More Meetings

I have created a Sunday Brunch meeting at Shipyard for members of staff that are committed to planning for the 60^th Anniversary Event. Because our Director Staff meetings on Tuesday are geared towards department updates, and many of my own department members are busy during the week, I thought it would be a good idea to have a fun meeting, even though it's on a not-so-fun day to meet. This will also make it easier for us to create a relationship with Shipyard, and hopefully make it easier to convince them to give us free kegs for the 60^th Anniversary. 

Also coming up I have the meeting with Mandy Booker [scheduled for next Wednesday, 2/29] to talk about our E-Commerce Account. 

I am also planning to meet with again with Leslie Fair to learn how we can use our gift account to fund the concert, and understand where exactly donations during the event will go. Hopefully this will occur within the next two weeks.

          

You're Fired!

          This reading definitely resonated with me as a member of WPRK for three years. Our director staff and our DJ staff are both made up of volunteers, however, we still have the problem of "firing" or letting go of the volunteers who do not do their jobs, or are hard to communicate with. Especially in regard to DJs, who sometimes feel that they have more of a right to have a volunteer position than Director Staff.
          While I do not have as much experience with hiring and firing DJs, I was part of an effort to "fire" a DJ that posted our WPRK logo on a Rachel's (strip club) flyer, and put these flyers down in our station. From the reading, I believe this would fall under "poor work ethics." The DJ, however, appealed to OSIL, saying that there is nothing in the constitution that says he cannot do this. The DJ was reinstated by OSIL, and Clark, Rob, Casey and I set up a meeting with Sara about how this hurts our power as Director Staff. It was definitely an important experience, where I felt that WPRK Director Staff was able to confront OSIL about how this type of conflict weakens our ability to direct the DJ staff.
          In terms of firing Director Staff, this has also often posed a problem (past and present). Because students are not paid, there is little incentive on our part to "fire" a student (because this student will have to be replace) unless you are a in a director position that needs this student to be doing there job in order to completely do your job. I feel that the new departmentalized staff does make it easier to let go off and re-hire staff; however, I think we still could use more guidelines about this - especially because now that we are in departments not all positions have met the other positions.
        The author also mentions having DJs take a test on FCC guidelines and other rules; I feel that this would be extremely helpful, and we have talked about doing it before... We just need someone dedicated enough, and with enough balls (excuse my language) to re-test all the DJs we have already hired. I also liked the idea of evaluating student staff member, however, I feel like this would be more viable for us if these positions were paid, instead of volunteer positions. WPRK also needs to work on our communication to students when we feel that they are not sufficiently doing their jobs. Unfortunately, we tend to fall back onto gossip and back-talking about how these people are not responding or doing anything, instead of confronting these students.

Biz Recruitment: Continued

            As the business recruitment of alumni, donors and sponsors continues, the WPRK business department merged with our Promotion department to generate hype about the event. Our Promotions Director, Rob, broke down the Greater Orlando area into districts, and a two-person combo team of business department and promotions department are now able to help each other out in their different areas. The districts include the Milk, Garden, Fairbanks, Mills 50, College Park, Downtown and the Attractions.

            In the WPRK promotions meeting on Thursday, I attended the meeting to link everyone in the promotions up with their corresponding business partner. We discussed and brainstormed some methods of reaching our to sponsors and vendors. On Friday, I met with Kayla and we also talked about the best way to reach out to sponsors. We decided to come up with a list of possible sponsors and get their contact information on Park Ave. The Park Ave and Fairbanks District is going to be utilized by Kayla, Lauren, and Dara, but I wanted to help Kayla get a feel for what to say to potential sponsors. It was a great trip, and we reached out to a lot of businesses on Park Ave:

            On Saturday, I held my Biz Staff meeting with Rob and Justin (only they could make it) and we discussed the concert more in depth. We talked about the layout, how to work with vendors, and decided to focus on the raffle as a great tool to gain donations. Businesses so far (as I learned from talking to those on Park Ave.) are very interested in giving us a gift card or other trade, rather than donating for on–air promotion. By utilizing these gifts and gift cards, we can really hype up the raffle and create a huge incentive for people to donate to get raffle ticket(s). 

           This is the progress we have made so far on recruiting alumni and sponsorship donations and trades. There is still a lot to do going forward, but I feel like the Business department is on the right track and heading in a good direction.

February 13 and Beyond

For the past few weeks, I have met with Leslie Fair from the donations offices, and plan to meet with Mandy Booker in Bursar. After meeting with Leslie, our WPRK donor relations coordinator has kept in touch with Leslie and is working on a list of WPRK alumni to contact for donations.
After talking with Mandy Booker, I am working on creating an E-Commerce account for WPRK so that we can sell items and use that money for our budget. This is especially important because of the concert coming up; this is a great opportunity to sell event t-shirts and posters. After I can get some forms signed, Justin (our Business Director), Sara from OSIL and I will meet with Mandy to get the details about how we can use this E-Commerce account to make money for the station.
Finally, my Business team and I are putting together a list of sponsors we plan on contacting, and compiling their names, phone numbers, and emails. This is going to be organized through gmail (Ted, I shared with you our sponsor list) so that there are no overlaps of people contacting the same sponsors. This shared list also allows WPRK staff outside of the business department to add local business relationships that they may have.
Our next, SPECIFIC goal going forward is to have all of our food-trade sponsors locked in for the Fund-a-thon. This means 15 food sponsors, three meals per day during the event, all food traded for advertising during the event.

CMR Reading

Two things stuck out to me while reading the article in Campus Media Review, which focused more on the campus newspaper side than other forms of campus media.
The first was the importance of the connections to people in the organization; good connections also make recruiting much easier. For WPRK, however, I feel this is something we need to work on. We have a couple of people who leave our director staff bitter that they did not get the position they wanted, or felt that others ganged up on them or were simply rude. We have a lot of drama at the station, and I feel that this limits our potential to connect well to other students and teachers around campus.
The second is our space. The director staff office we have at WPRK really represents our alternative nature as a station, and draws in people, especially those who are interested in music. Our CD library always impresses guests. I feel that the more we can get people down to the station, the more people are going to be interested in staying with the station and getting involved.