Dance Marathon-It's for the kids!

Dance Marathon is an event held every year at Georgia College & State University, as well as 80 other college campuses. This event celebrates raising money for local children's hospitals. One of the closest children's hospital to this campus is the Children's Hospital in Macon. My sorority, Phi Mu, visits the hospital as much as possible considering Children's Miracle Network is our philanthropy.

This year Dance Marathon will be on March 6, 2010 from 2 p.m. to 12 a.m. in Magnolia Ballroom. In past years the event was 12 hours standing on your feet doing activities to support the Children's Hospital, but this year it will only be held for 8 hours.

During the event, children from the hospital come visit and tell us their stories. We get to meet some of the kids and we play games throughout the whole day. During the 8 hours on our feet, someone leading the group will usually create a dance that everyone follows every so often. This dance keeps everyone going and ready for more! It's more like a "motivational" dance.

I have done Dance Marathon every year since I've known about it. I am really excited to spend my upcoming Saturday doing something beneficial for my community, helping the children at the local children's hospital.

Come out and support a good cause!

PRSSA-Real World 2010

PR Real World was on Friday, February 19 this year. About 10 members of GCSU's PRSSA, including me, traveled up to Atlanta at 5:30 a.m. for the event. Since GCSU is about two hours away from Atlanta the whole crew decided to meet at Starbucks and caravan all the way up in good ole Atlanta traffic!

The event lasted from 8 a.m. to around 4 p.m.; though, unfortunately, I couldn't stay the whole time. I left around 2 p.m. to avoid traffic and to make it back to school for my last homecoming weekend!

I have never been able to attend PR Real World, so I had no idea what to expect. I was nervous because we were going to be meeting actual PR professionals and I wanted to make a good impression!

At the event, we got to pick the seminars we wanted to attend during each session. I chose to attend "agency vs. corporation", "non-profit" and "resume tips". All of these gave me valuable information, but I really enjoyed the "agency vs. corporation". The three speakers talked about their careers and how they got there. One of the speakers, Ellen Hartmann, talked about how she was able to have a family and be a successful PR professional at the same time. Her speech was really inspiring to me because I want to be able to have a family and a career also. I'm really glad Ms. Hartmann came and I thank her for sharing her story with us.

Since I'm graduating in May I won't be able to attend another PR Real World as a PRSSA student. I am very glad I got to attend this one and hopefully I will be able to come back next year with valuable information for other students!

Ms./Mr. GCSU

It's campaigning time! Every year Georgia College & State University puts on Mr. and Ms. GCSU. An individual is nominated from any and almost every student organization to compete against others for the title of Ms. and Mr. GCSU. Last year my good friend and sorority sister, Keri Allgood, won along side of Delta Sigma Phi representative, Tyler Anderson.
A week before voting, organizations are allowed to go onto campus and chalk, publicize their candidate on Facebook through groups and/or events, put up flyers and pass out delicious treats. This year Phi Mu is passing out brownies for their candidate, Emily Brown. Everything goes into these campaigns from slogans to fancy, colorful, and expensive promotional material.
I worked as the PR chair for Phi Mu a couple of years ago when Phi Mu picked Jennifer Shannon as their representative for Ms. GCSU. I worked day and night for weeks getting everything put together. I had to create the slogan as well as getting every piece of PR material perfect and ready for distribution. I assigned people to different times during the day to chalk and to work tables where we passed out materials such as cookies and flyers. It was a lot of work, but it definitely paid off. I learned a lot about PR before I even started taking PR classes at GCSU. If it wasn't for this event who knows what Major I would have picked?! I'm glad I made the right decision!

It's that time of the year!

Super Bowl XLIV was aired on CBS on Sunday night at 7 p.m. The Saints won their first Super Bowl against the Colts! Though, I paid more attention to the advertisements than the game! Some of my favorites this year were the Doritos commercial called "Dog Gets Revenge" and Career Builder's "Casual Fridays". Some other good one's were the Dodge Charger Commercials and the Bud Light Commercials featuring T-Pain. I always like the more humorous commercials. Of course the GoDaddy.com commercials were with the usual girls attracting attention by doing something sexual. I think it's safe to say that we are all getting sick of these. Then of course there was the Tim Tebow ad, which had all of the controversy surrounding it. Was the Super Bowl the right place to air this kind of ad? The commercial, honestly, didn't grab my attention at all the first time.
It seemed as though, overall, the themes of this year's Super Bowl advertisements were women being knocked over and pants less men. I wonder what next year's Super Bowl ads will bring us...more naked people?

Twitter Challenge!

So this week my PR Campaigns class was challenged/assigned to "tweet" 35 times in one week. This meant we had to get on Twitter about 5 times a day and respond to people by @replies, post links in our tweets, and basically just get used to using Twitter professionally. We also had to start a list and add people into it. My list was called "PR Campaigns" and in that list I added everyone that is in my PR class. I figured this would make it easier for me to communicate with the whole class.
Now, when I first started this assignment I was skeptical. I know how to use Twitter, but I have always had a hard time seeing the significance of it. As soon as I followed more professionals and started tweeting more, I realized that Twitter is a very important social media tool. I was able to network with PR professionals all over the world. I got responses to my posts within minutes, rather than e-mailing people, which can take forever for a response.
I encourage everyone to take the "Twitter Challenge". It will open up many opportunities! So, go to, http://twitter.com/ and follow me at CaraRyanW.

Digital Bridges

This year, in PR Campaigns, our client is Digital Bridges. Digital Bridges is a non-profit organization that bridges business and technology. They hold "brown-bag" luncheons and other workshops to teach people that technology is important, especially for businesses. In this day and age, people use technology for everything! It is important to keep up with the technology trends to keep your business successful.
Well, back to the "project", our class was divided up into 4 target groups and from there we will create campaigns to raise awareness for Digital Bridges. I have Courtney and Brooke in my group so I know we will do well!

Good luck to everyone! It's our last semester!

For more information about Digital Bridges, visit: http://thedigitalbridges.org/db/home/home.html

PR in Action

Our last assignment for PR Admin this semester is to upload a video depicting "PR in Action". My video is an interview with PR Admin classmate, Keri Allgood. She described her role in the Relay for Life Kickoff event and the success of it.
Like I've said in earlier posts, the Relay for Life Kickoff for Baldwin County was our big assignment for the semester for Dr. Miller's PR Admin class. We were split up in teams and we pitched our ideas to the Relay for Life Committee. There were about 5 groups and my group, which included myself, Kara Teresi and Lyric Burnette, won. I was in charge of decorations, Kara was in charge of food, and Lyric was in charge of everyone. The theme this year was "Celebrate a Memory" and the event was held on Tuesday, November 17. We spent all day Monday and Tuesday decorating and getting the food together. Everyone worked really hard and for the most part, stuck to our budget. Like Keri said in the video, I think the event was overall a success too.

See everyone in PR Campaigns next semester! I can't wait to work with everyone again!