Week 1 Update

For my capstone project, I'll be implementing my campaign that I constructed last spring. My campaign was devised to help a struggling local business in Chambersburg, Pa. Better You Nutrition is a privately owned nutrition store that is struggling to remain relevant. I plan to carry out the campaign with the help of the owner, Tom Carey.

I'm excited about this opportunity because I actually enjoy health & fitness, which creates a genuine personal connection to the project. Tom is very receptive to me helping. I know he would be, we've remained in contact throughout the summer. As a PR practitioner and a consumer, I remain confident and optimistic that Better You Nutrition will succeed.

Week 1 - Shimandle

I am creating and implementing transition and training materials for Shippensburg University's Colleges Against Cancer officers. Many of the current officers will be graduation next semester. These materials will help to clearly explain all position expectations in order to keep the organization on the right path for growth.

There will be one main binder with materials detailing each position for the club advisor, student advisor and club president. Each officer will also receive a packet with their own position obligations, project suggestions, project time lines and other explanations of the sort.

The first step after creating the project proposal will be to set up a meeting with the club advisor and student advisor in order to clarify what they need to know about each position as well as what they think will be valuable information to include.

Week 1 - Mark Cover

For my project, I am going to be putting together a digital journalism package on the Unpopularity of U.S. soccer despite its recent success. I will be aiming to do a documentary type angle for the story. I believe this is essential for me to do because I have an interest in what I'm doing as well as a purpose. I believe I can use all the journalism skills I have learned up to this point to be together something really memorable.

I will be brainstorming my goals and objectives soon as well as devising actions to meet this goals and objectives.

Week 1 - Sarah Smith

I will be developing a magazine for students who are graduating and transitioning into the real world. It will focus mainly on the personal side of things, from buying or renting a house to budgeting money and gaining responsibility.

I've started multiple pages of my magazine already and it's going great. I'm really enjoying the design aspect. I must say that taking photographs for each story and having it match is somewhat difficult. How many different photos of houses can you take? I assume I'll need to get some help from others on that part.

I'm also trying to keep everything targeted to the direct audience, so the content and stories must revolve around them. At first, it seems easy since I'm the same age as the audience, but I want to make sure it stays consistent. Hopefully it will all work out.

Keeley-Week 1

My project is to plan the "Give the Gift of Art" holiday exhibit at the Shape Gallery. Because opening night is Nov. 4, I need to start the project now. Luckily the gallery holds a different exhibit every month, so the volunteers are used to planning these events quickly. Last week I attended the monthly meeting to find out what is currently going on with the gallery. This week I will be sending an email blast out to all the gallery members asking them to participate in the holiday exhibit. I will also be designing a logo for the event and creating post cards to send to members in the mail. Another goal I have is to create flyers for the event. Right now though, my main concern is getting artists to display their work.

I am about halfway done with my project proposal. I hope to finish it in the next two days. That way I will be able to dig deeper into what needs to be done. My biggest concern is not having enough time. I am also worried that the President of the gallery will do most of the design work, something that I really want to do for my portfolio. I will email him today about what he wants to be added on the promotional materials.

Week 1- Brouillette (I saved it instead of posting it!)

For my project I will be creating a digital magazine (Ezine). This magazine will highlight local wineries and vineyards, along with profiles of individuals who make homemade wine. The title of my magazine is Uncorked. It will be a Nov./Dec. issue that will be released. All of the content in my magazine is going to be original. I also plan on soliciting local business to advertise in my magazine.

Last week I identified my stakeholder. Professor Witmer graciously agreed to help me with this project. She is also my professor for Magazine Design. I will be creating the same magazine for this class however the requirements are far less than what I will be producing.

This weekend I visited Adam County Winery. I believe that winery will be a feature story for my magazine

Week 1- Beverly Ponterio

This weekend I met with my clients, who happen to be my family. I have already met my first risk, which is the fact that due to the fact that my clients are my family, they come with a lot of demands. While working with a client one has never met, you generally don't argue or debate what should and should not be included because it is not your business, but in my case this is literally my business.

My sisters are both graphic design artists and photographers and so are more advanced in the software than I am, which is beneficial and frustrating. My time is allocated for this project and my guidelines are structured, but accepting critique from family is more difficult and seems more personal than from a random client. They also have an extremely specific picture in mind and so it will require many meetings and a lot of editing to get it right.It is difficult to establish client and consultant relations.

The project will get rolling with a lot of speed and is already bolstered with a lot of information. I am not an expert in the subject of alpaca farming and certainly not of marketing, but I already have a lot of research that has been allocated through my clients. They have given me the basics of what they want and how they want it, but I am to determine the best way to produce and disperse the information. We went over in detail how the project should progress and what specifically my client needs.

The Planning Stage

Well now that I finally figured out how to use this blog, I guess it's time to talk about my project.

I am going to conduct a InDesign seminar for PRSSA members. This is an essential project because many members are creating promotional pieces for clients that are below professional standards. When members create poor-quality pieces, it could decrease our credibility and image with our clients. For an organization that prides itself on its promotion skills, we are doing a poor job.

I just started writing my proposal and I'm at a crossroad. Do I want to purely conduct the seminar and evaluate it, or do I want to create a manual for the members to keep?

It would be highly useful for the members to have a manual, but is this a further step that I am willing to take? I am not sure.

Starting off

Through personal experience of being friends with the public relations chair of the Sociology/Anthropology club, I have noticed that the club has major communication issues and very low recruitment levels.

For my project, I will be making a public relations training manual for the Sociology/Anthropology club. After the manual is made, I will be holding a session with the club's officers to go over the manual. I want to interview the public relations chair of the club to see what the weaknesses are. I also want to survey the members of the club to see what they think about the low recruitment issues. I am going into this project understanding that Sociology and Anthropology majors and minors who are members and officers in the club are not entirely interested in communications of may not see the importance of it, so I don't want to make the manual too long or overly detailed in ways that they would not understand.

I have already completed my concept map, so I really want to get started on making the surveys and interview questions. After I make the survey and design the questions, I should contact the public relations chair for an interview and to also see which meeting would be best to survey the members.

hit the ground running

As this project begins, I think for me it's going to be most important to develop the time line and concept map to keep everything running on task. Being my last semester, I often find myself so ready to be done and overly sick of classes, projects and exams.

My capstone project will be an interactive speaker session for the John L. Grove College of Business about using social media to find your dream job. This summer I attend this speaker session by Andy Drish. Since I have planned previous events for Alpha Kappa Psi and the College of Business, I spoke with Andy after his session about speaking at Shippensburg. He was interested in the prospect of setting up other schools in the area or doing a webinar. This is also something I'll be taking into consideration for my project.

The skills this project will showcase for my project will be mainly event planning. However, this project has the ability to show my understanding of the audience and their needs during the economic times. I will also showcase survey and design skills.

My first tasks will include: contacting all the people involved, picking a date, making my concept map and timeline and finally the proposal.

Hello Everyone!

I am going to be developing a plan to help freshman transition into college life. From helping with homesick freshman to helping freshman find out about clubs and opportunities on campus my plan will include multiple tactics to make this information available to them.

I am planning to talk to some RA's this week and possibly the counseling center next week to get specific and needs and/or goals they may have in mind. Possibilities include but are most certainly not limited to creating a blog/website, brochure, Facebook group, group counseling sessions, and anything to promote friendship and bonding, etc. After talking to my stakeholders I will have a better idea of what the freshman need and what I can do to help.

First post...

So.. I officially am working with my client for my campaign which is a big plus for this week! For this week ahead, I will be meeting with the adviser and the Senior Editor to The Reflector (my client, for those of you who don't know) on Thursday to discuss what we will be doing to implement this plan so far.

Dr. Sipes, you had mentioned that I had stated that some of my plan had been implemented already. This is true, but does not come directly from the campaign I had previously did. One of the tasks I had set for The Reflector to do was set up a Creative Writing Club on their own and they did just that - but it hadn't been related directly to my plan. For some unknown reason, the adviser to The Reflector failed to give the members a copy of my campaign. I am left without the credit to that success then..

The Reflector also has a PR person on their staff this semester which is awesome which means I will have someone to hand off my stuff to after graduation. I'm looking forward to doing this project because in a preliminary meeting with the editor, Ben, we decided I would be handling the promotional materials for a spoken gallery (yeah, I'm a bit confused on that as well) they will be having in the Huber Art Center soon. But that is also more good news for me since it means more portfolio pieces.

That's all I have.. for now.

TEST RUN

Hello fellow capstone blog members!

This is just a test, I repeat, this is just a test! Trying to figure out how this contraption works :) see you all tomorrow

Welcome

Welcome to the C/J Capstone Projects Blog. Each week participants will post updates, goals, successes and struggles toward the completion of his or her capstone project. Looking forward to a semester of learning from each other...