Any step forward is a step in the right direction.

I’m really happy I got to wake up at 4am this morning so I could go sit in a chair for roughly the next 10.

My MEPS trip today yeilded little results, but it allowed me to get over some hurdles that needed to get over. First of all, I had my security interview and was cleared to move on to the next phase.  This is important because for many jobs I will require clearance and the Army has instilled my faith in me to invest the money required to process an application.

I also did a typing test. Weird, I know, but for some programs that I am looking into I am required to be able to type a certain WPM. I aced it clocking in at 50 WPM with zero errors. I’ll take it.

Afterward, I learned that because of some trouble that I got into in the past, I was not qualified to have a job in Intelligence.  C’est la vie. So now I have to consider more options in the Army that will ultimately get me to my goal of PsyOps (37F).

Here’s my new plan:

The requirements for PsyOps is to be Jump School certified and to be DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery) certified. I will then go into the PsyOp special training school.

Unfortunately, I can’t do this until I am an E4 (Specialist). Which will take me 18 to 24 months to obtain. So until then, I will be enlisting in an MOS that requires jumps school as part of its training. That way, when I drop a packet and apply for PsyOps, I will already have had the training and will be more likely to get a spot in the PsyOps training.

Because of how close PsyOps relates to a career in PR, my enlistment time is no longer an issue. I will stay in for as long as I am being challenged and feel rewarded in the work I am doing. PR will always be there for me when I’m done and the transistion to a civilian career will be easy.

Over the weekend, I will be looking at jobs that have Jump School as part of the training and could be signing up as soon as Monday.

Joining the Army is really, really hard.

I don’t know where the notion came from. I guess it was from all of the WWII movies and ‘Nam stories, but long gone are the days of walking into a recruiter’s office and leaving on a bus for boot camp on the same day.

The process to join the military is long. Really long. I mean, you could transcribe “Roots” and it would probably take less time, and would also be less of a headache. (I seriously wouldn’t suggest this, however)

First of all is the part I like to call “Window Shopping”. This is where you look around the internet and see what each branch has to offer. For me it was no question what-so-ever, I’m an Army man. Career-driven and a patriot. I want to serve my country and get valuable experience that will help me as a civilian. After you’ve shopped around, it’s time to go and talk to a recruiter.

I almost feel lucky with my experience with the recruiter.  I had a guy who was very no-nonsense and had answers based on his actual experience in the service.  What sealed it for me is when he told me that he didn’t care if he made his quota, the worst they could do to him was send him back to infantry and that’s where he loved serving the most.  I’m not sure why, but feeling like it didn’t matter to him whether or not I joined was huge in earning my trust.

After I met the recruiter, we looked around at jobs. In college I was a PR major, so I was interested in jobs that were related to that. Either doing PR work, or being able to interact with people on a level that would allow me to make the most difference.

I had narrowed it down to three options Public Affairs Specialist, Psychological Operations and Human Intellegence Collector.

Unfortunately, PA Specialist required at least Associate’s Degree, which I didn’t have so I had to cross it off the list. Disappointing, but I understand.

After I decided on those two jobs, it was up to me to become qualified. I passed the ASVAB and began to build my packet to enlist. Paper work galore. I had to talk about everywhere I had lived, worked, gone to school, been in legal trouble, and talk about my family and medical history…for the last 9 years.

This whole process is ridiculous, and literally took the better part of three weeks getting verification of everything I had said on the application.

Finally it was time for me to take the physical. If you’ve never heard about the MEPS physical, you’re in for a treat. It wasn’t so much “Hurry up and wait” as people make it out to be. There is a checklist and the people there are very friendly and as long as you can follow directions. If they say stand here and don’t move, then do it. If they say go sit there, then do it. It makes the whole process so much easier and by doing that, I was able to turn an 8 hour ordeal into a 6 hour ordeal. But it is still an interesting experience.

After I passed the physical, I finally got to sit down and look at jobs. Luckily, my recruiter told me before hand that PsyOps is a really hard job to get as a non-prior service coming in and that it would be a stretch for me to get it. When we found Human Intel Collector had an opening, it was time to put my money where my mouth was.

I took the offer.

I’m leaving on September 21, 2009 for Fort Jackson, South Carolina. After I graduate from basic, I’ll be going to Fort Huachuca, Arizona to complete my training and learn to do the job that I chose.

Even though the job was my second choice, it so closely relates to PsyOps that in 18 months after I’m promoted from PFC to Specialist, I will be able to re-class into PsyOps with little difficulty at all. Re-classing shouldn’t extend my service time depending on how early I can get re-classed and how long it takes me to finish that training.

As of right now, I’ll be serving until May 10, 2014. It sounds like a long time, but 5 years isn’t much at all. I’ll be 28 when I separate and will have a ton of experience that very few people will be able to say that they have.

I’m going back to Oklahoma City on August 6th to sign the contract and swear in. Thank you to everyone who has supported me in this journey and I promise to keep in touch as best as I can.

Why I’m joining the Army. (soon)

I am not yet in the military.

I feel like I have to say that first and foremost because I don’t want the questions.  That’s also the reason for this post. Apparently people think that I have NO idea what the military is and I’m just rushing into a decision.

No.

The fact of it is, the Military is another option.  I could stay at OSU, I could drop out all together, I could do anything that I want and at this point I still can.  In fact, as Matt Galloway once told me, I’m young enough that I can still go in any direction I want. I don’t feel stuck, or obligated to do anything that I don’t want to do. The fact of it is, I’m bored with what I’m doing now. Coming out of high school I didn’t want to go to college, but I told myself that in four years it wouldn’t matter. I would have a degree and everything would work itself out.

Fast forward to now. Four years later, and here we are. I’m still two years away from that degree and the way I’m going, it might even be longer. I’m not a good student. I never was. Don’t even begin to ask how I got all A’s in high school. I contend that had I gone to a school that actually graded based on performance and not potential, I wouldn’t have done near as well.

“No one likes school, Will.”

You’re right, they don’t but all they do is whine about it. I’m doing something. And name something else I could do that would allow me to walk away from college and provide the benefits that the Army could…I’ll wait.

What benefits? How about a steady job for the next four years? And with that a steady paycheck. I know too many degree holding peers out there who don’t have jobs, or have jobs at companies that could go under at any second. Not really a lot of job security, is it?

My job isn’t going to be clearing buildings in downtown Bahgdad, I’m currently looking at three options.

1. PsyOps. From what I can tell, this is Propaganda. Or as you PR pros call it, “Strategic Communications”. What job could be more cool than figuring out what message will have the most effect on our enemy and, even better, the morale of our soldiers? This is a job that is tough to get but will help me be an asset to the Army.

2. Intellegence Analyst. This is an information war. The more reliable intel we can gather, the more lives we will be able to save. This job will allow me to play a part in keeping soldiers safe and when necessary, helping them fight and win.

3. Human Intel Collector. You got it, Interrogator. This job has gotten a bad rap because of Guantanomo, but it still plays an important part of the war. We need to be able to get valid information from people, and this is the way to do it. The information that I gather in this job will save lives and possible keep our soldiers from an ambush.

“But they’re going to get you to Iraq and turn you into a grunt. That doesn’t mean you’ll get the job you sign up for.”

Let me paint a picture for you. If I walked into the recruiters office and told them I wanted to be 11 Bravo (Infantry) and told them that all I wanted to do was fight and learn weapons and tactics, they would spend millions of dollars training me and months teaching me how to use those weapons and tactics so that when I got to the war, I could be the best soldier I could. In that scenario, they would not send me to Iraq or Afganistan and put me behind a computer and tell me to gather intel, would they?

What makes you think it would work in the opposite direction? The job they spend money and time to train me for will be the job I’ll be doing during my active duty.

“So you’re dropping out of college?”

In a sense, yes. For now. But getting my degree is still very important to me and the Army will help me achieve that. While on active duty, I will be able to take classes toward my degree and there will be plenty of money available to use for school. So if I don’t get my degree it will be because of my own accord, not the Army’s.

I plan to serve for four years and then spend the next four on inactive reserve. Meaning, they can call me back if necessary. All Military contracts are at least 8 years. The number that’s advertised is active duty years. But they are all 8 year contracts.

While on active duty I will have many benefits that would not be available even if I did have a degree and a full-time job. Full medical, vision, dental and life insurance will be provided (life costing $28/month for $400k). I will have few, if any bills aside from anemities, like cell phone, etc.

The pay is not that bad. I will be making roughly $35k a year. Which is as good if not better than many entry-level positions considering that I won’t have many living expenses.

If I said I wasn’t afraid of being shot, or serving in a “hot zone” I would be lying. Those are the scary parts of war, but I know full well what they are, and I am accepting that responsibility. It is my hope that after basic, I never have to fire my weapon, but I am thankful that if I should I will be able to because I will have had training in defense and I will not be afraid to protect my life and the lives of those around me.

I have put a great deal of thought into the OPTION that is before me. I know what the risks are, and I know what the benefits are. As of right now I am in the process of getting all of my documents and paper work filed to join. It is highly likely that I will join assuming that I get one of the positions listed above. If not, you can bet to see me walking the quad in the coming semester.

The bottom line is this, the Army needs intelligent, young and enthusiastic people. JFK famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” The Army needs more people like me. And I’m stepping up to the call.

Thank you for reading, please feel free to comment below.

JB4520 Takeover of PR Open Mic

The week of May 20th was a pretty big one for the Social Media class at Oklahoma State University.

The class, myself included, took control of the 4,000-user social networking site PR Open Mic.

Screen Capture of Day 1

By control, I mean that we were responsible for planning, implementing and analyzing the content for the week on the site.

The idea came from Auburn professor Robert French (follow him on Twitter) who created the site.  He contacted us via our Professor Bill Handy (he’s on Twitter, too) and we were given the challenge.

As a class, we decided that first thing to do (which is to say, the first thing you should ALWAYS do) is to develop a strategy for the week. As you know, too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the soup so we decided that a group of four students should be in control of the strategy and making sure that everything ran smoothly.

On April 12th, I recieved this message from Bill:

Welcome to the PROpenMic takeover strategy team.  You were each chosen based on your ability to work quickly, well with others, determination to accomplish a job set before you in the time frame allocated as well as a variety of abilities each of you poses. Please keep in mind, not everyone who applied was selected.

The objectives are pretty easy/set:
Generate more conversations on PROpenMic (true measurement will be determined once I have access to the analytics)
Highlight OSU’s JB Program as well as the ability of the JB4520 students
Increase membership is one of Robert’s objectives although with 4,000 folks we may be at a critical mass so I would focus more on the enhancement of the site and not so much creating new members. Besides, they are about to get 42 new members.

Being chosen was a great honor because my stregnths have always been in my strategic planning and more importantly my wilingness to lead.

I wasted no time getting organized but felt that Monday yeilded little in the way of organization and planning for the project.

Tuesday, I sat down with Bill and after being put on the spot for a topic for the week, I began to ramble about how interesting it would be to focus on the “PR Student” not the traditional student, but EVERYONE who was still learning. That proved to be the phrase that paid for the rest of the week. Luckily, Bill liked it so we had a jumping off point.

Class that day was one of the most impressive brainstorming sessions I had ever been involved with. It included me with a blackboard asking questions that helped us get a feel for what questions we wanted answers to. After the class we had a topic for each day that would allow us to provide content on the site.

The next two days were used by the Strategy Team to figure out what content would best fit with each day’s question. Finally on Thursday, we sat down with the class and handed out assignments. Luckily, our story ideas weren’t so bad that it wasn’t like pulling teeth to get producers for each idea. After class, we had a plan, and most importantly, a schedule. The game was on and it was ours to lose.

We developed a schedule for the producers where they would send in their content 24 hours before it was set to post on the site. It was then sent to a copy editor and returned to the producer who then posted it on their personal PROpenMic page. Bill Handy, who was given the site editor permissions then put it on the site and featured it on the front page for all to see.

We opened with a WELCOME VIDEO talking about what our plans were for the week.

The week cruised along quite well, there was phenomanal communication between myself and the rest of the strategic team as we as with Bill, who I checked in on everyday to make sure that the group hadn’t done anything to limit the potential of the project. He was very helpful in providing guidance while allowing us to keep control of the situation.

Most importantly, however, was the cooperation from the class. There were no major hiccups and the only bumps in the plan were smoothed over immediately. All of our editors, producers and video makers were amazing and without them the week wouldn’t have gone as well as it did.

How well did it go?(via Bill Handy)

If we compare Monday – Sat (I would argue the only change between the two weeks was the class taking over) we find the following:
Traffic increase of 75.1% (2124 visits) from the previous week
Bounce rate decrease of 4.54% from the previous week

If we only compare Monday – Friday we find the following (prior week’s number in parenthesis)
·         Average time on site increase of 6.45%
·         There were 1,918 (1,057) visits with 1,213 (698) being unique visits
·         These visitors collectively visited 9,466 (4,710) pages
·         45.46% were new visits (never before been to the site. You could infer we were a driving result of that)

Regarding Friday, I heard some comments that our effort just kind of died out – nothing could be further from the truth.

We saw a 59.6% increase in traffic. A few thoughts on this:
·         Friday traffic on websites is usually a bit slow.
·         I would argue the class stopped a much larger decline due to the strategic tweeting which occurred.
·         Here is the kicker – Socially Orange saw a 163% increase comparing the last two Fridays and had the most visitors on a Friday, or any day, ever (stats are also true comparing Thur/Thur)

I think that it’s safe to say that we exceeded everyone’s expectations EXCEPT for our own. JB 4520 understands the concept of Strategy and was able to implement an excellent one through the cooperation of 42 students and one very engaging professor.  The only people suprised were those who were not sitting inside the classrooms and offices while the endeavor was being planned.

I can’t say I was satisfied with the results, but they could have been much worse.

The best part: JB4520 set the bar high for any school who plans to take over the site in the future. I offer a challenge to those schools and dare them to come up with a strategy that will be more engaging than ours. Given a second chance, I know JB4520 would be able to out-do themselves, but I’ll have to keep that strategy under wraps for the right time.

Getting a little help from the village.

So I finally sat down and got into Visual CV. I played with the features and added some solid information. I thought I had a good product so I sent it out into the world.

Come to find out, all I had done was give the runaway kid one of those sticks with the red bandana.

How Perfect.

As I sent it out into the world, I began to get a little worried. Until someone picked up my hitchhiking CV, sprayed it off and brought it home.

Karen Musullo sent me a tweet suggesting that I add a few more pictures to the page, and boy did I.

. Visual CV tweeted that I should find some pictures from working at Syracuse and add them. And I did.

Here’s what became of it.

Karen also told me about a new website that I might be interested in sharing my skills with.  Not wanting to seem unappreciative, I sent the website an email. What I got was something that even impressed me.

Your sports background and and your writing are good assets that you bring for sure.
The twitter piece and knowledge of social media are helpful as well.

I have some house keeping to do but at some level I am sure we can work together.  I think this is a good opportunity for you in PR to be associated with a project of this size and I think you could help us find our way.

I couldn’t believe it, and the best thing was that the email was sent less than an hour after I initialized contact with him. How about that…a prospective opportunity to utilize my talents and it came from someone who randomly reached out to me and was just helping.

Now the question arises, how can I pay it forward? This was honestly a lesson in how much the professionals of today want to help the professionals of tomorrow. I feel lucky, but I know that luck is when preparation and opportunity meet, which is exactly what happened today.

Maybe a change of heart

I don’t want the newspapers to die.

I do however, want printed publications to die and they are. Not right this second, but soon. There are many reasons for printed publications to be here: old people, sudoku/crosswords, comics. But the fact remains that one by one, people are skipping the dollar for the paper and just getting the headlines on their phone, via Twitter, RSS or the old school email.  

Also, advertisers are taking their money to the websites making the cost of printing more of a burden on the companies.  This is one of the reasons for layoffs, decreased publications, and bankruptcy. 

Papers who circulate daily just can’t keep up with the lightning fast pace of the internet. 

But, someone still has to produce the content, so the writers are cool, they can stay.  I just can’t wait for the phasing out of the “paper”

For a little more on this you HAVE to check out http://www.briansolis.com/

Let the Newspapers die. PR doesn’t need them anymore.

Scott Hepburn  has posed a list of valid questions that everyone in media should consider. Notice I said “media” – print, web and broadcast media people should ALL take a look at it and just think about it. 

Here’s my shot at ‘expert’.

How does the current upheaval in the newspaper business create opportunities for smart PRs?

Public relations professionals do not need newspapers any longer.  Let it soak in.  Imagine yourself as the head of PR for EA Sports, a video game company that handles the Madden and NCAA Football franchises. If you have a big announcement to make which makes more sense: Send a press release to Game Informer magazine (circ. 3 mil.) and wait a month or longer for the next issue, or shoot an email to a contact at Joystiq and have the information posted in hours to 174,000 a day…that’s only 2 million more views a month, and without the wait.

Today, the technology exists to spread information at amazing speeds, why should I wait a month to see what’s new and hot in ANY segmentation of my interests?  I don’t have to now, and more importantly I refuse to.

A smart PR professional should be able to see this as well.  While it may be “tradition” to include publications, it is a dying part of the spread of information.  Back to the video game example – of the 174,ooo visiting the Joystiq site, any number of them could be bloggers themselves and will go back to their site and blog about what they saw.

Why should blogs go along with this? Easy, if someone called you from a company, any company, I don’t care who it is and said, “This is our next big announcement and we want your site to be the one to break it” you wouldn’t hesitate for a minute. Many bloggers would jump at the opportunity to beat their competitors to breaking news, and their readers will know what blogs are the best for the newest information and that would create a loyalty to that blog that will spread as they share their knowledge.

The best part? EVERY NICHE HAS A BLOG. So it doesn’t matter if you’re Johnson&Johnson announcing new baby oil, or Chad Johnson announcing his name change to Chad Ocho Cinco.  Good PR professionals know where their public prefers to get their information and want to get the information out as fast as possible to as many people as possible.

Long story short, save the money, time and resources…forget the print, the blogosphere has your cake and you can eat it to.

@reinier44 

Boone Pickens Stadium to get One more facelift

 

The wind turbines will go along the new West Endzone Wall

After years of renovation on Boone Pickens Stadium, the University has announced the ultimate plans for the facility.

 

According to a source within the University, the final touch will begin today as crews will add wind turbines to the top of the west side of the stadium.

Wind energy as long been an aspect of the Pickens Plan, but now with the additions of the turbines, it will come full circle after Pickens’s donation of over $260 million in 2003.

Building and maintaining the turbines will create new jobs by building out the capacity to generate up to 22 percent of our electricity from wind, according to pickensplan.com.

One concern expressed by University officials was that of excessive celebration after big wins during the football season.

April Foley, of the athletic department had the same concern, “It’s bad enough that we have to take down the goal posts to avoid injuries, the last thing we need is for students to try to take down a turbine.”

The turbines will be in place before the beginning of the 2009 football season and are expected to account for 70% of the power that will be used by the University, including the stadium. 

The O’Colly is heeding the Call… to Tweet

Starting Monday, the Daily O’Collegian will move from strictly RSS feeds, to a more personalized way to communicate the news.

First, we will tweet all of the new articles of the day by 9AM. It’s important that we allow for a straight link to the articles so they can be read each day. Our most important objective is to link back to the OC website and increase traffic there.

Next we will take the stories and try to relate them to our readers. For example, if there is a story about summer fun at the lake, we might tweet about the story and suggest a pair of sun glasses to wear while at the beach. Something that will not only get them to read the story, but also take it a step further.
For opinion articles, we would link back the the discussion forum so others can get their opinion heard.
We are going to tweet sports scores as soon as possible.
And most importantly, get user feedback from the readers for ideas on stories.
Through out the day, we will use twitpic to take pictures of interesting things on campus. Like if the Union was a zoo, or an exceptionally good sidewalk chalk.

Here’s what I’d like from you…the students, the “gurus”, and the pro’s.
Email me other suggestions. I really don’t want this to be as bad as most newspaper twitter feeds, but I need to know what you want. We will consider everything, because we want this to succeed. My email is william.reinier@okstate.edu

Thanks a mil – Will.

Apple iPhone 3.0 – Nothing but a tease.

I went to bed monday night thinking that I was going to wake up and be able to download the new iPhone OS.

Fail Stamp.

Instead, I was treated to a PREVIEW of 3.0 and was told that I would have to wait until the summer to get it. However, I am going to take this opportunity to rave about some of the rumors.

First and foremost, COPY and effing PASTE, pretty much the only real thing that the Blackberry had on iPhone, now just a thing of the past (err, future, until summer)

Next, Spotlight Searching. Now I can finally type Mraz instead of having to scroll all the way down when I’m feeling like my easy morning music. This will also search the calendar and apps.

Picture messaging!!! No more dumb emails. I can send and receive the actual picture…so clutch.

Subscription apps. Now, I can cancel my ESPN the magazine subscription and just have them downloaded to my phone, I have no reason to doubt that every major newspaper will take advantage of this. Imagine that for a small fee, you could have the most recent news sent to your phone, or wake up and have the Times or Journal waiting for you at the touch of a button.

Shake to Shuffle. It’s just so fun.

This is such a great idea to give us all a NEW PHONE essentially and for free ($9.95 for Touch users)

My only real beef is that Flash is still not available, not sure why, Apple and Adobe have a close relationship. Other than that, I’m really happy, but also sad that I have to wait until summer to get it.