Getting acquainted

I’ve been here a week and a day now and have met what seems like a hundred people. For the first three weekdays, it seemed like all I did was attend meetings and meet people. I’ve got a list of names, numbers and emails. They’re sort of coming together.

This weekend was the anniversary of the floods. Not the floods themselves, I don’t think, but the day the sirens went off to order the mandatory evacuation. I went to three of the events surrounding, and man, they were both depressing and uplifting.

Everyone was affected by the flood, either directly or indirectly. Yesterday, I was at a park that reopened (with a grant from Coke) and heard some of the stories of the people who were forced out of their homes. Some are back in, some aren’t. One lady was back in but then ordered by the city to move. It’s really sad overall because most of the world has no idea this is even going on.

The state fair, which was canceled last year because of the flood, will resume this year. The city (or someone) has gone into debt rebuilding that area but it looks fabulous.

In my first meeting of my AC service, I went to a meeting of several different flood relief organizations. One topic of business was trying to get publicity. Well, someone approached the fair director to try to get the fair’s headliner, Blake Shelton, to do something about flood relief. I’ve no idea of the specifics, but the fair liaison said no.

Well, on the way back, I was talking to my counterpart and I mentioned that I didn’t think it was the fair rep’s call. It’s the performers, but you have to get to the performer. My counterpart felt the same way. I mentioned that Blake Shelton was just one of the fair’s lineup.

So I chased down reps for some of the other performers, asking for permission to give away two tickets to the show and to be able to attend a 5-minute meet and greet-type thing. Thirteen hours later, a publicist from the Zac Brown Band called me to OK it. She was very interested in the entire Hope Village blueprint and I was happy to explain.

It’s really an original concept and it’s working. Last week we had something like 160 volunteers in and about 4000 hours of work hours from them. That’s awesome.

So now I am trying to brainstorm other ways to get the story out. I’m trying to work with the official PR person for the village to update the blog and Facebook page better, but right now she is on vacation until June 27. We’ll see how that works, but it seems like it’s going to be pretty positive.

It’s a novel concept – being appreciated at work. Cool deal.