Archive for April, 2011
Favorite Artists and Entertainers from Key Arena Sports Games
Apr 26th
I realized while watching Rat City Roller Girls two Saturdays ago that a nice added bonus to both these bouts and Seattle Storm games is the great live entertainment. Below are a few of my favorite artists I’ve seen at Key Arena:
DJ Soda Pop – The Rat City DJ. Great party music.
Dance Belt – How do I always end up mentioning Lady GaGa on my blog? At the most recent roller derby bout, these Capitol Hill dance teachers performed an awesome medley of GaGa music video dance moves.
Massive Monkees – I discovered this hip hop dance crew through America’s Best Dance Crew’s Season 4 and was thrilled to see them at a Storm game.
Massive Monkees in 2009 - image taken from MTV.com without permission
Cooking Authentic Chinese Food in Maine: Part 3 – Stir-fried Broccolini/Broccoli
Apr 11th
This is the final post in a three-post series on cooking authentic Chinese food in the United States, inspired by my trip to Maine this past summer. This post is on how to make broccolini or broccoli in one of the two common ways vegetables are stir-fried in Beijing. You can read the first post on Cashew Shrimp here. You can read the second post on Egg Fried Rice here
Broccolini is more common than broccoli in Beijing, but you can substitute broccoli. I chose this as the vegetable to blog about because broccoli and eggplant are the two vegetables I didn’t really like eating until I went to China.
Note: I don’t include a wok in this because I’m better at stir-frying in frying pans than woks. If you have questions on how to adapt this recipe to a wok, then ask away in the comments section.
Broccolini I stir-fried in a wok.
Stir-fried broccolini or broccoli:
You’ll need:
broccolini or broccoli
roughly 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
fresh ginger, or chopped prepared ginger in water as opposed to olive oil
fresh garlic, or chopped prepared garlic in water as opposed to olive oil
table salt
water
deep-ish frying pan with lid (or wok)
1. Slice or separate the broccolini or broccoli into long, narrow pieces as shown in the above picture. If you use broccoli, keep much more of the stem attached per piece than you would for most American dishes.
2. If using fresh garlic and ginger, peel then mince by chopping with a knife. Use about 1/2-1 tablespoon per head of broccolini/broccoli depending on how strong you want these flavors. If using prepared garlic and ginger, use 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of each per head.
3. Pour oil into pan then turn on medium-high to heat the oil.
4. Add broccolini/broccoli, garlic and ginger; stir to coat in oil; lightly sprinkle salt over whole pan; add water to pan until ingredients are almost covered; then cover pan for approximately 2 minutes. (The heat will be high enough if the water is boiling before you cover it.)
5. Uncover pan to check to see if broccolini/broccoli is sufficiently cooked. It should not be mushy but soft enough to cut through the center of with a metal spatula. Add water as necessary to keep from burning.
6. If broccolini/broccoli is not yet cooked, repeat steps 4 and 5 in intervals of a minute or less until it is cooked.
7. Once broccolini/broccoli is sufficiently cooked, uncover pan and stir ingredients until most of the water evaporates.
8. Serve immediately on a plate or in a shallow, wide bowl with oil from pan as part of a family-style Chinese meal. Easiest to eat with chopsticks but possible to eat with a fork and knife.
Feel free to comment with questions, rave reviews, or suggestions for improvement.
2008 Student vs. 2011 Professional: PR Agency Job Duties
Apr 9th
I experienced a steep learning curve during my Weber Shandwick internship because while it wasn’t my first internship, it was my first at an agency. Below are tactics and job duties that I never encountered until agency work and have worked on at both Weber Shandwick and Nyhus Communications:
Emailed pitches:
Depending on the agency and client, pitches can be a more common outreach method to individual journalists than emailed press releases.
Advanced search engine skills:
In school, I learned how to use library resources, including exclusive access databases, to research information. Now, most of my research involves figuring out the most efficient and comprehensive search queries for either inbound coverage alerts or one-off research projects.
Soft skills in prioritizing and time management:
I never knew that time management could be any more systematic than working on tasks my supervisor assigned until they were complete and keeping a to-do list. It’s been important for me to figure out which deadlines I can meet without extensions and what tasks can wait until later.
Other job duties I didn’t have until agency work:
Monitoring incoming media pitching opportunities such as publication editorial calendars, Profnet and HARO
Hunting down background information for briefing documents for spokesperson interviews
Compiling and updating documents for client viewing such as call agendas, detailed coverage reports and metrics, and agency activity reports
Researching and submitting applications for awards and spokesperson event opportunities
2008 Student vs. 2011 Professional: The PR Industry
Apr 9th
In preparation for some of today’s PRSA Jumpstart attendees’ likely visiting my blog after meeting me, I’m writing two back-to-back posts on how my expectations of public relations as a student in 2008 differ from my work experience so far in 2011. I’d like to highlight not only my predictions when I was a student, but lessons and skills agency work exposed me to.
This post is on the public relations industry as a whole. The next post is on my job duties. These two posts aren’t meant to make me seem highly knowledgeable or opinionated on public relations, but rather provide insight for people who are in the same place in their careers that I was a few months ago. Note: I didn’t work or intern in public relations for the two years following graduation, hence the time gap.
The industry:
It’s possible to do entry-level public relations for something you know nothing about.
I think this may be a big difference between public relations for the arts versus business to business technology. It can be pretty difficult to get even an internship at a prominent arts organization without a major in the same arts discipline – for example, a theatre arts major if you want to intern at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – but no one expects an intern on a Microsoft account at a worldwide public relations firm to have studied computer science. Decision makers on the account must be familiar with the business, products, industry, and target media, but not interns starting out.
A big part of public relations is knowing what not to share.
I’ve observed my supervisors and their corporate clients decide to approach company news either proactively or reactively and draft a plan for communicating with media regardless of which they choose. Business relationships, competition, and what people have already decided are key messages can all influence the proactive versus reactive decision.
Social media use is not prolific, and its relationship to public relations is not yet standardized.
When I was learning how to blog and use Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in class in the winter of 2008, I expected that social media would be much more widely adopted in general and much more integrated into public relations in 2011 than it is now. There are still media professionals without Twitter or LinkedIn accounts, and people still email press releases that are not the least bit interactive and result in media coverage.
Who should manage a brand’s social presence: someone whose job is entirely digital in nature, a team in the digital department of a public relations agency, or someone who is also skilled in traditional media relations? Should community managers get free content reign or do they need to draft tweets for approval? Answers to these questions still vary quite a bit within the profession.
Public relations internships and entry-level jobs are more competitive to land now than they were in 2008.
I’ve observed that this is for two reasons: companies made long-term cuts to their junior public relations positions during the recession, and three to four graduating classes are now competing for the same jobs. The top two students in my graduating class and major spent the summer of 2007, between our junior and senior years, interning at San Francisco offices of worldwide public relations firms, and neither of them are from California. Now, this is so much less likely to happen, because a full-time public relations intern almost always has a college degree, if not a masters or public relations work experience, and is already living in the same city as the job.
The good news is that the industry, while still recovering, is very visibly growing instead of shrinking. It’s much less likely that an account coordinator will get laid off now than it was in late 2008.
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