During this year’s mass communications week I was able to attend three panels. My overall experience at MC Week was great and I enjoyed all of the panels I attended.
The first one I attended was Multicultural PR: A Niche Worth Pursuing with Ana Toro, senior manager at ICF International in Atlanta. Toro discussed the importance of being able to cater your projects to your demographics. For example if you are working for a company who’s client’s are mostly Hispanic, it is important to take that into account when marketing. Another thing that I thought to be important is to remember where you live and the demographics of your city. For example if you work in San Francisco a large amount of the population are Asian and you should keep that in mind when working on projects.
The second panel I attended was “What you don’t know, now you know” with Sara Helmy from Tribu Advertising. This was my favorite panel I attended because Sara and Victoria from Tribu were young and easy to relate to. They talked about what they do at Tribu and I found it interesting that they typically hire recent graduates. I graduate in spring and the majority of the jobs that I have looked at say their entry level positions require experience, and it was refreshing to listen to a company who’s entry level positions are actually entry level. After the panel I was able to talk individually with Sara and enjoyed our conversation. We talked about what made her decide to start her own company, her internship and work experience before starting Tribu, and why she prefers hiring recent graduates.
The last panel I attended was Adventures in Media Innovation with Burt Herman, Trei Brundrett and Anna Tauzin. Herman founded Storify and I enjoyed listening to his experience starting his own company. The most useful information from Herman was not to take too much money when starting a business because the more money you get from an investor the more say that investor has in your company. Brundrett is the chief product officer at Vox Media and I found out some interesting facts about Vox that I didn’t know before. Vox started as sports blogs and grew from there. Tauzin works for the National Restaurant Association and I enjoyed hearing her speak a lot. She talked about making sure you consider how you frame new innovative ideas when pitching them. The way you pitch an idea can determine whether it is a success or failure. She also hinted that drones may be making an appearance in the restaurant world soon.
I also find it amazing that so many of the speakers started their own companies. It seems like entrepreneurship is the future for our generation. People create apps that change business practices that have been in place for decades, such as Uber.