Exciting Stuff!

Today is an exciting day! We officially started work on a new project with Exempla hospitals with a video shoot for PR and internal communications down at Exempla Lutheran Medical Center, for which I got to run teleprompter. That was a ton of fun, even if our script was full of grammatical errors (note to management: never put an English major behind a script written by television guys, unless you want her to critique it and made snide comments between takes).

Anyway, this new project is a collection of videos for both internal and external use for the hospitals. We're looking at some communiqué-type videos for the CEO and upper management to get memos and updates to the rest of the staff on a regular basis, and a fantastic sports medicine program for the everyday person. And that ball started rolling with the video shoot this morning. Woohoo!

On top of that, we've got a meeting with another potential sponsor/partner for Catch It In Time (over lunch, yum!) that I think is going to turn out fantastically.

Go go gadget MedCenter!

So There

Apparently, Q&As don't work when the only people who read this blog at the moment are still in the company (or, if you don't work for us and read this, a big shout out and a "why in the world aren't you commenting? Please? Don't make me beg!). I guess I'll just have to try again when we have more of an audience. Hear that, handful of irregular readers? Go out and tell your friends and family to book it over here so you can ask that burning question you had but were too shy to ask!

Things at the office are slowly chugging along. Things are coming together (huh, where have I heard that before, right? No, really, we're getting there. I promise), projects are getting finished as new ones come in, the office fridge has been restocked and we have a quickly dwindling bag of chocolates just begging to be finished off. And, before you say anything about chocolate being unhealthy, check out the new study from the British Medical Journal that suggests chocolate may be linked to lowering heart disease.

Q&A? Maybe?

Last week, immediately after posting the last entry to this blog, I had a fantastic idea for this week's post. It was so awesome it would completely blow your mind if you read it. Like brain matter all over the walls sweet. Why am I telling you this? In short, because I forgot it and I'm secretly hoping that by distracting you with the amazingness that was supposed to be this week's post, I can keep you from reading further.

You're still here? Why are you still here?! You should have realized I've got nothing interesting to say this week and scurried away by now! What are you doing? Still reading? Why, of all the impertinence!

Seriously, though, I got nothing. All my energy's been going toward Catch It In Time and I forgot to write down that amazingly brilliant idea. I also may have had too much sugar this morning.

So this week, give me your poor, your abused, your--oh, wait. I mean, give me your questions! About anything. Me, MedCenterNetwork, Catch It In Time, whatever you got. I'll do my best to answer them. Have at it! En guard!

Organizing the Disorganized

Yesterday was super productive for me. Not in the "I wrote ten blog posts and updated Facebook and Twitter every two minutes!" kind of way, but productive nonetheless. I made lists! Isn't that exciting?!

This is my list of "do"s and "don't"s for the office. 

And this is my to-do list. I particularly like number four.

Now, I'm not a terribly organized person, but I can't deny making a series of lists was rather relaxing. Though, of course, looking back on the fact that I have to do all of that this week, or at least start it, is not so relaxing; in fact, it's rather intimidating. Does anyone have a super hero cape I can borrow? I need to feel super to get all this done. 

We've officially decided to cut back blog posts here to once a week instead of every weekday, at least for now. At the moment, we're working so hard on getting Catch It In Time off the ground that a) updating that blog is my priority, and b) there's not a whole terrible lot of interesting things going around in the office. A lot of calls, secondary meetings, frustrated tearing hair out, that sort of thing. Nothing that necessarily makes a great blog post. Unless I'm feeling particularly mischievous, of course.

The good new, though, is that lots and lots of new projects are lining up. I'm not allowed to talk about any of them right now, but I can assure you that there's awesome! Some more health stuff and some more training stuff, and a few things that I'm not even sure how to classify exactly. Point being, this show is finally getting on the road! Woohoo!

Still to come: the long-awaited introductory vlog post (maybe), details about the Catch It In Time campaign (possibly), and a trip to Disney World (hopefully)!

And, for kicks, a picture of my new 'thinking cap.' Why, yes, it is a jester's cap. Why would you expect otherwise?

It's back!

It liiiiives! First of all, my humble apologies for being MIA for the last few weeks. I would rattle off a nicely polished excuse here, but I don't have one. I've just been lazy and staying at home in my PJs all day. But now I'm back at the office, bothering my coworkers and being all-around crazy again. Today I set up some sites for our big upcoming project, and (hopefully), really figured out what I'm supposed to be doing around here. Don't be surprised if I still get a little floundery, though! Working a brand-new job with basically  no guidelines and no framework is a bit of a challenge. But I'm sure we can make it work just fine.

The goals this week: get back into the swing of things, make some contacts, pester all of you transient readers with randomness from the office.

[Insert evil laugh here.]

Last Week in Summary

Monday: I got another project dropped in my lap, which was what's been distracting me from updating here. Eventually, I'll be working on another blog, Facebook account and Twitter account for one of our big projects coming up.

Tuesday: We had a follow-up meeting with one of the local news stations. Half-day, woohooo!

Wednesday-Friday: I wound up working on some personal projects and trying to figure out the stuff that hit me on Monday.

I promise I'm not ignoring you! Last week just got busy and crazy in more ways than one. Let's get back into the swing of things this week, hopefully with some Bogus Health Tips and other random awesomeness.

Irony

Dictionary.com defines irony as "the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning." Why in the world would I bring this up here, of all places? Because I've been thinking about my position here at MedCenterNetwork. 


As the Social Media Coordinator, I'm in charge of promoting our online presence and getting our name out there. But one of our goals as a company is to be the best media connection that you've never heard of. The campaign and our partners' names are the things we want to get out there. And, yet, here I am, blogging and updating the Facebook and Twitter pages. I understand that it's really to help get others interested in partnering with us and get the message out thataway, but it still struck me as amusing ironic and I thought I ought to share.

Still to come: More of Emerson's Bogus Health Tips, office coffee maker wars, and random pictures!

Go, Go, Go!

Today has been busy. A meeting with a third news station early this morning, a trip to Boulder with Rebecca and Bianca to gather intelligence (read: information on other companies that might be interested in partnering with us), lunch at the Boulder Teahouse (my fault, because I'm a tea addict), and now writing a blog about all of it. At least it's cooler in the office than it is outside; I swear I felt like I was going to melt while we were walking down the street. Note to self: get some shorts.

Anyway, this trip to Boulder was short and sweet: visit the visitor's center for as many pamphlets as we could carry, have lunch, work whilst eating, visit another company that might be interested in working with us, and come on home. And, if you don't believe me that we were working during lunch, take a look at the massive stack of pamphlets and magazines we were attempting to sift through.

I've also decided that I'm going to turn this into a food blog. Surprise! From now on, I'll be rambling about the best places to eat in the Denver/Boulder area. I mean, really, check out this awesome salad I had! Fabulous salmon, succulent orange slices, beautiful goat cheese and a delicious Dragon's Eye tea vinaigrette dressing. 

Note: I'm not actually changing this into a food blog. It's just an amusing thought, especially since I will, at some point, be talking about healthy eating, I'm sure. 

Still to come: Which new station decides to partner with us? How much chocolate does it take to get the Social Media Coordinator bouncing off the walls? And why does our office refrigerator freeze everything we put inside it?! 

Ps. The office is now complete! We have a coffee maker and an electric kettle for tea. Huzzah!

Tougher Than it Looks

Do you know what's tougher than it looks? Getting people to sign on with us. We know exactly what we're doing, but since it's so out of the box, it's tough to explain to potential partners over the phone (or, heck, even in an hour-long in person meeting!) what that is. Colby, Rebecca and Keith have been working on a one-page summary of our current project for weeks now, and they still haven't quite pinned it down. Surprise, that project got dumped in my lap today! Let's hope that writing degree comes in handy.

But back to phone calls. Over the last two weeks or so, basically everyone in the office has been making phone calls left and right, conference calls, trying to entice people to partner with us. So far, it seems to be working pretty well; we've got a lot of companies that sound interested. We just have to amp up the bait a little, give them some more information or some examples of what we're doing. Lets just hope we can all remain sane in the meantime!

Historical Artifacts

Welcome back to Connecting the Dots! I hope everyone had a lovely long weekend (super long for me, sorry about that!) and I'll bet you're all ready to get this show on the road again. Well, today, we're going to spend a little bit talking about MCN's past. 

Now, I bet you're wondering what this guitar has to do with MedCenterNetwork, right? A) It's plain awesome, even if you don't like country music (all those signatures are country stars). B) It's good entertainment during down times. C) Everyone who has signed that guitar has worked with us in some capacity or another, mostly before we were formally MCN. This guitar has traveled through two office spaces, and been around since before MCN was created in 2007. I really should have some sort of amazing anecdote about how this guitar represents us as a company, but, in all honesty, it's just one of the neat little artifacts hanging around our office.

Like the bookshelf of awards that Keith has won over his years in broadcast and other forms of television media. At the moment, said shelf holds only a very small portion of all that statues and other art pieces that count as awards; the rest are still either in the old space or in storage. I swear, I'm not exaggerating. I'll post a picture as soon as all of the awards come out.

Where did all these awards come from? Work with NBC, CBS, ABC, Animal Planet, Discovery, Disney, Outdoor Life Network, History Channel and Great American Country. Keith was also involved with Lifetime Network and Discovery Channel's weekly health programming, as well as co-founding American Medical Communications, which was another innovative company allowing medical professionals to view relevant programming over broadcast television. So he's definitely got a history in different thinking and fabulous video production!

And what does a bookshelf full of awards, a crazy mind and a guitar signed by country singers make? Keith Singer: created by a man who doesn't have a box to think outside of. He has a Bluebell ice cream container. And a strong reputation for creative, innovative videos and ideas. What do you get when he takes those ideas and bases a business off of them? MedCenterNetwork: a company unlike any you've seen before.

Pitches and Titles

Today I finally got to attend a formal meeting instead of sitting in my cubical and eavesdropping. It's quite a lot more fun to sit in the other office and watch the expression of our potential partners change from "oh, um, okay?" to "oh, wow, my brain has totally just been blown because this is such an awesome idea and I can't believe no one else has come up with this before. Except I'm still not entirely sure how to explain this to everyone else at my company." That just means that we're going to have to go into said company offices to explain on our own. Oh, woe, whatever shall we do? Going into a local news station to explain our standpoint and ideas again sounds just like torture, doesn't it? (Note the ample sarcasm. I actually think that'd be pretty cool).

As you might have guessed from the last sentence of (minus the aside) of the previous paragraph, today we're meeting with representatives from local news stations! It's pretty fun to actually see other people in the office instead of listening to half a conversation on the phones in the other room.

But what really amused me about this meeting was how much it reminded me of a prolonged novel pitch session. As a hopeful novelist, I got the opportunity to pitch my novel idea to a literary agent at a conference last year (it didn't go well), and watching Keith pitch MedCenter's philosophy to a potential partner felt a lot like that: the eager, earnest pitcher talking a mile-a-minute to the agent/partner, who's sitting in a corner, nodding, looking mildly impressed and slightly confused. The good news is this is probably going to go a lot better than my novel pitch!

I also officially received a title today, which was very exciting: "MedCenterNetwork's Social Media Coordinator." Sounds a lot more official than "social media representative," doesn't it?

MedCenter...Weather Gods?

Guess what today is! That's right, another rainy, thundery day! What's that mean? The folks here at MedCenterNetwork have their thinking caps on again! We're not entirely sure why or how, but it seems that all of the recent rain has been a direct result of MedCenter's brain trust getting their think on. Every time you see a lightning bolt or hear thunder rumble, one of us has come up with a brilliant new idea. We're just that good.

Don't worry, though, we're working on a way to keep our magical, idea-generating brains from affecting the weather like this again. Hopefully we'll have the tin foil caps installed within the week, so keep an eye out for the sun again soon.

(Disclaimer: any and all claims made herein that the crew of MedCenterNetwork have any actual sway over the weather or any other magical powers are here for comedic effect. Except maybe me. I might be the next Hogwarts valedictorian. But let's keep that on the down low, shall we? They don't really like me talking about it. )


On another note, I have a few shoutouts today. The first goes out to Lee Suttie, our cofounder, who has recently complained about not being on the blog. Here you go, Lee, your very own half a paragraph! The second goes out to Rebecca and Colby, who helped me figure out today's post (kinda). Thanks, guys!

Aborted topics for today: the health benefits of owning a pet, the health benefits of chocolate, chocolate cats, and chocolate thunder. Aren't you glad I didn't wind up talking about any of those?

Things That Keep Us Awake at Night

Apparently, the thing that keeps our director up at night is the state of the office carpet. Oh, the things I learn by eavesdropping on the random meetings that happen on the other side of the room. Last night, Keith had a dream that MedCenter was the object of a huge corporate uproar over the way our carpet looks. Now, I must say, the carpet itself isn't too terribly bad. Not anything I'd want in my house, sure, but it's in pretty good shape for the most part. Cleaner than my former dorm room, at least. Kind of ugly, though.

And then I saw this:

 

I'm not sure where it came from or  if it's fixable, 

but there appears to  be a rip/snag/other deformity

of your choice in our carpet by the computers. 

And now I totally understand where that nightmare came from (note the sarcasm in that last statement). The good news, I suppose, is that this is the only thing keeping us up at night at the moment. No worrying over whether we're doing right by our clients; no fretting about getting projects done on time; no tearing our hair out over where we're going. Just our carpet. Our lovely, ugly, torn up carpet. 

Oh, we worry about how hot the office is, too. We've got a big set of windows facing out east, so the rising run always shines right into the room and heats it up until it's basically sweltering by the time we get in here around nine. Four or five people sitting around, brainstorming, and sweating like pigs isn't all that attractive, I can promise you that. We've been tossing around plans to get a fan or something to help with this problem, but nothing's been done as of yet. That keeps me up at night. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be creative and funny when I'm practically melting all over my desk? 

Brainstorming

Today, I'm sitting in my newly decorated cubical (read: I put up a poster of a dragon and an anime wall scroll, both of which can be seen below), listening to the brainstorming session going on in the other room between Keith, Rebecca, and Colby--our founder, our customer service director and our sale guy--about one of our new projects. It doesn't make a terribly interesting picture, but I put it up all the same, for kind of a vague idea of what goes on around here. A lot of sitting around and talking at this point.

While I'm writing this, Keith's going over how we make stories interesting, which I find terribly appropriate. He's saying, "it's sort of like product placement; except, instead of putting a product in, we're embedding a concept." In other words, we take the project (cancer awareness, training videos, whatever) and focus on making an entertaining story, and slipping our sponsors' messages inside those tales.  In my opinion, that's a pretty neato way of going about things. Get people sucked into the interesting stuff, then subtly plop our message into that. Much better than taking a big, broad message (aka heavy, blunt object) and beating people about the head with it.

So there's, hopefully, some insight into the sort of thing we've got in mind when we say "Our goal is to create fun, interesting, entertaining stories to help our sponsors, partners and clients reach their own goals." 


And here are the promised photos of my newly decorated cubical. So exciting. 

The awesome dragon poster. 

Bonus points for anyone who knows what this is from! 

Emerson's Health Tips #1

I've decided that, since we focus on health-related stories, I'm going to try my hand at making up some health tips for our readers (yes, it's a quiet day in the office and I've got no other ideas for today; why do you ask?). Some of them might actually be good ideas, like the day I decide to delve into the medicinal properties of various herbs and teas. Some of them, not so much. Those in the latter category are likely to be just plain silly/fun/ridiculous/take your pick. If anyone's reading this and decides to try any of these tips, please feel free to let me know! I'd love to hear how they work out for you (if they do), especially the not-so-serious ones.

So, Emerson's Health Tip for today: when it's raining, try dodging raindrops. When I was a little kid, I used to try to do that all the time, when it was drizzling or only lightly raining, when it was still possible to dodge a majority of them. I suppose all the recent rain around here has got me thinking about it. Only problem comes when it's a misty or heavy rain, but that just makes it more fun: exercise, game and shower, all in one! Just remember your soap. If nothing else, it can be a game with your kids (if you have them): whoever gets the wettest loses. Just don't stay out too long, especially if it's cold, and have a dry set of clothes on hand to change into when you're done. Maybe even get some hot cocoa or tea going for afterwards. If you're making it a game with the kids, you could give them some sort of prize at the end, a sweet or a little toy or something (since we all know the kids are going to win, regardless). Of course, this'll only work if you like 1) dancing, 2) rain, and 3) potentially looking like a crazy person. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

And, so I don't get us sued or something: none of these health tips are designed to replace traditional medicines/doctors. Most of them are just for fun.

Office Shenanigans Pt. 1

Despite the fact that MedCenter Network has been in existence since 2007, we've never had an office of our own. Until now. Over the last few weeks, we've been moving furniture into our nice, new space, setting up cubicles, reorganizing all of our equipment, and all sorts of other fun things that go along with moving. And it's all been overseen by our very own captain.

For those of you who know us, you're probably thinking I'm talking about Captain Keith Singer or Captain Lee Suttie, the two in charge of this whole company mess. But I'm not. I'm talking about Captain Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

He's the Big Cheese around here, as far as I'm concerned. But, then again, I've always been kind of a Trekkie. It's comforting to know that we've got a Star Fleet captain on our side.

Besides the Captain, we've got four cubicles set up--mine was just finished minutes before this posting--and a side office for Sales and whatnot. They're the ones with the good desks. The rest of us getting the stuff that came with the cubes. Not that I'm complaining. A desk is a desk. It just doesn't come with the sense of prestige that the nice ones have. Today, actually, the chaos of moving has calmed down to a dull, organized roar. Only thing we're missing now is a good set of office chairs. Notice the camp chairs in the photos below of some of our set-up process.

The guy in the last two pictures is our founder, Keith. See, he's not afraid to get his hands dirty.

Also, I've decided we need better candy in the office candy jar. Ironic that a health organization should have a candy jar to begin with, but everything is good in moderation. We just need something actually appetizing, instead of mysterious hard candy with no label.

Still to come: video introductions, how to decorate a cubical, and what happens when the social media rep is left alone in the office.

Hello World!

I think the title says it all. Hello world! I'm Emerson, and I'll be your MedCenter blogger for, well, as long as you decide to follow us. I've just recently signed onto the MedCenter Network team and I'm still getting my sea legs, but, hopefully, I'll at least be entertaining.

At this point, you're probably asking "what in the world is MedCenter Network? And why did they feel the need to hire this crazy person to blog about it?"

To which I respond: MedCenter Network is, in short, a media production company, focusing on health-related stories (and a few other things) inspired by the people involved. We help other companies and organizations get messages out to their target audience, via personalized stories presented through multi-media outlets, including traditional, web-based, print and mobile media. Our goal is to create fun, interesting, entertaining stories to help our sponsors, partners and clients reach their goals.

As to the second question, I say: a) I promise I'm not completely insane; I'm just energetic and excited about this project and b) we decided to start a blog in order to help spread the word about our company, our sponsors/partners' programs, and to give anyone who wants it an insight into what goes on behind the scenes of video production.

And, as an entertaining (hopefully) first post, I present you with watermelon smashing! As part of a ladder training video Mr. Keith Singer (read: my boss) is working on for the cable installers of CableOne, we went out into an empty parking lot, took the safeties off a 28-foot extension ladder, and used it as a guillotine to smash two large watermelons and a cantaloupe. The point is to use the footage of the dying melons as a sort of cautionary "this could be your head/foot/other body part of your choice!" for the folks watching the video. For little old me just tagging along, though, it was just pure fun.

Just imagine if that was your foot! Remember kids, ladder safety is no joke. But just think about how entertaining this video is going to be for those installers. Who doesn't like watching something get utterly destroyed? Below is the final carnage of the day.

And this is the sort of stuff we do here at MedCenter Network. Just a taste, though. Still to come: robots, medicine, race cars, and airplanes!