Week One

Hello all!  Today is concluding my first week working for the 2012 Final Four.  I am on the New Orleans Local Organizing Committee which is housed in the Superdome in downtown New Orleans.  What a change from going to classes on Mizzou's campus.  The committee has put me in direct contact with the Public Relations Firm that is in charge of all non-sport related community events that will take place during Final Four weekend.  During my first week, I have been thrown right into the organizing and meetings regarding the Final Four.  It has been such a great experience already, and I have been able to see communications play a major role in all that goes on.  Yesterday, for example the Director of the Committee was over-booked on meetings and was supposed to have a conference call with the Marketing Firm who is located out of Houston, Texas.  Since he was out of the office, I had to sit in on the conference call and be in charge of relaying the information back to him afterwards.  I realized how difficult it can be to understand how someone is seeing or planning something creatively when the physicality of being with them is taken away, much of the planning and processing of an event of the magnitude takes place through the mediums of technology because people are based in different places.  All of that to say, I am extremely excited about what this experience is teaching me and all that I am going to get to do in the upcoming months!