Hey Everyone!
So now that the big jazz event has been completed it's time
to start getting prepared for next year. 2013 is going to be an amazing, jazzy,
eventful, and busy year for WAYJO as it celebrates its 30th Anniversary!
As part of its anniversary WAYJO is hoping to encourage alumni to
get involved in all aspects of its celebrations. For the
projects we are undertaking WAYJO would love to showcase the success of past members
and encourage many to get involved by attending and even performing at numerous
events. Encouraging alumni to get involved will help strengthen and re-establish strong relationships.
My job is to find WAYJO alumni that have been disconnected from
the organisation. However it seems that information recording past WAYJO
members has been lost! You can imagine the problems this has given
me.
So in order to find these "lost" alumni I have taken to
the very useful and efficient resource called Google. I must admit the idea of Google
"stalking" people was not something I would ever think I would be
doing at WAYJO but hey it's for the greater good of jazz! But don't worry I use the
word stalking very loosely; it's more searching through past WAYJO events and
performances, looking through jazz sites, and reading through jazz musician
bio's and other information. After determining if they are past members I then
strategically search for ways in which to communicate with them, which has proved
very tricky. Did you know that not many people are open to posting their
details online for everyone to see? I definitely will still not post my details
online but please past WAYJO members, just this once!
I can’t wait until I begin communicating with the alumni as due to
my “stalking” I’ve learnt who the alumni are, what they’re doing, and what they’re
about; this will be very rewarding in building strong relations with alumni.
You could call this a silver lining.
I'm not sure my tutors really prepared me to find specific people within
the public from scratch. However, I hope for the sake of all future and current
PR students that they never have to learn or go through this process.
Bye for now,
Christina.
