My First Big Project!

It was a big week for me at work! Which may be a reason for my lack of posts recently (sorry! I'll try to post more often!) Anyway, I helped own a project this week - a mobile partnership announcement - and let me just say that it was quite the experience! Although I can't disclose full details of the project, I did learn a few things along the way:

• Communication with your team and other players is key. You must be clear and lay out exactally what you want them to do. Then, you just need to let trust take it from there.
• You must also communicate well with clients.
• Work fast and respond quickly. In PR land, you could extrapolate this point to fit just about any project you are working on.
• Be prepared to answer lots of questions.
• Send out reminders or other useful tid bits of information to people who are helping you work on the project.

First week on the job

Hi everyone! First of all, welcome to my blog! Throughout the course of my entries in this blog, I will detail my experience in the professional public relations community and offer tips to PR students on how to best prepare for a PR career.

But first, let me go back a step and introduce myself. My name is Andrea and I recently graduated (Saturday, to be exact!) from the University of Oregon with a Journalism: Public Relations and Electronic Media degree. I jumped right into an internship with Waggener Edstrom Worldwide in Portland, OR the Monday after I graduated. I now (as of three days ago!) intern for the Microsoft Online Strategic Business team, which deals mostly with MSN, and so far, I love it! Here at Wagged, employees get complimentary coffee, soda and… Ritz crackers. Of course, some of the most obvious benefits to working for a high tech PR firm.

I was a bit nervous to enter into the realm of technology public relations, but even after the first few days on the job, I have come to find that it is actually a lot of fun! I was afraid that the “tech talk” would be completely over my head, but I am quickly catching on. In yesterday morning’s conference call, for example, the Microsoft OSB team kept referring to “Luda.” I thought this was just another acronym I would have to add to my list of things I don’t know, only to find out later that “Luda” equals “Ludacris,” a well-known rap artist. Go figure that the youngest member of the team is the one who is least up on her pop culture.

Here at Wagged, they definitely throw you right into things and keep you busy. But I am catching on pretty quickly. I feel that my education at the UO really prepared me to encounter the challenges and work load I have faced here and will face in the future. My first day, my manager asked me if I knew what a blog was and, duh! I finally feel like the four years I spent working my bu** off to pay attention in school and get good grades has paid off.

That’s it for now. I will continue to post articles as I learn relevant tools that might be useful to the aspiring PR professional or random thoughts I have throughout the day.