I’ll be busy the next 3 days in social media geek out mode covering the Frozen Four in Pittsburgh. While some still think you can say “oh just go do something social” is an acceptable way to handle major events, I’ve been secretly planning my coverage for awhile in the darkness of my basement office.
Social media deserves respect from the old school marketing folks and should be accepted as a critical part to any campaign. It’s much more than snapping a couple photos and blasting out a few sales pitches. This is about creating an experience for the customers and this is what I enjoy most.
Like my joy of brewing beer, I love creating for people. Feedback is critical for me to make a better product and experience not just for myself but everyone else. Since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to make whatever I do an enjoyable experience for others and with social media I have the ultimate chance to do so.
I’ve gone over my headaches of trying to go mobile when covering events as the social media guy for an organization so this morning I’m trying to make my backpack load as light as possible. The current work area on my coffee table is a mess of 2 laptops, multiple cameras/videocameras, ipad, adapters, battery chargers and scattered papers with events notes. This is where the IT guy in me has no problem with it because I have tech surrounding me and while it may be a mess, it’s an organized one.
The fun part of this will be making content live as fast as possible. I’ve been fine tuning the workflow so that before the end of any event we will have content already posted, titled and tagged. Overkill? Some may say so and you need to pick & choose when you do it so you don’t burn out a limited staff, but you would be amazed at how fast people are already looking for content. I saw this with the RMU vs UK upset and that’s when I finally had my business case to move forward with my vision.
The next 3 days will be interesting as I’m honestly at the mercy of finding wifi that won’t die when I batch upload hi-res photos and some HD video but that’s part of the fun when working with technology and limited budget. I have a vision for the ideal digital communications plan (team members/process/and more) which I think businesses should implement into their workflow.
Want to know what it is? Let’s meet up for a craft beer and i’ll tell ya
Pittsburgh may be down 3-1 in the 2012 NHL Eastern Conference Quarterfinals to Philadelphia but one thing is for sure, they put a humiliating beating on the Flyers on their ice last night.
Odds aren’t in their favor to win the series because overcoming 3-0 in best of 7 is almost impossible. That’s what most people would say about scoring 10 in Philly during the playoffs.
One thing that I’m bad at is remembering the year. I kept thinking it was 2010 for some reason and have no idea why 2012 doesn’t seem far fetched. Maybe I have a thing against years with odd numbers? This past year was eventful personally but when it came to blogging it was kinda meh. Either way here’s a quick recap so my kids don’t have to sift through archives.
April 2011
My mom wanted to know why I didn’t invent Facebook, the internet or cure cancer. I had some views on the sale of Iron City which turned out to piss off a bunch of yinzers and Pittsburgh purists. Eh, it happens.
June 2011
After many years of hard work I graduated cum laude from college. It was incredibly stressful when I threw work and the family into the mix but the support was fantastic! I’ll probably have my student loan bills paid off when Teaspoon is starting school.
Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby returns to the NHL tonight for the first time in almost a year since suffering a concussion this past January.
Tonight the magic returns and I’ll enjoy every minute of it.
Shortly after the announcement tickets went from around $100 to $400 online. suckers…
My family never taught me to skate, they would take me to public skates and tell me to figure it out.
I have the ticket stub from my first pro hockey game somewhere. My brother took me to a Pens game at the Civic Arena in the 80′s where player Jimmy Mann sat next to me. Jagoff still owes me a stick. Find out why.
One of my friends on our highschool team had more penalty minutes than ice time. Rumor has it he was suspended for trying to stab someone from the rival school with his blade. Wouldn’t surprise me. Now he’s protecting our country.
Until my nephew Ben started to play hockey I was the only fan of the sport in my family.
I played in net for my 2 years at Pitt. For a game I played with the “Jason” mask. We drew stitch marks on it afterwards for everywhere I got hit.
I bat right and left in baseball but can only slapshot a puck left handed. Goalie though right is my stick side.
I haven’t skated since 1996
I own 2 pairs of roller blades I never wore.
My favorite player of all time is Martin Straka. He’s magical.
I’m gonna need a second or third job if my boys will play hockey. Bah I didn’t need sleep anyways.
How do you get your husband to get his hair cut? First thing in the morning say he looks like Justin Bieber!
It was getting bad and now its not so bad
On any given workday it takes about an hour to get downtown. Traffic is jammed on all parkways and its mass hysteria. This morning I found the secret, leave at 6:30am. By 7am the city was barely awake and I was able to snap this pic.
Today the Penguins invited select season ticket holders to stop down and take part in a fan forum. It was our chance to let the Pens, CEC staff and Aramark know what we thought of the new digs so far.
Scheduled for only an hour we ended yup going 30 extra minutes and were just warming up. Nothing major for complaints but little things to help out. I gave my opinion of a few issues I noticed but of course I had to mention the lack of quality beer in the arena to the Aramark rep. How do you spend money bragging about all of these local ties when your beer is all Bud, Miller, Coors.
This was addressed with Penn and Rivertowne having their beers available but you can only get them in a couple stands and the ones with it can’t stock enough even when the game starts. I got some names and emails to pass along to some local brewers whom have been unable to get someone to call them back. Seriously, PNC Park has a hella better selection of beer and at $1.50 less a glass.
Weather hit 54F today so in all it was a great day! The Pens were absolutely amazing hosts and took a serious interest in us today. You won’t find that coming from other organizations in this town.
July
We did that moving thing which pretty much consumed our entire month and turned in our keys to the skid row of Cranberry. The sky was more blue that day and birds chirp was sweeter. SIDT was featured as a “What’s Hot” on iTunes. I think the summer heat made people delusional
September
Its official, baby 2 is on the way. We had known for a few months but finally made it public. Steel City Big Pour 4 was a huge event for SIDT. Our second booth allowed us to play more with the live podcast plan. Well recorded live but it was still cool to have beer runners and brewers coming up asking to talk to us. All of this was made possible from our live debut at the Big Tap In back in April which we’ll be doing again in 2011. I did my first solo session at Podcamp Pittsburgh. It was a blast because for once I wasn’t talking about SIDT but social media in higher ed. I love social media. I love to talk about it and I love help people understand it. I should probably be charging for it but honestly with my schedule its more of a hassle to figure out a rate structure. Though, that was 2010 thinking, we’ll see about 2011. Daddy has some diapers to pay for
December
Lushie and I took an afternoon to ourselves and visited the Vatican Splendors. Most people don’t think of me as the religious type but hey, you learn something new about me. We took our former landlord to court and won our security deposit back. Funny that we had to “win” back our own money rightfully owed to us. It also taught me about how dishonest and shady people can be even when they swear they’re honest. This Christmas holiday I also got the greatest gift of all, my son Owen. With that I published a log of everything I was thinking from conception to birth. Final cap of the year was getting tickets to the Winter Classic Alumni Game and Winter Classic.
2010 was an incredibly busy year. More than we ever anticipated and I’ve never been so overwhelmed in my life. Its because of everything I have learned this past year that in 2011 I’m going to shift gears and focus more on my family, the house and my career. I graduate in June so that will be one burden off my shoulders. School, work, buying a house, moving, trying to get it organized, having a baby, trying to get SIDT to the next level and getting a side writing job off the ground was intense and I realized I need more balance.
I never thought about it until a few people asked me if I was going to do a recap of 2010 as I did 2009. What the hell why not! Lord knows it was a batshit crazy year! I’ll break this up into 2 parts so you don’t fall asleep.
January 2010 Still early into my new job and fighting the first of 2 major blizzards I saw RMU pull off one of the biggest upsets in college hockey for last year as they defeated #1 Miami. Even with the storm we had a bigger crowd than previous and I handled the pr/socialmedia for the event. Pho-down, Tweet-up was one of the great times in early 2010. I’m a Pho addict (I get cravings like crack addicts) and this night I went for the kingpin of dishes at my favorite Pho place where I finally had tripe and it was amazingly good. We also started the search for our first house knowing that the incompetence of our landlord was detrimental to our family.
The Winter Classic is quickly becoming the Super Bowl of the hockey world. I couldn’t make it to Buffalo for the first Classic game and the last couple years I would watch the game but I was never “into” it. This year with Pittsburgh hosting all of that changed. I’ve been to a lot of high profile hockey events in my days and will say that this was the most incredible ever.
I walked over from town on a night filled with a mystifying fog lingering over the rivers. With the lights of the bridges and city glowing it was a scene reminding me of a Crow movie. As I passed PNC Park the tailgating began and what a party these people were having! The amount of hockey love was amazing! Still the vibe didn’t hit me until I reached Heinz Field and walked through Spectator Plaza. Knowing this is a growing event I appreciated what was there but could see how the NHL could have dominated a lot more floor space.
Signature Sandwich Face-off
In a first for the Classic, Aramark pitted the signature sandwiches from the Washington Capitals (The Fury) against the Pittsburgh Penguins (Kielbasa Grinder). Its no secret that I am obsessed with the sandwich but I was severely disappointed with the offering at the Classic. The meat was dry, the cheese was hard and there was barely any sauce. Somehow it won though so kudos for that.
The Game
I went to the game with my nephew Ben. We have started making it a tradition going to important Pens games together and this was another one to chalk up. Our seats were in 147 which if you go there for any other event don’t exist. If you’re watching the Steelers game its the open end section of the south end zone. Seats were incredibly tight (dude next to me was 180lbs and barely fit) but the view was absolutely amazing.
Besides the Caps winning 3-1 the game was hard hitting and amazingly fast given the poor ice conditions. Officiating was mediocre which we’re use to and probably to the disappointment of HBO/NBC you didn’t see much from Crosby or Ovechkin. At the end of the game neither team shook hands, they just left the ice. I have a severe hatred for the Philadelphia Flyers but the joy I see in defeating the Caps grows every game. Pens fans hate Philly because that’s history. Its just what you do. Caps players and their fan base hate anything Pittsburgh and I LOVE it. It makes for a healthy obsession with my team.
In between periods were short sets performed by Hinder, The Clarks and Styx. Styx? yeah I guess they thought it was a Steelers game. The bands sounded great but that happens when everyone does the lip sync.
What I wasn’t crazy about
You take the good, you take the bad and… that song is now in your head. You’re welcome.
Heinz Field needs upgraded. It was great 10 years ago but I’m still pissing in a trough, your concession stands don’t take credit/debit cards and your Nacho Grande is 2 cups of cheese? Your sound system crackles and the video was 3-5 seconds off of the audio. It was worse than watching TV and listening to the radio. Lame.
Alyonka Larionov – who hired this girl? The most basic video segments and she fumbled over all of them. You called the band “The Styx”? Were the cards in Pittsburghese and you couldn’t read them? You’re not that cute. What a joke
Cell coverage – my phone showed 4 bars and 3G coverage but I couldn’t upload anything and twitter was impossible. Its worse than Consol Energy Center. Verizon should spend more money on coverage than on advertising being a top sponsor.
The weekend was absolutely amazing and I will never forget the hockey love that took over the north shore.
I’ve never been a big Christmas person. In fact the holiday would annoy the shit out of me every year because of how fake everyone was about being good and giving meanwhile the uber obsessed ones would drive me insane with their bat shit craziness like most of Steelernation. It wasn’t until I started having a family that this would change and while I’m still a bit “meh” I’m coming around.
This year was different. This year I was stunned!
Before I started break from work I received some monumental news from a co-worker that I can’t say until its “officially official” but will hint that.. no I won’t. You’ll have to wait. Then I won $20 on a $3 scratchoff card Lushie got me as a stocking stuffer and $35 from a football pool that my mom apparently entered me in at the church I belonged to in Erie. I was feeling pretty good by this point and as a small family we had a great Christmas day.
We celebrated Christmas at my bro’s a little late because my mom was sick. What I opened as my present left me stunned. I will be attending the Winter Classic on Saturday with my nephew/godson Ben. What a lot of people don’t know is that as a Pens ticket holder I was offered tickets in the summer and had to say no because it was too close to Lushie’s due date. I was devastated as a hockey fan but knew this is one of those things I had to do. My freaking kid could be born, I’m not missing it! I was bitter for awhile and refused to even read coverage.
I started to get angry. I told a few people on Facebook/Twitter about it and was actually called “stupid” and “dumbass” for passing up on such an event. The bitterness grew but by taking a step back I realized it wasn’t Pens fans saying it, it was the Steelers fans who jumped on the band wagon. People can be brutal on the interwebz
Back to the ticket. So I sat on the couch stunned. My brother said that the family will make sure that if Lushie goes into labor that a plan was in place to make sure I don’t miss the birth. I was speechless. Not because I had a ticket but because my family pulled together to make sure this happened and I had no idea. Some may think that a game like this is trivial but unless you’re married to me you have no idea how many things I have had to turn down.
And then…
Lushie went into labor at my brother’s. She didnt say anything just in case it was a false alarm but around 6pm she said we needed to find a sitter. By 4pm the following day my 2nd son was born.
This Christmas I’ll be in hockey nirvana. Friday I’m going to the Alumni Game with my good bud John, Saturday I’ll be at the Winter Classic and I have a new healthy son.
Let’s connect!
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