For the past few weeks we’ve been working a bit more on the theme and image for Collective’s ‘Lent’ series. Surprisingly, it’s been very challenging to find an image that relates to mortality in a positive light, but I did suggest the theme of New Orleans funerals and the idea went over very well. The image would either be one consistent image or a variety of images, but it seems to be leaning towards one consistent image. It’s still a nice change to be working on something more cohesive rather than projects that vary in purpose and theme, especially in such depth. This also goes for creating a graphic related to the theme of each Sunday. This week’s theme is “The Gift of Mortality” which transitions the Lent theme. It was challenging to find something appropriate and not too intimidating, and also not related to New Orleans since that’s a separate series. I went ahead with an hourglass rather than a skull.

The sponsorship packet has gone though multiple revisions, primarily related to what benefits each tier of sponsorship will receive and a typo here and there. Thankfully the design has stayed and I’m glad that’s still the case. I’ve also made runs to the print shop plenty of times and it’s been beneficial to become familiar with what is provided there (at a low cost). In relation to marketing for Sunday Soul Brunch, I’ve been posting the event in various online calendars and gone around town to hang up posters. The first time I went a few weeks ago I was pretty nervous to walk around and ask people to hang a poster, even though I wasn’t the one asking. Today I went around on my own and I was still nervous and stumbled my words a bit, but the actual process was incredibly easy and I feel much more comfortable doing the task myself in the future.

Things are going fairly well so far, and I know it’ll be vamping up in the coming weeks with the start of Lent, as well as Easter.

This week, because there were not that many things to write about I researched ways for auto posting from WordPress to other platforms. I looked into Nextscripts,  read about it, and looked into what the customers thought. It seems to be great, it is a multichannel poster that auto-posts WordPress posts to all connected social media platforms. With the free version, you can add 1 Facebook, 1 Twitter, 1 LinkedIn, etc. The pro version allows for multiple accounts on each site,

I looked at the bad reviews first, specifically the ones with one stars. Overall, there wasn’t much information. They said things like: “no working repost feature,” “worst customer service ever,” “must pay for multisite.” All of which don’t seem so bad. Apparently the paid version is totally useless, unless you have 15 Facebook accounts you want it to share to.  Since we are only going to use it for the one Creative Arts twitter page, it should be totally fine.

However, almost 65% of the reviews were 5 stars. So I think that says something. 260 reviews with 5 stars amazingly still have hardly any information, but they seem to think it works fine. Reading through it, it would definitely be worth setting up. (Just don’t pay for it). With this we should be able to autopost with no problems to the twitter page.

The website is starting to look like someone actually uses it! Which is great. After posting Jasmine Ramos’s bio and answers, Laura sent out an email informing people that she had been featured. Since then two more people have asked to be featured: Laine Callahan and Mitchel Robey. They have been put in the queue and will be posted two weeks from each other. I’m hoping that when more people start to do it their friends will also want to. Each of the writing styles is very different, so it’s going to be cool to see different personalities within the Creative Arts Department.

I’m still having issues with the little snippet that shows up above their picture on the main page. There is no section in my dashboard for adding in a segment, so I’m going to have to figure something else out or else Dr. Wolek will go back in every time something is published and change it himself. I will bring that up on Thursday in our meeting.

Professor McCoy’s  Rhinoceros post was also up already last week, however it didn’t go up in featured events. I changed that last Friday and scheduled it to reappear in the featured events. It came up yesterday, also with a higher SEO ranking as I added in some meta descriptions and the like. Everything is looking good, and it’s not taking up too much time so it’s going great!

I am currently working with Collective Church in downtown DeLand as their Digital Media intern, and started the internship during the last week of January. I’m fairly glad to already be getting into a decent amount of design work related to marketing Collective Church’s event, Sunday Soul Brunch. I was put in charge of designing their sponsorship packet that would include details on the event as well as options for different tiers of sponsorship. It was pretty challenging as far as getting down a sort of template for each page for consistency throughout the design of the packet, and it took more than one try to get the entire thing to look at least satisfactory. If anything it’s only more experience regarding the work I would like to do, and it fairly directly tied to my major/minor (Digital arts and Marketing, respectively).  I also work on editing photos, designing Facebook covers, and we’re in the works of changing stock photos on the website into real photos from videos or actual events. I will also be working one-on-one with the head of Collective in order to tie in some image themes with a series they will be doing in the next few months.

The environment otherwise is very relaxed, but it’s understood that I should get my work done on time and make it known when I need more. I often help with setting up and taking down, as well as serving coffee before Sunday services. Because of this I’m able to help myself to a cup or three which is great, and it helps a bit with the 2pm slow-down I often have during my shifts. I’ve also been able to walk around DeLand and encounter more shops than I usually would while putting up posters. Additionally, I get to meet the owners and people behind the counters which makes downtown feel a little homey-er. Overall it’s been great, and I’m looking forward to seeing if I can make an impact!

The first profile went up today! Jasmine Ramos responded to the email and sent us a really good bio and answers to the questions. I’m excited! It’s nice to see the website catching up to current events. This is definitely one of the easier things to do as well, because it’s all written out for me. All I’ve done is just change a few things that sound awkward, add in some SEO tags, and then I added a link to Gary Bolding’s faculty page in case income students or parents want to see who Jasmine is talking about. I am still having a little trouble, though, remembering each individual thing (like where to write the little quote that shows up above the headshot in profiles).  Every time I write a post there’s a new thing I don’t know how to do! Which is good, because I like doing things I don’t know how to do. After the first one, I should be able to do the rest easily.

I think these profiles are going to be really good for the CREA page, because while students do want to know what kind of stuff goes on, they really want to know who goes to the school and who they will be taught by. I definitely am inspired by seeing other artists work, and seeing creative people makes me believe in a creative arts program. I’ve also emailed Madison Creech and Grace Ramsey about the faculty profiles. Madison Creech has already responded so I’ve sent her the questions, but I’d like to put up Grace Ramsey’s first because she is leaving before Creech. Hopefully we get more seniors as well!

It’s my first week as the intern for the Art Department! I’ve only just started, but already had a few problems. At first, I was unable to write anything. Then, I couldn’t upload the picture to the post because I didn’t have the required permissions. And of course, when I did get the permissions I accidentally forgot to put it in as the featured image, so it didn’t show up right. But, now that that is all out of the way, I’m pretty sure it’s only uphill from here! I’ve been thinking about other potential stories to write about, such as future events in the Art Department world. I’ve scanned through the events calendar at Stetson and the next event for art is The Art of Resilience show by the counseling center. However, that is tomorrow so if I’m going to write about it I should do it today.

I’m thinking that one probably won’t happen, so the next thing I should focus on is the “Alumni” panel. I’d like to expand it to current seniors in the Art School, as well as faculty. Speaking of faculty, I’m thinking that I’ll write pieces about the new faculty from this year, including Madison Creech and Grace Ramsey. This way we can start to bulk up the information on the site and give users a better experience. Hopefully knowing what’s going on here at Stetson will make prospective students excited and wanting to come to Stetson.

On Monday January 23^rd at 7:00pm during the Stetson Women’s basketball game where the Hatters vs NJIT. Jeffrey Taylor decided to put me back on the same camera and continue what I did during last Saturday’s game after doing a good job last week. I enjoyed following whoever had the ball in their hands and keeping up with the referees that made calls on the opposite teams. I learned when the game goes into commercial it is important for me to move the camera around to find something interesting before the game comes back on. Even though I was happy to be back behind the same camera for the Women’s basketball game, I wished that I could have used the bird’s eye view camera where it follows whoever has the ball so that I can get more experience behind a different camera and its responsibility during the game. One of the things I need to work on is move the camera closer to the side of the basketball court in front of me so that I can zoom on one of the players getting ready to do a free shot Also, one of the employees showed me how to take the camera apart starting from the top by turning the locks that holds it together and then nicely removing it off the quick release plate. After that the moving stand that holds the camera had to be taken apart and placed in the case as well.

On January 21st at 1:00pm during the Women’s basket ball and Men’s basketball game at 7:00pm,  Jeffrey Taylor  finally assigned me to use one of the video cameras near the floor for the second half of the games.  I was moving the camera left, right, and up to follow whoever had the ball and that tried to shoot it int the basket. I had to aim the camera at the referee that blow his or her whistle for making a call. I had to point the camera at the opposite team that made shots in the basket because they were coming towards me from a distance. Whenever the players were going to make a foul shot I had to immediately move over to the one that was about to shoot the ball, but I had to keep him or her in a complete whole frame before the red light came on. Also, whenever the players moved away from me I had to zoom in a little to get the other basketball court farther away while keeping the scoreboard in the same frame. Even though I did a good job at using the camera instead of always watching someone else perform it, I wished that I could have used the camera for both half times instead of waiting until the second half for my turn because I would have been more use to using it than right now.