May I present the Truman Alumni at The COMMFerence!

I can't believe by this time tomorrow night The COMMference will be almost over! A semester of planning is all coming to an end tomorrow....But, as promised, a sneak peek on the Alumni presenting tomorrow:

Sarah Y. Moore earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communication with an emphasis in Journalism in 2010. After six months of working at the Webster-Groves-Shrewsbury Area Chamber of Commerce, she was promoted to interim president and chief executive officer. Currently, she works for a veterinary hospital in Arnold, Missouri, as their hospital administrator. In addition to her professional work, Moore also volunteers her time to several area nonprofits.

Adam Claypool earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communication with an emphasis in Journalism in 2003. His first job out of school was as a newscast producer for WSJV in South Bend, Indiana, where he launched the brand new Fox @ Five show. He currently works for Gannett, the parent company of KSDK, in Saint Louis and takes on the role of Regional Operations Manager for Social Commerce. He also serves on the board of governors for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Mid-America chapter.

Karman (Wittry) Hotchkiss earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication in 1987. Hotchkiss has been an employee of Meredith Corporation in Des Moines, Iowa, for more than 20 years. The majority of her career has been in the Special Interest Media group, where she’s served as copy chief, managing editor, and executive editor. She currently is the deputy content core director for home-related publications and manages a dozen editors who produce magazines such as Kitchen and Bath Ideas and Do it Yourself.

Allie Toepfer earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communication with an emphasis in Communication Studies in 2011. Right out of college, Toepfer worked at Rabbit Hole Creative in Nashville, where she was able to gain more public relations experience. She joined Fleishman-Hillard’s corporate reputation group in September 2011. She is an assistant account executive and primarily works with AT&T Mobile Barcode, Emerson Web and Panera in the public relations realm.

Justin Hartmann earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music with an emphasis in the Liberal Arts in 2003. Hartmann, even with a music degree, has worked in all aspects of media production. He has worked as a television director, which included directing news coverage of the Saint Louis Cardinal’s 2006 and 2011 World Series win, to running the Jumbotron at SLU’s Chaifetz Arena for a Rick Ross concert. He also enjoys photography, mainly processing HDR photos of the City Museum, along with other projects.

Enjoy these little snippets of information in the program tomorrow and get excited for these wonderful alumni  that will be joining us tomorrow! 

We've last minute details to work out tomorrow, but other then that we're ready to go. See you tomorrow!

A Culmination of Education

I had the opportunity to attend the BA Capstone exhibit in the Truman Art Gallery today. As I listened to the artists talk about their capstone experiences and artwork, I realized that the COMMference is really serving as a culmination of my communication education. Well all the projects and papers I have done have been interesting, fulfilling and important, the COMMference is real world stuff. Sara and I have dealt with press releases, alumni, current students, design, event planning, advertising, reaching different publics, etc. This event has put my entire public communication education to use.

As I looked around Barnett this week, I realized how excited I am for this event. I keep running into posters around Barnett and hearing people talk about the COMMference; the event is coming and we are ready! After all of the designing, planning, and working I am ready to meet all the alumni, sit back and enjoy the student's hard work and figure out what comes next in my future.

Seeing all of our long hours of planning play out on Saturday will be such a validation of my COMM education and my time at Truman. As a designer, seeing my posters hang around Barnett and being witness to the comments they receive is my validation. There is a little feeling of joy that pops when you get to step back and really see the product of hours of hard work. Its not a real feeling until you pick up the prints and start hanging them, then you realize that you have accomplished something.

I have had many other posters hanging for many other events, but in all honesty, I am so excited for this event. I want to see everyone's reactions to posters, I keep seeking them out (its like a miniature scavenger hunt, can I remember where we hung all the posters) and getting more excited. I hope the posters are causing everyone else to feel just as excited.

The COMMference is so close and it is crunch time for Sara and I. The text messages are flying back and forth reminding each other to finish all the tasks we have assigned to ourselves. I got my first text of the day from Sara yesterday at 9:00 AM, I can only assume that today's text will come even earlier. We have a list of things to complete, but are racing towards the finish and the COMMference.


See you on Saturday!

-Carrie

Your Future. It's who you are. What are you going to do?

I guess once you start making videos, you just can't stop! Decided to mess around with it again. This time the video focuses more on what students want to do with their Communication degree. Leave comments or let me know if you want to be in a video. Again thank you to those who helped create this one. Many thanks to Sarah Reddekopp, Shelby Sims, Andrew Hewitt, Yabrell Newman and Emily Lowndes-you all have made Carrie and I's lives much easier!

Also-any tips you have on helping me improve these video making skills would be great. I wasn't thinking of anything that was too elaborate. I really just wanted to get more people involved with the whole process and get The COMMference's name out there. So as a beginner, hope I'm doing well or at least somewhat amusing you. Enjoy :)

P.S. Thanks to Patrick Gross (our neighbor) for helping with technological difficulties in posting this evening. 

What are some of your favorite Comm memories?

Yes, we'll have two posts today. We just have a lot to share this week to get everyone excited about attending The COMMference. 

Our previous post has the press release that we have sent everywhere that we can to get the event itself publicized. This took several revisions and a lot of hard work. I myself had been a little rusty with press releases, so I really relied on Carrie's work. Dr. Y was right there the whole time to help us along the way. It reminded me how important writing skills can be in a field such as event planning. It took a lot of re-writes, but we're proud to have finished them. Last night we sent it to the student media and asked them to incorporate it into their stories this week. It is also featured in the Truman Today online edition. Check out the Communication Department Website as well for more information.

We took hard copies to the President and Provost's office and the Truman Institute. We also gave Dr. Davenport, the Dean of our program and Dr. Clark the department chair of Communication a copy. We wanted to spread the word about the event in as many places as we could.

We have a video to share that highlights random Communication students favorite memories within the major. I'm not very good at creating videos or using any kind of program that can do it for you, but I thought I would give it a try. I had to learn on my own. In event planning, you just have to be ready for whatever arises and the use of videos to grab the audiences attention seemed like a great idea. After messing around with it for a few hours, I was able to put something together that established our whole theme. I was willing to put in the effort and learn how to create a great publicity tool. 

Now enjoy the video and thank you to Blaise Hart-Schmidt, Andrea Hewitt, Shelby Sims, Sarah Reddekopp and Yabrell Newman for helping us out with this!

P.S. Look for another video soon on students talking about what they want to do with their Communication degrees!

Using those Communication Skills: One Press Release at a Time!

The COMMference: A Night Celebrating Communication Department Student Successes

It’s spring and time again for Communication students at Truman State University to showcase another year of their successes.

This Saturday’s event—now called The COMMference—kicks off at 6 p.m. in the Alumni Room of the Student Union Building and features an extended alumni panel to talk about jobs and graduate school. Also included are a crop of current students who will review projects they completed in various Communication courses during the past year.

These range from a presentation on Internet regulations, the 2012 political campaigns, and photography captured during the 2012 Iowa caucuses. More than a dozen Communication students, along with members of the co-curricular student media, traveled to Iowa in January to do reporting, but also to complete research that began in a political communication course during the fall semester.

Event organizers, Communication seniors Sara Kluba and Carrie Nelson, said the event’s focus enables students new to the discipline to see what the more senior students have accomplished in courses such as Publication Design, Advertising, and Rhetorical Criticism, among others. They also get to interact with former Communication students who are now working in the fields they want to pursue in the future.

“We’re using the skills that we’ve learned in many of our classes,” said Kluba. “We want to show others what they can learn too and how it can be applied in the future.”

This year’s alumni panel is comprised of five speakers who represent the variety of occupations open to Communication majors and minors, including a public relations account executive, a magazine editor, a television director, a communications coordinator, and a broadcast news producer.

Representatives from the department’s co-curricular student media (Index, Detours Magazine, News36, and KTRM—the Edge) will be available to talk about on-campus opportunities, including positions as writers, editors, photographers, videographers, broadcast anchors, and radio DJs. Other department-related groups—also co-sponsors of the event—will also be on hand to talk about their activities, including the pre-professional Advertising and Public Relations organization, Forensics and the discipline’s honor society, Lambda Pi Eta.

Organizers Kluba and Nelson said they’re using the full range of their communication skills to pull off this event. They even invited their classmates to get involved and show off their communication skills as well. Through a social media campaign, including a Facebook page called “YOUR name here,” they offered their fellow Communication students an incentive if they could invent a fresh, inventive name for the event. Senior Teresa Bradley came up with The COMMference and earned herself a gift certificate to La Pachanga.

            “By using many different forms of social media including Facebook, Twitter and a blog, we’ve reached a wider audience than with using only traditional media,” said Nelson.

Kluba and Nelson, both experienced event planners and active in many clubs within Communication and across campus, launched a blog so students interested in event-planning, social media and design could follow their progress. They also hired Twitter “volunteers” to help spread the word, as well as to record and upload video clips of their classmates talking about their favorite Communication "memory" while at Truman, and to describe what they hope to do with their educations after graduation.

            Kluba said she is especially interested in a professional career as an event planner, and enjoys the hectic pace that accompanies making arrangements, scheduling tasks, and meeting with the many people who are needed to make events run smoothly.

“There are a lot of little things that many do not think of that go into event planning,” said Kluba. “It is a great feeling to know that what you are doing is all going to culminate into something great.”

In contrast, Nelson says she gravitates toward the creative end, spending her time designing promotional elements, including posters, flyers, and other promotional tools such as Facebook pages and websites.

            “Working on all aspects of a campaign from the logo to the advertising is a really rewarding and challenging experience,” said Nelson.

            The event was first launched in spring 2011 by seniors Kelly Fox and Amanda Goeser, who said they hoped to see this event continue to grow.

            “We wanted to do the event because communication students put a lot of time and effort into projects, but no one get to see the fruit of their labor,” said Fox, who now is attending Washington University as a graduate student.  

            Kluba and Nelson said they hope the event will bring excitement to learning about the Communication major and what it offers students both during and after their time at Truman.

--30--

One Week Away: Get Excited!

The COMMference is only a week away and we can't believe it. On an event planning perspective, this is the time when things start getting a little bit crazy. Last minute things always pop up and trying to finalize everything can be a real challenge. Thankfully, Carrie and I have planned enough ahead that this week shouldn't be too stressful. It will certainly be busy, but hopefully it will run smoothly because preparation was our key.

Our focus now is just to spread the word and get people excited about attending the event. Through all the social media we can and from the help of fellow Communication students, we're going to crank the publicity up so much that everyone will know what The COMMference is. Knowing how to enlist help and get people excited about something can be a real challenge. But, the greatest aspect is having volunteers get excited about helping and going the extra mile to help us. Event planning is really about knowing how to network and work well with others. There is no way Carrie and I would have been able to do this all on our own. Many have helped us and we couldn't be more grateful.

With The COMMference being a week away, get excited and look forward to a social media attack. As always let us know if you have any questions or leave us a comment!

Fortune Cookies, Binoculars, Ipads...OH MY...

What do fortune cookies, binoculars, and Ipads have in common?

 They are all featured on The COMMference 2012 posters! The posters have been ordered and should be fresh off the press and hanging in Barnett early next week…

When I started designing the posters, I thought they would have more to do with identity than the future. When Sara and I first started thinking about the COMMference, we thought a lot about how people always identify you by your major, “what’s your major” is one of the first questions you ask anyone at Truman…

But then we realized that as we thought more about our own futures in the real world, we had no idea what to expect and the COMMference serves as a sneak peak into both the Communication department and the real world.  We moved away from Truman identity and more in future identity.

I started the designs with all kinds of future telling devices: magic 8 balls, fortune cookies, crystal balls, and tarot cards…After some deliberating with Dr. Y & Sara we decided that three difference modes of determining what’s coming next would be better.  

These bright posters were the result of making hours spent staring at and illustrating my hands and some strategic google image searches.  I am excited to see it all coming together with the event coming up so soon.

Also, we have had so much support from student media and communication organizations. Our $0 budget has quickly been increased with much needed help! THANKS EVERYONE. 

-Carrie

Ps. As always, if you have any questions, please leave a comment or tweet at us @COMMference

The Alumni Are Coming!

Hey all!

So as I promised, we wanted to showcase a few of the alumni that will be here soon for The COMMference! We're really excited about the variety of alum we were able to find to participate in this event. We'll start off with Sarah Moore from Arnold, Missouri.

Sarah graduated from Truman with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and an emphasis in Journalism in 2010. Dr. Yaquinto has stayed in contact with her since she graduated. Sarah was very eager to come back and help us out. Since the start of this, she has been so helpful and responsive. It has been great knowing that she has been excited about this just as much as we have.

I don't want to give everything away about her, but I will share a little teaser with you. After she graduated she took a position with the Webster Groves-Shrewsbury Area Chamber of Commerce as their communication coordinator. She was promoted after six months as the interim president and chief executive officer. Such an opportunity for a recent graduate! She currently works as a hospital administrator in Arnold, Missouri. In addition to working, she volunteers for various non-profits.

In just a few years, Sarah has become very successful. I am interested in hearing more about the job transitions and how her Communication degree helped her get her to where she is today. Well, just a sneak peek for now! You will just have to come to The COMMference in a few weeks to find out more about her.

Have a good rest of the weekend and as always let us know if you have any questions :)

COMM COMM COMM COMM COMM CHAMELEON: Choosing colors

After creating the logo the next step was choosing the colors. While this may seem like a trivial part of the design process (I mean come on, how many color combinations can there be), it ended up being one of the more difficult tasks. 

Sara and I started with colors we liked and disliked. We thought we wanted to stay away from purple because of the excess of Truman purple on EVERYTHING. We started by looking at the website Design Seeds which features color schemes based on photos. If you are a design/color nerd like me, watch out, this site is addicting. 

After looking through pages and pages of beautiful photos, we found a few color schemes we liked. We began choosing mostly cool (blue and green) colored things that focused on one specific color palette, staying away from girlie pinks and purples. 

Once we found the colors we wanted we had to create them in InDesign. Each color is coded by a hex code or a 6 letters and numbers that stand for the components of a specific color.  Every color is made of up of different percentages of red, green and blue (web/screen design) or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (print design). I copied the hex codes from Design Seeds and then applied them to our logo.

We didn’t have much success directly copying the color schemes, so we moved on to choosing one color and then going to this website to create our own palette. 

Eventually we found a group of colors that we thought looked well together and wasn’t too heavily focused on any one color. Here are a few of our color choices...

 After looking at all of these (plus more) we picked the last one (as you can see by the completed logo at the top of this blog). We thought it showed a nice array of simple colors while accenting the Truman purple as the core of the C. 


-Carrie


ps. If there is something you want to know about the visual side of the event, leave a comment and I'll blog about it!


pps. Thanks to Blaise H-S for the name of my blog, she submitted it as a potential name for the COMMference and I took it...

Alumni Panel

Another week has gone by, which means another week closer to The COMMference! I can't believe how fast time is flying. Now, as I promised: a little more about our alumni.

Our goal was to bring back a variety of alumni. We wanted to cover all of the tracks that we study here in Communication. Our only issue is we had no idea where to start. Thankfully, Dr. Yaquinto and Dr. Clark were willing to help and knew where to send us. Carrie and I were very eager to get started and contact a lot of Communication alumni. We figured we might as well contact as many as we could. I think the number ended up being close to 15 people. I'm glad we did it this way because we heard back from more people than we expected, which of course was only a plus to our planning stages.

Once we heard back from those who were interested, we had to let them know the details, one of which included we are on a very limited budget. We thought this would be a hindrance for us in moving forward, but the alumni we have coming were very excited to work with us regardless of the limited funds available.

We're now in the stage of getting more details about our alumni and finalizing their trip here. They all seem very excited to see what the Communication department still offers and share their knowledge about what they have learned. Come back and visit the blog for more information on the alumni panel this week!

And we're still accepting submissions! Practice for upcoming projects or just help share your work with the younger Communication students. Whatever feels best to you-submit something!