Website

The creation of the website was my absolute favorite project all semester. I totally loved how the entire thing was a culmination of everything else that we learned during the course of this semester. It connected to every other project we completed this semester and best of all, it used HTML coding and the new CSS coding I learned during this project.

            In an earlier blog post for the WikiHow page I commented on how much I liked HTML coding and how it made sense to me that was made even more apparent to me during the creation of the website. The only issues I ran into were when I actually had no idea how to put a certain code in or how to do a certain action such as adding a next/previous button to my portfolio pages. The funny thing is that my mom’s boyfriend is an IT, and so the day after I created the site in class he looked at it and showed me a bunch of websites to help me learn code, like w3schools.

            I must admit of course, that I did go a little bit overboard with this project as the requirement for portfolio items was 8 and I had 41. It was so fun to learn how to use it and I cannot wait to use my new techniques to help me grow as a practitioner.

            I would use my website to promote myself by adding links to it on all of my professional social media accounts, I would also add a link to it at all the ends of any written works I give to any client, etc. or at the very least leave the web address. The thing I loved about this project the most was that everything led up to it. The Twitter and Facebook Projects, the Blog Project, even our Video and WikiHow projects to some degree. Everything was there and used as a tool of self-promotion. It was amazing. It’s extremely beneficial to have these add-ins because these links are the links that people are going to be inspecting or looking at, most likely due to familiarity.

            I think I got so into the project that I lost track of time and ended up staying until after midnight with Professor Pabico to finish it. I wanted it to be perfect, and although the final product wasn't perfect it was pretty close to what I envisioned and I really think I learned new things and I truly believe that I can implement these new skills into the creation of more things not only for myself but for others.

            Overall this project was the cherry on top of one of my favorite classes to date and I didn’t care about all the time and effort I had to put in because I had fun doing it.

Interview

In class, we were assigned groups of two in which we had to interview each other in a formal mock job interview. This was to help with the social and communication aspect of the course. The following is a list of the questions I was asked along with my answers.

1. How do you plan on self-promoting yourself?
I want to use social media to promote myself. Social media is important because it is the future!

2. Name three goals you have between now and graduation.

I want to be on the Dean’s List, I want to complete the remaining half of my novel I’m currently writing, and I want, no I need, to have my application process finished for grad school.

3. What employment goals do you have after graduation? 
Name three of them.

I have an entire life plan. Firstly, I want to do crisis management for a PR firm, then I want to work for Edelman in their New York City office either in crisis or in their social media department, and I want to end my career as a college professor teaching Public Relations.

4. Name three best-case scenario jobs you would like to have and why.
Outside of my field, I would love to be a surgeon if I ever did the whole med-school thing, (laughs) growing up I was really into medicine and I watched like surgeries and autopsies and I found them fascinating.  Relating back to my field a job at Edelman would obviously be best-case scenario, simply because they are the tip-top of the PR world. Lastly a job in investor relations would be a best-case scenario because they typically start with six figure salaries right out the door.

5. Do you prefer to work professionally with a group or on your own and why?

I can’t really choose one over the other simply because both are extremely important based on the task at hand and the type of work required.

6. What contributions can you make to a group dynamic? 
Name three things.

Usually in groups, no matter how hard I try not to be, I somehow always become the leader or find myself in a leadership position. I have a ton of ideas swimming around my head at all times that I can contribute to the group. A third quality I have is that I can get along with anyone.

7. What contributions can you make working independently? 
Name three things.
I can work very quickly by myself, my work tends to be better because the entire project is coming from my own head space, and in working alone I can make conclusions on tasks and come to a consensus on a task or problem much easier.

8. What are your pet peeves in a work environment?

I absolutely cannot stand when people are not trained correctly! It really grinds my gears because it’s like if you’re going to do a job do it right! I also cannot stand when in a group setting somebody does more work than another person. A third pet peeve would be messy work areas. I can’t deal with any mess that isn’t my own.

9. Name three things you feel passionate about professionally - 
this could be school related, current job related, group or organizationally related - and outline why you feel passionate towards them.

I wholeheartedly and absolutely believe in hard work, I think rational thinking is the best route to take towards anything. If you take a second and break it down, it is entirely possible to figure out a situation clearly. Proper workplace etiquette is also an absolute must.

10. How do you handle stress and pressure?

There’s this thing I do when I’m stressed out. When I get super stressed I get a cup of coffee, just sit with it and clear all distractions. I clear my mind and occasionally play happy music. It really helps.

11. Name the last three jobs you had, and the best success and the worst failure you experienced at each of these jobs.

My current job is Electronics at Target, and the best success I have had there is that I am currently the top sales person in the electronics department, which is like really cool! However, I do have a habit of showing up between 5-10 minutes late. Oops! My job before that was Laundry and Housekeeping at the Holiday Inn and my best success was definitely getting out of that environment! Leaving that job was the best thing I could’ve done. My biggest failure was never getting a raise in my entire year and half there. Before that, I was a cashier at Tops and a great success was how much my customers loved me. They would come in looking for me by name and would light up when they saw me. A failure was leaving on bad terms with the head honchos.

12. How do you handle criticism?

I am highly accepting of criticism, but sometimes to a fault. I only say this because I really do let criticism effect me.

13. Outline three strengths you have in school.

My writing is really good, not to toot my own horn. I am a seasoned writer. My study habits as of late have become really good, simply because I have barely studied before this semester. I also have really good time management, which is totally going to benefit me later in life.

14. Outline three strengths you have in your workplace.

I take every workday seriously and I give each workday my all! Usually my fellow employees look to me for guidance in what to do, and they come to me for their questions on what to do at work. Because of Target, sales have become a specialty of mine.

15. How has creating a WikiPage strengthened your communication skills?    Name and elaborate on three things:

The HTML coding became a new skill that I found I excel at which is extremely beneficial. Creating a WikiHow page taught me how to break things down into steps, and it provided a new writing style that I had only ever touched upon in the past.

16. How will Facebook be used to promote you?

Name and elaborate on three things:

I would start by creating a “Zack Reese” Facebook page, and then I would begin adding new people and encourage them to add others, following this I would reach out to other organizations to further spread my brand and get into talks.

17. How would you promote an organization on Facebook?

Name and elaborate on three things:

Pages, events and lots and lots of pictures.

18. How will Twitter be used to promote yourself? 

Name and elaborate on three things:

I would tweet to companies from my Twitter page, I would use personal hash-tags so that my tweets could be found easier and maybe even trend. I would also tweet with bit links to other sites that may have more information for visitors to my page.

19. Graphically what do you want to have on your website?

Name and elaborate on three things:

I definitely need a ton of pictures, a bio, and links to other social media.

The conducting of this interview was even more so helpful because it kind of painted a picture of what I want to come in the future as I answered each question with 100 percent honesty. My interviewer was John and he did a pretty great job. At times, I really did feel like we weren’t in the classroom any more and more like it was an actual job interview. He keep a good posture being turned towards me as he asked me questions, maintained a constant level of eye contact and seemed to be genuinely engaged in what I was saying by helping me come to an answer when I got stuck. 

Twitter

The Twitter Project might have been the easiest project yet. I mean I definitely have déjà vu saying so, because I feel as if I’ve written these exact words on another blog post. This one came with such ease because of how familiar I am with Twitter as a whole.

            On my current personal Twitter account, I have 21.3K tweets. This is how much I’ve tweets since I began college about 3 years ago. I had an original account of maybe 15K tweets, but I deleted that towards the tail end of high school. I don’t tweet as heavily as I one did, sometimes tweeting over twenty times in one day. But I digress, the point I was trying to make was that Twitter was familiar territory to me so this project was easy.

            The parameters of the project included making ten tweets on any topic, with at least five of those tweets having a link to an outside website. Then we had to choose three official twitter accounts of generally varying topics and send each of those five tweets a piece. Following this we had to reply to everybody in the class twice. This led to a total of 55 tweets. It was a simple enough task, it was just tedious and monotonous.

            Again, as with the Facebook project before it, there were some issues, but these issues were much more miniscule and a lot easier to correct. The main issue I came across was the fact that 90 percent of the class made their accounts private so as to not draw outside attention; so for those who employed this method they had to approve every follower request. The problem with that was that not everybody approved the requests in a timely manner. It was the night before the project was due and I found myself direct messaging classmates to allow me to follow them. Between the couple that I did message neither replied nor didn’t approve me until class the following day. After which, by the way, the project was already due. So this was slightly disconcerting but eventually I reached my targeted tweet number and fulfilled each of the project guidelines.

            Straying away from the technical side of things slightly, this project made me realize how powerful a tool Twitter can be in the communications world. It allows clients and the public at large to respond directly to you, (unless you’re set to private, obviously) it is also an effective way to give quick, concise updates on what exactly is going on within your life, or your company’s daily updates. Twitter is a lot more applicable than Facebook, simply for the fact that it is much easier to grasp conceptually. The 140 character limit is a drawback of course, but it’s also beneficial because it makes the message you’re trying to get across extremely clear. Pretty much most companies have Twitter presences, and I would imagine that is because of how easy it is to use.

            A great thing about Twitter that I also touched upon in my previous Facebook blog post is that Twitter rarely suspends or deletes accounts unless the tweeter is really in hot water. If the profanity towards others is bad enough that an account gets reported to Twitter, that account will be suspended and will only be allowed to be reactivated if the person or people running the account email twitter directly and explain why they should be given their account back. Facebook on the other hand will delete with over activity. Twitter encourages over activity and the mass following of people. Twitter is more likely to be used by a business or company because it DOES encourage connecting with others in a grand scale.

            With the slow, agonizing death of Facebook, Twitter will more than likely rule supreme over the social media kingdom. Especially in a business setting. This project solidified that this is going to be the social media account that I emphasize for a client if they allow it. This and the website which we will be making in class this upcoming week are leagues more important and good to know.

            Knowing how to professionally present myself within the Twitter setting will be very beneficial to me later down the line. This project showed me how hashtags, mentions, and replies can be conducted in a professional way and in a way that shows extreme internet etiquette. This know how will separate me from the competition that will eventually cloud my way.

 This entire class is showing me just how important an internet presence is for any company, and how equally the people who create and manage these presences are. Perhaps, even more-so. This is the way of the future and the way the industry is going very, very quickly. There isn’t a website out there that isn’t overloaded with links to other websites, most of which are social media sites. The maintaining of each of these sites is a job in of itself and one that is growing more and more of interest to me personally.

I’m currently looking into jobs in the Crisis Management and Crisis Relations fields and what better way to reach people than with a social media approach? This is what people will see, this is what people will understand, and this is communication in one its newest and rawest forms. Helping a client keep their reputation after a crisis would be unbelievably difficult without the use of social media. That isn’t to say it would be easy, because it certainly wouldn’t be, but a social media approach can help alleviate some of the burden.

Every project we have done, especially the recent Facebook and this Twitter projects have led to the website project which is the final project. Every project is equally important to some degree and applicable in some way, shape or form to the public relations and communications world. I do believe with more and more of these projects under my belt, my skill set is ever growing and will continue to support me well into the future. The Twitter project was one of the more beneficial ones. 

Facebook

Facebook is used in the communications world as a means to connect to one another professionally. It can be used to reach out to companies and corporations. It can be used to promote oneself or their business. It is an efficient connector of business globally. As an in-training public relations practitioner, the knowledge on how to use Facebook given the right context and criteria is extremely beneficial.

In choosing three different companies without a Facebook presence and in turn creating for them a Facebook presence, a general understanding on how much work actually goes into maintaining a company’s page was achieved. Unfortunately the execution of adding other people from the class and allowing them into the created pages didn’t flow so eloquently.

Early on in the project, due to an excess of activity in the form of friend requests and inviting classmates to our pages almost everybody’s Facebook was shut down by Facebook. This was a little bit (a LOT a bit) disheartening because at the point in which my Facebook shut down I had just finished making my pages, adding the class, and was ready to begin commenting on classmates pages, which of course was the next phase of the project. And so, even as I write this, I am still adding people, two or three at a time so as not to arouse Facebook’s suspicions, and I haven’t re-created my pages to their fullest effect as of yet. Luckily for me however, I have a back-up of every word I had on my first account saved onto my flash drive.

I suppose that Facebook’s retaliation of the class so quickly early on is sort of reassuring in the social aspect in that they are trying to reduce fake profiles, and keep a certain level of internet safety. This of course, leads to a backlash for people who are trying to create a new Facebook presence and get their name out there or trying to create a new page for a company. In comparison with the Twitter project which we ended up doing concurrently because of the technicalities, at this point from a business perspective Twitter is for sure the way to go, simply because it is much easier to create a profile there and NOT have it taken down for something as silly as adding 15 other people too quickly. That’s crap.

As we’re approaching the end of the semester, I’m starting to realize what works and what doesn’t. I’m beginning to get a grasp on what is going to help me in my career and what I want to use. Due to the technicalities, and the overall slow decline of Facebook use, I will not be using Facebook unless the job absolutely calls for it. Besides, I’m almost 99.9% sure that within the next three years there will be a brand new social media site that will take the place of Facebook, especially for practitioners. This new site will join the leagues of the more useful ones such as Twitter, and Instagram.

 

iMovie Creation Post

           The iMovie creation project was most definitely my favorite so far, by far. This project was the most fun to create and really employed the trials and tribulations of creating a video for a client given a specific topic. My group was given the topic of time. We had a few weeks after being given our group and topic to come up with a video that could convey said topic as a group. The videos themselves are posted below.

            The mechanics of the project involved creating an individual video that lasted a minute and a half. Then as a group, a group video had to be created which would last for a minute. There was also about 15 seconds for intro and outro credits. With that in mind, our group decided that given the topic of time we wanted to make one concise video rather than subject ourselves to three fragmented videos and a group portion.

            It was after our first class together as a group that we all came back with raw footage that all coincidentally had one thing in common: motion. One of the group mates Drew had footage of him riding a bike. Our other group mate, Emily had footage of her running. I recorded some footage of me walking. The interesting part was that the entire thing was literally unplanned, and we kind of just “rolled” with it. Once the pieces started to click, we had a sort of idea how we wanted to edit the video. We wanted it to be faster in some places and slower in others, but the main thing we wanted to do was to intermix all of our video clips together into one video file. This idea came from a desire to show that not only does everything in the entire universe need and use time but all of these things run together and alongside each other.

            The one hiccup we as a group ran into was the group portion of the video. We found that we couldn't shoot it during the days that we were each on campus and so we simply decided to come on a Friday. The funny thing is that going into the recording of the group part we had no idea what we were recording outside of the realm of it being related to time and motion. All we knew is that we needed a camera person and luckily Drew’s friend was able to facilitate the part. We decided with this portion to demonstrate the idea that all the time we pass strangers every day and cross paths with said strangers. We also wanted to employ the motion idea we had throughout the rest of the video so we decided to show me walking past Drew who was riding his bike and past Emily who was running and then have the three of us end of in the same elevator. However, an accident in shooting proved to be beneficial when I didn't stop to get the elevator door for Emily who arrived at the elevator last, and thanks to the handy rewind option on iMovie, we was able to change this for my own benefit and put that scene in plus the correctly executed on in succession. This was to show the idea that a simple fragmentation or change in judgment for even a split second can change somebody’s entire timeline. The group project was fun to edit because it was pretty chronological whereas our main video was intentionally all over the place.

            Editing was fun and went pretty smoothly among the three of us, the only thing that really annoyed me was that I felt as if my videos personally weren't of a high enough standard at least from a high-definition viewpoint. My video’s quality was significantly less than those of my colleagues and I’m guessing that would be because of my phone being a galaxy compared to Emily’s iPhone and Drew’s iPod with which they took videos. Our group portion looked pretty good because I used a digital camera for it.

            Something that I was incredibly pleased and impressed with was that one of our group mates, Drew, actually composed and created a musical piece specifically for this project. This song had a bunch of sound bites from movies and television shows of words and phrases related to time, Drew also recorded himself saying tick and tock and over layed all of these extra sounds with a really cool musical track that really encompassed what time is. It was really impressive and he said it only took him five hours.

            For the most part, our feedback on the video was widely positive, which was something that I personally took pride in. As a group, we did put a lot of hard work into this video so it was nice to it met with such well reception. The only thing that we were given feedback to improve on was the execution of our pre-credits. In the actual video they were too short and were actually important because they contained a quote that I penned myself. That quote being: “Time is a constant motion. It is a part of everything that we do. Without time, there is nothing. Even daily, mundane activities require time. It is a constant motion, never ending.” It was suggested that not only do we extend the length of the clip, but that we actually move it to the end of the entire project. I must say, I totally agree with these suggestions as it would've made the video end with a concise ending.

            I truly believe that I lucked out with my group mates, and topic. It was extremely easy for us to work together and get our ideas about time into video form. We all worked together as a group should, each doing their part and then working together to put it all together. This video is entirely a representation of the three of us and with that being said, it’s totally obvious to see how applicable this project actually is to the public relations world at large. Videos are becoming more and more common within social media campaigning so being given a topic from a client (Professor Pabico) and working from there was a good warm-up for the real deal. 

Time Video - Final Edit

Time Video - Group