Keep Doin' Whatcha Doin'

I've come to realize that public policy isn't where my future is. I got all caught up in the excitement of FoodWorks and suppressed my dream of being an urban farmer. That isn't to say I haven't had a good time, on the contrary I learned a lot and have really enjoyed working in Community Outreach. I feel appreciated and capable and better equipped for other jobs and interviews.

Something funny happened during my internship though. At one point I was put to the task of inviting some 3,000 fans of Christine Quinn to events through facebook (in addition to cold-calling, e-mailing, and faxing invites). The woman holding the position of "Web, Digital and Social Media Manager and Press Officer" signed me in to the Speaker's Facebook account and let me rip (or click) away at the invites. Now this is nothing new to kids these days, I personally grew up with a computer in the house, I started blogging when I was 14 and I'll admit I was a bit of a late bloomer getting on Facebook ( I logged in for the first time in 2005 but didn't really use it until 2008). Now I've got a twitter, a tumblr, a blip.fm "station", a flickr, and a foursquare. Since I started driving the ice cream truck, I've been pretty familiar with promotion using 140 characters. The point is I consider myself social-network-comfy.

So one day I arrived at my internship and checked in to "250 Broadway- NYC Council" on foursquare, as I had been doing 3 days a week. For some background, Foursquare is a social networking site that also works like a game, one can "check in" to a venue they are at, be it a library, restaurant, or even a cab, and earn points for each check-in. Checking in to a place for the first time gives you more points, as does creating a venue, and you can unlock "badges." The most fun is ousting the "mayor" of a venue once you check in more times in a month than the current mayor. Well thats exactly what I did, but the mayor I ousted was the Press Officer.

Of course I had selected in my settings to automatically tweet every time I oust a mayor. Whoops.

Within a few minutes I got an e-mail from the Press Officer asking for my in-house phone extension. Then my phone rang.

"I've seen your twitter and your tumblr... tell me about your experience with social networking," she said. I found myself in the middle of an interview (a lesson to always be prepared). By the end of the call I was offered an internship in communications and given some time to think.

A few weeks later she and I ended up at the same event together which was hosted by the speaker and we checked in to the event's "venue" together, which I created. That day I interviewed with the Director of Communications at the office of the City Council Speaker and was asked for my availability.

So it looks like I'll be staying with the Speaker for another semester! I'll miss Community Outreach, but web communications is just another way of reaching out to people, no?