The morning started off right with a good glass of cow juice and poppy-seed muffin. My day consisted of three non-stop meetings that totaled 12 hours. (Back to back to back). Some 25 million meetings take place in corporate America daily and roughly half that time is wasted. Today, I was part of 0.00000012% of those meetings across the nation but did not waste any time.
I want to get more involved with my local community and learn more about what others are doing to build better relationships, speak about their passions, learn why people give and stay on top of the trend.
I am lucky to work with many talented people in our office and with large stakeholders in our community like Widen + Kennedy, Roth’s Fresh Markets and the brain trust of SOOR’s staff and outstanding Board of Directors. Today I was in 12 hours worth of meeting and It. Was. AWESOME.
Portland State University
The day started off with SOOR’s Director of Volunteers inviting me to eat breakfast with her at PSU to sit in on a panel discussion about Social Media Policy. (She registered me for the event and put me down as the “Director of PR and Communications”, so I am glad I got a promotion for the day :)).
I learned some things I didn’t know about SM policy. For example, it is illegal for an employer to ask an employee for their log-in information. 48% of 18-34 year olds check Facebook when they wake up, with 28% doing so before even getting out of bed. AND in just 20 minutes on Facebook over 1 million links are shared, 2 million friend requests are accepted and almost 3 million messages are sent. (um, I so wish I got that many friend requests in one day!)
So do you think companies should have some policy around their social media sites? I would say yes! One of the things that came up was if you are a personal blogger and the press calls you to ask you a question about the company you work for (outside of your blog) pass it on to the marketing department and don’t answer. Well in my case, what do I do?
The past Governor is on our board and I sat in his seat while we were in committee break out sessions.
Portland Golf Club
We moved from that meeting to head to the Portland Golf Club where a 30+ brain trust of people are all working to raise money and awareness for Special Olympics Oregon. Every quarter SOOR has their Board Meeting and these people leave me inspired.
The average non-profit Board has 16 Directors. We have almost 30 and these people are all genuine, all care about the mission and all bring something so unique to the group. It is encouraging to see what 30 volunteers can do to help raise money for more than 8,000 participants year round (on top of what the staff and additional 7,000 volunteers do for us).
Downtown Portland High-rise
Tonight I was wine-ing and dinning on the 8th floor of Edelman with about 100+ young business professionals all looking to network and grow their contact database. I ran out of business cards.
The people I met were fantastic and encouraging to be around. If you have a BizMixer in your area, I would highly recommend you go and meet more like-minded people. The event was hosted by a company downtown who did a fantastic job catering the event and I looked around their office to see what it was like. How cool would it be to have your office view be like this?
Today’s Life Lesson: Today I shook a lot of hands and spoke to a lot of people. I mean a lot of hands. A lot of people. One thing I learned is you should always carry your drink in your left hand. Why? Because how awkward is it when you shake someone’s hand and it is all moist. Regardless of if you know it is the drink in your hand it is still gross.
(SIDE NOTE: If you are going to the rest room, please dry your hand off entirely before you shake my hand and don’t use the excuse “oh, I just washed my hands” if it is still wet. Still gross, and really grosses me out because 43% of me does not believe you.)
