Reflections on Ten Weeks at the City

Like many of you, I have now finished my 20 days of work experience. I enjoyed my time in Recreation Services and feel like I made a real contribution to the team. When I came onboard, there was a vacant position as someone had recently left and they were grateful to have the extra support. It wasn’t long before I proved myself and was given some independent projects to work on. There were days when everyone in the team was sick and I don’t think the e-newsletter would have gone out that month if I hadn’t been there. It felt good to know that my work was appreciated and I was involved in substantial tasks.

A highlight of my prac was when a colleague told me that her spelling and grammar had improved since I’d been there and it had really enhanced her writing. I know it’s small but it made me laugh and summed-up my biggest ongoing project – editing. By the end of my placement they were calling me, ‘The Writing Guru.’

A low point of my work experience was being asked to draft a submission for an industry award that didn’t get put forward. I worked on it for two days straight, working ten-hour days to get it finished before deadline, only to find out the following week that our manager decided to wait until next year to apply for the award to allow time to improve our chances of winning. It was disappointing to find out I spent so much time on something that isn’t being used but it was a good experience to be part of the project and I learned a lot more about the work Recreation Services has done.

I’ve been asked to stay on with Recreation in a full-time capacity for at least the next three months and I’m glad to know my work was valued and I’ll now be receiving payment for my hard work.

Web Skills

One of the most exciting projects I have had the chance to work on at the City of Joondalup is the website. Recently the City launched a new customer-focused website that shifted from the departmental organisation and navigation of the old site. In the process, a number of pages from Recreation Services were lost. I had already been reviewing the pages on the new site for spelling, grammar, typographical errors and out-of-date information when I learned of the missing pages.

The website was a project I knew was a priority and I felt it was something that would allow me to make a real contribution to the team during my prac. I was keen to learn more about writing, editing and publishing webpages because it was a task I had never done before and I knew it would be an excellent transferrable skill that would be useful to list as a competency when applying for jobs. I asked to be part of this project and received training in managing the website content. I have now created approximately 40 pages, rewritten old material and improved language choice to suit the new style and formatting of the website. I was excited to be part of this project and feel I have had substantial experience in the process of writing and editing webpages.

It turned out this knowledge and my involvement in this project was incredibly beneficial as I have now applied for a Communications and E-Marketing position in the City of Joondalup’s marketing department that has a focus on website management. With the end of my degree fast approaching, my greatest aim is to develop my skill set to be work-ready the day I graduate.

News vs. Newsletters

Hi Again! My prac at the City of Joondalup is really progressing and I’m getting stuck into some serious projects. This month I have been responsible for writing the Monthly Clubs Update which is an electronic newsletter distributed to all sport and recreation clubs in the City.

I have sourced articles from other industry publications, written articles about upcoming events, provided news from the City and contacted clubs asking for story submissions that I then wrote up. I also had to follow-up with clubs to obtain high quality photographs to accompany the stories.

An interesting lesson I was confronted with while undertaking this task was the suitability of content for the audience. As I read through submissions from clubs and found stories I thought I could use, I would re-write them suit the language of the publication. As I did so, I took a very journalistic approach and cut any material I thought was irrelevant to the central point and angle of the story. It was only as I was discussing the aims and objectives of the newsletter with a colleague to determine/brainstorm some additional articles that I was reminded the newsletter had a very community focus. I had removed information about team mates and competitors that I felt was superfluous to a story about the individual success of a player at a national sporting competition. I decided to insert the removed content to retain the community angle while maintaining the professional style and language of the newsletter.

To my surprise, when the newsletter copy was returned from the Marketing/Communications department after approval, much of the community focus I reinserted had been removed again for format and layout considerations. Marketing elected to include numerous glossy images of sporting fields and equipment rather than the content relating to the clubs and the emphasis on the social angle. This misunderstanding of the aim and focus of the newsletter has become a concern that will now be raised at the monthly marketing meeting so that the focus and need for inclusion of the community angle are identified as important.

When considering different angles and communicating with stakeholders, I decided to look back at some theory from our PR units and will keep the following ideas in mind when writing the October Monthly Update. Stanton (2000) states the purpose of a newsletter is to disseminate information to stakeholders in a controlled fashion. For this reason, the information can be written in a different way to that pitched to the news media and the content and design must be easily accessible to the intended audience. It must have a strong emotional appeal as well as providing rational content.

PR Outside the PR Department

Hi All! My name’s Marie-Claire and I am completing my prac at the City of Joondalup. I’ve been placed with the Recreation Services team working with the sport and recreation clubs in the City. I’m now a little over halfway through my placement and finally feel I have something substantial to contribute to the blog.

I have found my first 10 days with the City incredibly interesting. I have completed a number of other placements over the last two years but have always been in a PR-focused department. In Recreation Services I am involved with the Club Development Program, Clubs in-focus, and the timing of my placement could not have been better because the team was about to undertake an 18 month review of the Program to see how they could improve communication with clubs and promotion of Clubs in-focus.

The team have been very excited to have someone with a PR background join them and I’ve been asked to review more or less all the material they produce. I evaluated the Joondalup Sports Achievement Grant Package and recommended changes to the promotion of the grant, language used in the application forms and assisted in planning the 2010 recognition ceremony. Interest in this grant has decreased recently and the team asked me to develop strategies to target possible applicants and increase uptake of the grant. I also reviewed the 2008/09 Sports Development Program Application Package for redistribution in 2009/10. This involved proofreading for spelling, grammatical and typographical errors and recommending changes to structure and language to improve the clarity of the eligibility guidelines.

Another project I have worked on was identifying tactics to attract clubs to volunteer at the 2010 Joondalup Festival. This involved a lot of research into why people of different generations volunteer, what they want out of the experience and their attitudes towards volunteering. It was left to me to come up with and decide the key messages, how best to communicate messages to different groups and how best to target them. I drafted carefully crafted text (based on my research) for a flyer, choose a background image and within a week the flyer was printed and ready for distribution.

I’ve also worked on some “not so exciting” task – phoning approx. 50 people who recently married in one of the City’s parks and beaches asking them to send me their wedding photos because we are putting together a wedding brochure and wanted to save money by not hiring a photographer!

I have enjoyed looking at an existing Program and department (unrelated to PR) and looking for ways to improve their PR function. It’s made me more aware of how the skills and theories we are learning apply to all areas of business as all areas have stakeholders with whom favourable relations must be maintain.