Mikayla Duchene
Ah, travel. It sounds wonderful, and it is, but when it’s the weekend before finals, packing and studying don’t exactly go well together. Hint to all future travelers: make a to-do list and live by it.
When I left San Diego on Thursday afternoon, it was 90 degrees. When I landed in Indianapolis at 1 a.m., it was 50 degrees and raining. Talk about a temperature shock.
The best part of the trip was when I got to sleep in on that Friday morning, just kidding…kind of. Anyway, on Friday afternoon, Cassie and I walked the short distance from our hotel to the hotel the conference was being held at and explored a little bit of downtown Indianapolis along the way. Yes, it was still a brisk 55 degrees, but who doesn’t love wearing a pea coat?
First on the agenda for Friday afternoon was the Regional Conference planning session. This was definitely one of the highlights of the weekend. We learned so much about how to make our conference in April AMAZING. More details on that coming soon.
Saturday morning was when conference really kicked off. The keynote speaker was awesome, and not just because I’m into sports PR and she led the charge for the PR around the Indianapolis Super Bowl. Allison Melangton spoke about how to use sports as a vehicle for change and impact.
The biggest thing I learned, and which repeated itself in the other sports-related sessions I attended over the weekend, is that sports PR usually isn’t about sports. It’s about the community that is created around teams, players and events. Even though Melangton doesn’t know much about football, she knows about people and knew how to get people engaged at all levels, even if they weren’t football fans. PR shouldn’t be about an event; it should be created around an event. Some of the events created around the Super Bowl were Super Scarves, where people made scarves to donate to everyone that would be volunteering in the cold weather during the actual Super Bowl; Super Kids, Super Welcome, where kids colored and wrote welcome letters for the hotel rooms; and the goal of planting 2,012 trees by the Super Bowl in 2012. None of these activities were about the game of football, but they offered ways for all members of the community to be involved.
One of the best parts of being able to travel to new cities for conferences is getting to learn about what that city has to offer career wise. After visiting Indy and realizing how much of a sports town it is, I could see this being a future landing place for my career.
Ah, travel. It sounds wonderful, and it is, but when it’s the weekend before finals, packing and studying don’t exactly go well together. Hint to all future travelers: make a to-do list and live by it.
When I left San Diego on Thursday afternoon, it was 90 degrees. When I landed in Indianapolis at 1 a.m., it was 50 degrees and raining. Talk about a temperature shock.
The best part of the trip was when I got to sleep in on that Friday morning, just kidding…kind of. Anyway, on Friday afternoon, Cassie and I walked the short distance from our hotel to the hotel the conference was being held at and explored a little bit of downtown Indianapolis along the way. Yes, it was still a brisk 55 degrees, but who doesn’t love wearing a pea coat?
First on the agenda for Friday afternoon was the Regional Conference planning session. This was definitely one of the highlights of the weekend. We learned so much about how to make our conference in April AMAZING. More details on that coming soon.
Saturday morning was when conference really kicked off. The keynote speaker was awesome, and not just because I’m into sports PR and she led the charge for the PR around the Indianapolis Super Bowl. Allison Melangton spoke about how to use sports as a vehicle for change and impact.
The biggest thing I learned, and which repeated itself in the other sports-related sessions I attended over the weekend, is that sports PR usually isn’t about sports. It’s about the community that is created around teams, players and events. Even though Melangton doesn’t know much about football, she knows about people and knew how to get people engaged at all levels, even if they weren’t football fans. PR shouldn’t be about an event; it should be created around an event. Some of the events created around the Super Bowl were Super Scarves, where people made scarves to donate to everyone that would be volunteering in the cold weather during the actual Super Bowl; Super Kids, Super Welcome, where kids colored and wrote welcome letters for the hotel rooms; and the goal of planting 2,012 trees by the Super Bowl in 2012. None of these activities were about the game of football, but they offered ways for all members of the community to be involved.
One of the best parts of being able to travel to new cities for conferences is getting to learn about what that city has to offer career wise. After visiting Indy and realizing how much of a sports town it is, I could see this being a future landing place for my career.
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