Meeting the Children at Scitech

Hi Everyone,

I am now around half way through my internship and the Association for the Blind WA. Although I am only working three days a week at the moment I feel very busy and although I have been learning a lot!

I'll quickly fill you in on what I have been up to. Last post I was generally just settling in to the surrounds at the Association and doing some general database work. More recently I have attended several meetings that have helped me gain a more thorough understanding of what is going on within the company as far as marketing and PR is concerned.

My first meeting I attended was with the Associations PR Company, PPR. The company does some of the Assocations out of house PR and deals alot with the media when it comes to events held by the company. I was most surprised at the relaxed atmosphere of the meeting and the friendly manner in which everyone was included and involved. It was great to see how you can link some of the happenings and stories within the company to what is happening in the general media, what people are interested in and see where there may be potential to pitch a story.

My next meeting was with a company that does pro-bono marketing for the Guide Dogs Association. Representatives from PPR and Guide Dogs joined a member of the MarketForce team at the offices in West Perth to talk about the newest campaign that will surround the up and coming event 'Guide Dog Week'. Again it was interesting and inspiring to see what was coming up and the enthusiasm for the campaign made you want to be involved every step of the way. It will be great to see the advertising that was discussed in the general public as I will be able to relate and understand what angle they are coming from.

My last interesting meeting for the week consisted of sitting in on the findings from a research company Painted Dog. Painted Dog had recently performed several research methods (discussion and focus groups, interviews) for the Association to help work out where they are and where they want to be in the eyes of corporate sponsors, clients and volunteers. The meeting was very interesting for me as it reminded me of the unit Marketing Research and helped me to appreciate that what we do at uni really is applied to the workforce. It also made me think about why I chose the Guide Dogs to work at, why I was attracted to the company and how my perspective changed when actually beginning my internship. Although the findings were both good and bad you left the meeting with a hurried sense of 'there is so much to do!'

Before I go I will quickly comment on my trip to Scitech with the children. For the past two weeks The Guide Dogs WA have been putting on a talk every morning and evening for the children at Scitech. The organisor of this event recently went on a holiday so the team in the community relations office was asked to each take a shift to help out. This consists of taking one of the PR dogs (Calvin, Kip or Marci) along with a speaker to Scitech and generally helping out and keeping the dog calm while the speech is on. I took Calvin and my fellow collegue Ryan who has been blind since the age of three. The morning is generally quite crazy and negociating Calvin and guiding Ryan at the same time was a task especially when calvin stopped to eat every childs food snack on the way. I was happy I had a PR dog so the children patting the dog was not a problem. The talk went well but I was happy when I pulled the company car back into the carpark at the Association, quietly breathing a sigh of relief I hadn't scratched the car, lost Calvin or bumped Ryan into too many doorways.

Anyway, that seems to be enough for now. Hope everyone is enjoying themselves!

Rachel, Bentley