Category: work life

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Finding The Inspiration

This was written last month on a plane. I’m slow y’all.

Sitting here on the plane home (no worries, airplane mode is enabled on my iPad) and I’m thinking inspiration. My headphones are blasting Jay-Z and Kanye Watch The Throne.  In addition to my intense admiration for Yeezy’s quotable quotes from life and songs, I get excited and nearly stan for Mr. West based on his evidenced passion for art: music, clothing, collecting pieces, name dropping Dali and Basqiat. Though this sometimes manifests in wearing leather aprons during performances – pause – it mainly comes through his fantastic albums and the story of grinding it out as an unknown, struggling to make ends meet. As he said, “that’s a different world like Cree Summers.”

The Vocus conference stimulated some passion for me. The overarching messages could be summed up as thus: be awesome, don’t tell everyone you’re awesome but instead tell them how your awesomeness benefits them. Never stop learning, innovate and have a good product and message. Great speakers and just overall passionate communicators. At the airport, I took the advice of one of the main speakers and fellow Houstonian Dayna Steele: take travel as the opportunity to expand your reading outside of your usual realm of comfort. For her, it was reading about NASCAR, which helped learn about new marketing tactics. Personally I agree with her; it’s men and a handful of women driving around tracks for hours on end, not sport. But they market the hell out of it!

So I picked up my first Forbes magazine. And I learned. I learned about the new Apple CEO, Jamie Dimon and the European economy. And I went on to use my American Airlines points to subscribe to Inc., Fast Company, The Atlantic (and Lucky, I still like pretty things!). It’s great to be able to hold a conversation beyond the latest pop news, both at work and with my friends and family.

So now as I move forward, not letting the “conference fire” die, where did you find your passion? And how did you keep the flames stoked?

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The Numbers Game – My History with Media Measurement

I have about 25 minutes before I head to an industry conference, and I wanted to share my thoughts on why I’m going. Since I began here just over five months ago (my how time flies), I’ve learned many a lesson on public relations, interoffice politics and how I am perceived. One of the biggest areas of growth has been in media monitoring: the measurement, tracking and reporting of earned media coverage.

Getting into communications, this was not where I pictured I’d spend much of my time, though honestly I wasn’t sure what to expect from a career in media relations once I graduated. As nearly any practitioner will tell you, the numbers game is the ultimate goal. Whether you’re with an agency, internal relations or corporate communication, your ultimate goal is to share specific messages with specific audiences at specific times. And to be able to report on it. Starting out at the Dallas CVB, part of my responsibilities was to scan for references of Dallas tourism in a stack of magazines that never seemed to go below three feet high. Page after page, eyes traveling back and forth. I often sighed and wondered why the task was given to me and couldn’t I be doing something “sexier?” Of course, hindsight being 20/20, this was foundation for learning about that industry staple: precious lines of editorial coverage espousing your company line. I was better prepared for the quest at my next job, and technology met me there in the form of online databases. There are many to choose from: Vocus, BurrellesLuce, Meltwater, Cision. The list goes on. As part of a department that went from five to two in the span of less than two years, that drive to find all references and build those relationships was so much more important. And now, in my current role, I’m it when it comes to media measurement system expertise (though I’m using the world “expertise” quite lightly).

I’ve had some challenges with the current system we use here but through perseverance, blood, sweat and (few) tears we’ve come out on the side of almost understanding it all. I’m excited that my job empowers – and that’s the perfect word – me to take my knowledge to the next level. The Vocus conference will be a great opportunity to connect with those who play the same game as I – the numbers game.

I know they say this generation is “lost” in terms of starting a career and finding a place to experience development but I’m feeling like I’ve found a spot in the sun to grow.

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Don’t Hide Your Light Under a Bushel

If there is one edict that has stayed with me from my impatient youth to 26-going-on-27, it’s that if you use patience and wait out the tide, eventually it turns and everything gets better. I posted back in October that some days are just “might don’t make it days,” where you have to chalk it up that life has the better of you and keep it moving. And sometimes those days string together to the point where you wonder where the end is.

After the past week I’ve had, I feel like I’m on a mountaintop after coming through a valley. And I’m not hiding my light and blessing under a bushel. On Friday a long-sought job offer came through. It was such an overwhelming feeling after a few seasons of feeling like my skill set was lacking, after getting the “sorry but no” call or email or no call at all (which is so incredibly unprofessional I can’t even speak on that). I went to my mental prayer closet before I got the call. I’ve always liked that concept, taking your prayers and desires straight up on high. No interruptions, no distractions, just a conversation. One shouldn’t reject the path He chooses, and that was my desire: to understand that if the answer was no, it didn’t mean “never” it meant “not right now.”

When I got off the phone, I was shaking like I’d just been in a fender bender (speaking from experience here). Hands shaking, nerves slightly raw. It was just joy, coursing through my veins. With this new opportunity, I feel a rejuvenation of energy. If there is one thing I can’t take, it’s stagnancy. Whether it’s work, education, friendships or romantic relationships, I think you should always be moving forward. Discovering new things, new concepts, new levels. In no way am I disparaging any past loves or jobs, but you do reach a fork in the road sometimes and you have to decide which way you’re going to go. It’s feeling like a road less traveled right now, but I know I chose the right one.

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Two Pictures Worth 1,000 Words

I came across two pictures that currently matter to me:

The Tea Party and the Occupiers: Can They Just Get Along?

This Venn diagram is from a great Slate article on the similarities and differences between Occupy Wall Street and the Team Party movements. Why this matters? After the head scratching  three-hour brainstrom session in which I tried to narrow my research choices, I found inspiration in the latest news cycles. Seeing as I’m supposed to either believe that the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are a bunch of rude, dirt-encrusted ne’er-do-wells who just want to rob the rich or they’re the noble, progressive alternative to the crass and crotchety Tea Party, I decided on a textual analysis of the media coverage both groups received in the first 30 days. After presenting in class, I feel secure that this is simple enough to be manageable but could still be expanded upon in the future.

Personally, I would love to explore the lack of minority representation in both of these movements. As a black woman solidly within the demographic fit of the Occupy Wall Street protesters (middle class, college educated, etc.) I and several people I know like me is not going to spend precious time camping out in public to hold up signs and be a spectacle for media searching for a story. I’d rather be looking for a job and interviewing (if that was my issue like some of the protesters) or networking or anything other than standing still.

The second image that is of interest to me has to do with my industry.

According to the 2011 IBM Global Chief Marketing Officer Study (via Marketing Profs), there is a significant gap between the number of executives who report an high expected “level of complexity” in marketing and the actual number of those executives who feel prepared for this complexity. As the graph handily points out, this is a 31 percent gap. The rest of the report details the following slightly troublesome data:

  • 82 percent of CMOs plan to increase the use of social media but 68 percent of CMOs reporting unpreparedness for social media. I wonder how they plan to get past this 14 percent deficit between those who recognize the need for more social media and those who are not prepared to do just that.
  • Some communication folks may be tired of the “content is king” trope but it appears to be true. Categorized as “data explosion” and explained as “the increasing volume, variety, and velocity of data available from new digital sources such as social networks,” 71 percent of respondents indicated this as an area of unpreparedness (seeing a pattern here?).
Sadly, a lot of these areas of need can be filled by adequately training the less senior positions but companies are trying to be so “lean” that training and actual experience to teach employees is lacking.
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Work In Progress: Focus

At least weekly, I tell myself to work on concentration and focus. Just like today. I’d had it up to here with myself and my Internet usage. I confess, I am a multi-window-opener. If I see an interesting story, article, picture or what have you I click on it. Before I know it, I have up to 10 tabs open and I’m seriously distracted!

I’ve found that I do this when I’m truly avoiding work. School work, real work: pretty much anything that seems productive results in a venture into the vortex of the Interwebs. Today’s experiment was keeping less than two tabs open, which seemed to work well to getting stuff done. Wonder of wonders.

I’m going home to Houston this weekend, spending some time with my mom. And to keep me company: three chapters and three 20+ page articles. I guess we’ll see how well my distraction techniques work in real life.

I’m also on the look out for a good fall trip. Problem is I hate the cold and all places above the Mason-Dixie are already “cold.” So where to go, where to go. I think I’ll get some inspiration from this great post on Clutch Magazine “11 Black Women Inspiring Us to Travel.”