This is the day, this is the day...

        This is the day that the Lord has made.  We will rejoice and be glad in it.  This is the day that I will finally have time to completely dry my hair.  My new goal is to wake up to my alarm and NOT hit the snooze button.  When I can get my morning routine down to a science, and know exactly how long it takes to get to class, work, or wherever, I tend to start waking up later and later.  This morning, I woke up at 8 which gives me just enough time to shower, partially dry my hair, and run out the door...a frazzled start is not the best start to the day, but it's one that I've unfortunately become accustomed to in the past couple of years.  Someone ask me how my new wake up plan is going in about a week.
        LGA came in for a meeting today and we talked about the media plan for the Meineke Car Care Bowl.  They gave us a chart of the months leading up to the day, and the different media that we will be using to promote the game: billboards, radio, TV, etc... and the rough budget for the plan.  This year we are advertising for the bowl later than last year because we want each game, the Bowl and the Championship, to have their moment to shine and give the consumer an opportunity to give undivided attention to each game.  Lisa from LGA gave us the idea to go to mashable.com which is a social media website that offers a wealth of information on the most effective techniques for the usage of sites like facebook and twitter.  What an awesome resource.
        The rest of the day was focused on finalizing several things for the Quail Hollow luncheon tomorrow.  After doing some office projects, we headed out to the venue, 12 Football helmets in hand to set up for tomorrow.  (I will put pictures up in my next blog).  The country club was gorgeous...and a lot bigger than our country club in Greensboro (obviously).  It was actually just added to the rotation of courses for the PGA and will host the tournament in 2017.  Anyways, we weren't sure how we were going to decorate the tables because they were 10 tops and you don't want them to look blank, but you are creating a room for a largely male audience.  We brought the ACC football helmets, and 2 Bowl Game helmets (to mark the 2 head tables) and used a couple of black table toppers-essentially large black dinner napkins- to dress the tables.  Simple centerpiece worked because the 10 tops were actually kind of small.  I'm really excited about tomorrow and meeting more Leatherheads and Football Legend, Bob Griese.  I'm not excited about the good ol' southern food on the menu.  I've been accepting free food for the past month and it is starting to take a toll on me.  My body just needs a salad!
        Tonight I went over to Lauren Patterson and Christie Schaus' apartment for dinner which was great.  Carrie, Caroline Plunkett, and their other roommate came too, and it was nice to just be around friends that I am familiar with.  It is so weird that we sit around and spend  a vast majority of our time discussing our jobs.  Definitely different from discussions we would have over dinner in College.  Look at us...we are all grown up!  My aunt Mary came tonight to spend the night before she flies out to LA with Uncle Oscar tomorrow.  She recently had surgery and so she got to show and tell me all about that.  Nursing friends, you'd be so proud.  She is an AWESOME cook and I got her to try one of my biscuits from the other night, and she liked it.  If Mary likes the food I cook/bake I will chalk that up to a success.  So good to sit with her tonight and just hang out for a bit!

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!