  Essentially, they just all agreed I was sort of a smart ass, and the conversation flowed naturally from there.  

        Kevin Conrad, Chris Conrad(the Conrads' cousins from Chicago), and Kevin's girlfriend  had come into town this past weekend for the Chicago Bears vs. Carolina Panthers game this weekend, and Uncle Bobby managed to scramble up lots of tickets to the game, so we all tailgated and went to the Bears VS. Panthers game on Sunday.  After a bad weekend of football, at least from my perspective, I decided to forget about my home team loyalties and cheer for a winning team.  Go Bears.  Ryan and I got to sit in Club seats, which meant that we had the best seats in the house to watchwatch ANY more football for the rest of the weekend.  

        This week has been a busy one, even in just 2 days.  We had Meineke (Like actual members of the company) join us for our Monday bowl game meeting for the first time since I've been working.   I had almost forgotten that Meineke Car Care was an actual company, with an identity outside of the bowl, because this is the only experience I've had with Meineke...even though I've probably said and typed the words several hundred times over the past couple of months.  

        Colin, over in Raycom invited Sarah and I to sit in on their New Media meeting which was actually interesting, because it got some ideas flowing for things we can be doing better with Bowl and Championship media.  Last week I noticed that we have really dropped the ball on our attention to our social media pages, and so we've tried to be more intentional about our social media use this week. 
        Ticketing has been the other item on the agenda for the week.  And with a few new projects, I feel like I have gotten a crash course in Ticketing, mapping availability, and pricing over the past 2 days.  
        Alright, a police man just knocked on the door.  He had the wrong address...but bottom line, it's time to go to bed after a scare like that!