May 10-14: Wrapping up my internship

I have learned quite a bit this semester during my internship. The real life experience I gained is something that cannot be taught in a classroom. I would say I had nothing really to write about this week due to finals, but I am still working. I got HIRED through the election! So this week I will be traveling to Duncan Thursday and staying through Friday. We are shooting commercials and I am on the team to help.

I think it is very beneficial to have internships, as many as possible, throughout your time at the university. Like I said, the real life experience cannot be matched and the professional relationships you make will lead to jobs or people who can help you find one. From all the events I attended, I have tons of business cards that will help me network after my job on the campaign is over! I am very glad I chose to enroll in this class and participate in an internship.

May 3-7

Tuesday was a relaxed day around the office. I did a lot of data entry that needed to be done. It was a normal day with routine activities. I made just a few phone calls this day.

Thursday was a long and busy day. I would be traveling today to Durant, a town in Oklahoma that I had never been to. I arrived in the office around nine to work on some of the data entry I had left over from Tuesday and we left for Durant around lunchtime. We were headed down there because there was a gubernatorial forum at Southeastern State. Three of the four candidates would be there. On the way, I worked on the Faebook and Twitter accounts from my phone. Once we arrived I helped the media set up the camera and ran around finding people to let me in and out of doors. Then, as guests of the forum being to arrive, I mingled, offering bumper stickers and t-shirts and getting people to sign up for our e-mail list. Then I got to listen to my first election forum. It was very interesting to listen to the type of policy they were speaking about, because it would influence my future if I chose to stay in Oklahoma. Around 10 that night, we loaded up and headed home. It was an exhausting day.

Tuesday:9-6

Thursday:9-10 p.m.

April 26-30

This week was crazy busy. On Thursday was our candidates birthday so we spent a good majority of the week running around and making sure everything was going to go as planned. On Tuesday, we headed to the event site. We were going to be streaming live broadcast from the event so we had to test the cameras and sound and see how the internet connection would handle the interference. Luckily, after many hours of messing with wires, placement and sound, we were going to be able to pull it off. I had to make last minute phone calls to photographers, decorators and the caterers to make sure all the arrival times were coordinated. The next step was to make sure that the media around the event was going smoothly. We update the Facebook and Twitter accounts. This was also going to be a fundraising event, so we were making phone calls to volunteers and touching base with people who had RSVP'ed to remind them of the event. On Thursday, we arrived at the party site around 8 a.m. We set up all the media, tested it a few more times and tied up loose ends with the decorations. I then spent the rest of the day running around OKC getting last minute things that people had forgotten. The party was a great success and I had to walk around the whole time, making sure to talk to each person that was there and try to get them to do 30 second video spots for the Web site. When the party was over, I finally got to sit down and eat the cake!

Tuesday:9-6

Thursday: 8-9

April 22

Today was a day of the same grunt work of the campaign. I spent a lot of it making phone calls to volunteers for weekend events. I also was able to spend some time with our media consultant from Washington who was in town. I got to talk to him a lot about the media business and he told me about the best ways to get multiple clients. I talked to him about public relations and he gace me some good pointers. I helped type some more content for the Website and responded to a lot of the Facebook and twitter requests. We get tons of Facebook comments and friend requests a day so it is a full time job just trying to manage those accounts.

Hours: 9-6

April 20

Today was a similar day for me. I spent the morning working on lists containing information about contributors to past campaigns. This is an important aspect of fundraising because it lets us find out who our target audience is for events and calls. The more you know about big contributors the more you have to stand on when contacting them. This is a tedious process because I have to use a database that contains tons of information about these people and I have had to sort through it all.

I am starting to become a pro at excel.

Also, we have a major event coming up one week from today and I have been trying to do publicity for that. I have been using the Facebook event invitation aspect and have had a very positive response. I am working on a target publics for the invites. I am trying to get members of the candidates sorority, both active and alum, to come to the event and I have been contacting them with Facebook and phone calls. I am getting more and more experience on event planning.

It was also the arts festival downtown so I got to take a long lunch to go explore that. I have never been and thought it was fun!

WEEK of April12th-16th

This was a week full of some repetitive tasks. I spent a lot of time with getting Google News Alerts and posting them on blogs, Web sites, etc. in order to get good press out about the campaign. It gets tiring sifting through all the Web traffic but has ultimately taught me a lot about social networking. As usual, I made phone calls to volunteers and sent out Facebook invites and event pages. This is something that I am very familiar with and helps to reach certain demographics. We also started a big push to get summer interns to come work on the campaign. I drafted that email and helped start the circulation of that. It is something I hope people from OU will become a part of.
We also received contribution lists from other states. These lists contained the names and donations of people who give to similar parties and candidates. It is important on campaigns to sift through the names of these people and see if there is a possibility for donation. This became my job for the later part of the week was to do background research on certain demographics.

Tues/Thurs 9-6

April 8th

I spent today doing a lot of repetitive tasks. This was a very "intern" work day. There were tons of phone calls to make and a lot of pictures to upload so I was the one to do this. I made phone calls to contact people about events for what seemed like an eternity. I have found that the success rate of getting people to come to your events is highest when you make personal contact with them. I also was able to learn new MAC technology with scanners that I had never seen before. Knowing basics of photoshop helped a bit when it came to retouching and changing the photos to fit on the Web site.

I also worked overtime today to help out with a "volunteer" night. It was a long day but it was enjoyable to watch people dedicate their evening to help out. Basically volunteers on the campaign came at night to help out with little tasks that needed to be done. We contacted these volunteers from the Web site. About 20 people came out to help make phone calls and with data entry.

Thursday 9 am-8:30 pm