The end is near...

Hi everyone!

Hope everybody is surviving in this busy time of semester! I know I have been super busy trying to fit everything in- there are days when I wish us humans didn't have to sleep! I'm nearing the end of my internship and with just two more days of uni left the end is in sight!

Following on from my last post I have been continuing to develop the communications plan for 'Our Page in History'. It has definitely become a lot easier to write as I have become more familiar with the project and it's future. The plan is already over twenty pages so I'm hoping that I will have time to do a one page overview with a diagram showing how all the objectives/strategy/evaluation etc all link up. My supervisor showed me an example of one done by a PR agency for the National Year of Reading project and its seem like a great idea. We are planning to distribute the communications plan to the Community Engagement Officers so they can get an overall feel for the project and a one-pager will be great to do this. I have struggled with the implementation section as nothing has been set in stone for the project next year so it has been hard to set a timeframe. Bronwyn, my supervisor, is going over the plan this week so hopefully most of her feedback will be positive!

Last Friday I was involved in setting up the Premiers Book Awards. In previous years the Foundation has had the sole responsibility of organising the event but this year the Department of Culture and the Arts took over organisation. This meant that we didn't have a lot to do but I did help with some of the set up on Friday afternoon. This included some not so glamourous tasks like rearranging furniture and setting up signage. I definitely got my 30 minutes of exercise! At the actual event I was on the registration table and had to sign guests in and give them their name badges. It was quite overwhelming for twenty minutes or so when we had 120 guests registering at once. There were a few minor hiccups- we were missing quite a lot of name badges as the guest list hadn't been updated and some VIP's including judges didn't have badges. I can now see how important preparation is, particularly for those small aspects of the event. It is so easy to forget when you get so busy so I now understand why things like running sheets and checklists are so crucial. The minister ran 20 minutes late (apparently this is usual at government functions!) so this also pushed back all the proceedings. Despite the few minor hiccups the night was a great success and we recieved several comments at the end of the night from happy guests!

Manning the registration table (with our champagnes of course!)

My last few days will involve tying up some loose ends and getting the communications plan finished! I have been invited to attend some seminars as part of the Arts Developmental Marketing Forum which is being held in Perth next week. I'm hoping to go to a seminar about social media which will be really interesting especially as I have been doing a bit of research into it!

Hope everyone enjoys their last few days of semester!

Jaimi Baile

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It's all coming together...

Hi everyone,

I am now well into my placement at the State Library Foundation and as everything is coming together I am finding my placement really enjoyable. As I came into the organisation in the middle (and busiest period) of a project I had a lot to catch up on. After a lot of time spent reading internal documents and bugging the other staff with questions I now feel like I have enough background knowledge to contribute to the project. The team have been really supportive and the weekly 'Work in Progress' meetings with the whole team have been a huge help.

The main project I have been involved with is 'Our Page in History'. I explained in my first blog but it is basically an interactive website that allows users to record their own 'page in history' and connect to others. The project has a strong Western Australian focus and another lucky intern flew up to Broome for a month at the start of September to engage with the community and get them on board.

With a very small team my placement has been very hands on and I have been left to take initiative and make decisions. I have been enjoying this though as it keeps me busy and I hate having nothing to do! I have been very busy writing and designing all sorts of material for 'Our Page in History'- from postcards to fact sheets and backgrounders. I have been liaising directly with the graphic designer for some of the material and I really underestimated how hard it is to get things looking the way you imagine. It is quite a long process- even if something minor isn't how you imagined you need to get a re-design. The postcards went through at least five versions before we were happy with the product but they are currently being distributed in Broome!

I have also been busy getting content ready for the website launch. After some issues with the timeline for the launch of the website we are now looking at a launch in late October. I will be finished my placement by this point but I am really looking forward to seeing the website live after having so much involvement in the project. I have been scanning a lot of old documents to be added to the website. My supervisor Bronwyn is using her family as an initial profile and she has some amazing photos and documents that have been passed down through her family. Although scanning isn't the most interesting task I was fascinated with the items that she had. Telegrams from WWI, letters from her grandfather in the war and even a letter from the New York Times to her great-grandfather in 1895! These will all be up on the website when we go live and hopefully we can get some more great memories like this from users!

One of my last tasks at the Foundation before I leave will be to develop a communications plan for 'Our Page in History'. With a real shortage of staffing resources nobody has put together a thorough strategy and instead they have just jumped into the 'doing' stage without anything set down on paper. I am really motivated to put together some strategies that will work but I do have reservations about whether they will be carried through. Working in a not-for-profit environment has its challenges and sometimes great ideas are just not feasible because there isn't the staffing or money. Does anybody else doing their placement in a not-for-profit feel the same?

For the communications plan I have been doing a lot of research online into best practices. This has involved reading articles and blogs on how things have been done around the world. At the moment my big focus is on looking at how to encourage people to contribute user generated content. The website is only a 'skeleton' and will rely on subscribers uploading their photos, stories and documents to make the site interesting. I have found this area really interesting- it explains why we are all so addicted to Facebook! If anybody wants to have a read this a great article summing up the topic:

http://www.grannellmarketing.com/articles/MM-UGC.pdf

The Foundation is helping the library out with the Premier's Book Awards next Friday night so I will rubbing shoulders with Colin! Although I won't have much to do with the organisation prior to the event it will be interesting to see how this kind of event works behind the scenes.

The countdown is on until the end of semester, I hope everyone is surviving!

Jaimi Baile
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The Beginning..

Hi everyone!


After starting my placement a little late (my supervisor was on leave) I have now completed 4 days of my placement at the State Library Foundation as their PR intern. My internship falls under the WA State Government internship programs which run in semester two in a variety of government departments. I was lucky enough to get my first preference in terms of the project that I wanted to work on within the program. I wasn't too sure about what the Foundation actually was before I started my placement and I'm sure most of the fellow bloggers on here aren't really sure either.


It gets a little complicated to explain- basically the Foundation isn't actually a government department as such. Our offices are located in the State Library in Northbridge which falls under the Department of Culture and the Arts but the Foundation is actually a registered charity. We are bound by government rules and have government email addresses but the Foundation runs as a separate entity to the State Library with it's own board etc. I didn't know all of this when I applied for the internship- I assumed I would be working for the Department of Culture and the Arts. From thinking that I would be working in a government environment I am now working in the not for profit arts sector!


The Foundation was established in 2009 and aims to provide projects to the community that increase access to information and help to preserve WA's history. Through corporate sponsorship the Foundation has been able to establish several ongoing projects. These include the 'Spelling Bee Competition' which is run in conjunction with The West Australian newspaper and 'Our Page in History'. 


The 'Our Page in History' project is my main focus for my internship as I will be working to promote the re-launch of the website. The project started back in 2010 and is an interactive website that allows the community to upload their personal photos, videos and documents to the website to create their own 'page in history'. The website really is a great idea- it allows people to research their family and where they grew up and it adds to the State Library's collection of WA history. Through digitising photos it also ensures that even if the originals are lost there is still a record for generations to come. This has shown to be so important with events such as the Victoria bushfires and the Queensland floods. 


The website is being re-designed and the project is being rolled out to 20 regional and metropolitan towns/suburbs over the next 10 months. The team will be visiting Broome in late September and York in November to launch the project in these towns. Over the next 16 days of my internship I will have lots of work to do putting together a PR plan for the rollout. I have been given lots of flexibility in the way I want to do things although with limited staff and resources (money!) it's probably going to be a bit of challenge!


My first four days have been pretty busy! All the staff in the Foundation have a weekly Work in Progress (WIP) meeting and I have also sat in on a meeting with staff from the State Library. I also organised to meet with the project manager who has been hired to work on the Our Page in History roll out. All these meetings meant that I had a lot of information to take in but it has been good in that it has let me get up to speed with what is happening! I also encountered a mini 'crisis' for the Foundation on my first day. The web design company in charge of the redesign for the website have told us that there is going to a six week delay. Nobody was very happy to hear this- it now means that the launch of the website is pushed out by 6 weeks.


Other than that I have been working on writing up the annual report, drafted some new information for our brochures, wrote an article to appear in the Dept of Conservation's newsletter and started on the PR plan. I've been given lots to do but I have found it good to be working on a few things simultaneously- I never get bored! 


Hope everyone is enjoying their placements and staying nice and busy! 


Jaimi Baile
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