I attended my first board retreat with the Jeanette Rankin foundation this past Saturday, 26th of January 2008. Surprisingly, having been on half a dozen boards this is actually my first board retreat. It was from 9:00a - 3:00p.

I am amazed to say the day actually flew by. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, the debate, the support, the energy and the excitement I experienced. This board is made up of an astounding amount of talent and commitment.

At the end of the day, as I am sure all boards that have retreats are faced with, we were left with some answers but more questions than we came with. One accomplishment we did make was to decide that the very next meeting of the board would be a working meeting where we would put in place atleast a number of the ideas and initiatives we hope to undertake in the next year. We will actually show up with laptops in hand, and spend our day writing, programming, calling, and mailing. It is exciting to think of spending a day with a group of talented individuals in more than just conversation and find out what kind of creation can come from actual work!

There isn't a single command in subversion to remove external plugins from your application so I figured I would post this to help the next person save 10 minutes of reading docs.

Make sure you are in the root of your app and do:
svn propedit svn:externals vendor/plugins

Just delete the line(s) of the plugins you no longer want.

If you get the following error then you need to set your environment variable.
svn: None of the environment variables SVN_EDITOR, VISUAL or EDITOR is set, and no 'editor-cmd' run-time configuration option was found

You can set your SVN_EDITOR to use TextMate like so:
export SVN_EDITOR='mate -w'

Great sites when you're needing a design boost.

• CSS Beauty
• Best Web Gallery
• CSS Vault
• CSS Vault
• Unmatchedstyle.com
• CSS Remix
• CSS Elite

With a background (this word is a bit of an overstatement because I haven't even graduated yet) in public relations I tend to see the world through a communicator's lens. Since this is my first blog post I am stating my "background" as a sort of disclaimer.

I monitor a lot of interactive communications bogs. Recently, Karen Russell, a PR professor at the University of Georgia used her "Teaching PR" blog to ask professionals what they wish their new employees knew.

This was obviously very interesting to me because I just started my job here at Plexus. At Plexus, my job isn't solely public relations related, but the skills are definitely a part of my day to day. Here are a few of the responses to Dr. Russell's question that I found interesting. Even if you didn't just start your job, these can serve as a motivating reminder. What do you think Plexus? Are these things you wish new employees inherently knew?

Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications says:

I wish my new employee knew that the beginning part of a career is usually a slog. It’s not all Social Media fun & games, sorry. To be effective & accountable strategists, we need databases, research, detailed reports. That’s how everybody starts out, even the rockstars.

I wish my new employee knew that “eagerness is everything.” If you’re eager; if you’re leaning forward; motivated, I’ll lie on the train tracks for you. If you’ve got a dark cloud over your head, its shadow casts a pall over the entire office. That includes my office.

Office Politics 101 from Colin McKay:

Acronyms are not your friend. Not when you don’t understand them, and not when you throw them around trying to look intelligent.

Read up on learning styles. The way a person collects, interprets and processes information affects how they behave in a conversation with you, how they interact with others in meetings, and how quickly and violently they will try to shoot down and bury your cool new idea.

Most PR people don’t write well. This includes old flacks who’ve been around since Adam announced his snappy new fig leaf attire. If you can explain complicated situations or argue positions in writing, you’ll leapfrog ahead of your peers. Really. Make this a priority.

5 Things all PR Students Should Know About Their Career Choice from Steven Silvers

You don’t have exclusive access to this line of work. There are a lot of people who come to the field from journalism, law, marketing, psychology, business, catering, investor relations, event management, human resources, finance, administration, politics or on the advice of their parole officer. Your degree is worth only what your applied skills and intuitiveness make out of it.

Grunt work and details get you promoted. It’s nice that many PR students study the Tylenol crisis. But most of you will have less dramatic introductions to the profession. You’ll spend your day doing routine research, stuffing envelopes, proof-reading someone else’s material and taking notes at meetings. The sooner you prove that you don’t make mistakes or let things fall through the cracks, the sooner you’ll get thrown into the more interesting deep end. Invest your time in getting good, because most of your peers won't.

The new year has began for me, just like it has for many, as a fresh start in life. Myself, along with hundreds of other UGA students have finally reached the goal of graduating before hitting that five year mark. After four and a half years of sitting through hours of class and making meager wages working a part-time job at The UPS Store, I have earned my degree in graphic design. Although many automatically think, "Art degree? What do you do for a job? Draw stuff? Sounds easy." Wrong! Yes, majoring in art does mean that you greatly reduce the amount of tests you take in college, but that doesn't mean it's any less work. And my department definitely didn't make my last semester at UGA easy by any means.

For my graphic design class' final semester, we were required to work on a 4 month long project and present it to our teachers and peers at the end of the semester. The purpose of the project is to give you a more, real-world sense of what graphic design is. In other words, you pick a company, or organization, and treat them like a client. You design their identity, create brochures, booklets, posters and whatever element is needed to make your client look good. All of this also needs to be within a reasonable "budget". So no holographic advertisements projected over the Empire State Building in New York.

For my project, I combined my interest in music with my love of design. I used the name of an existing record label, and without knowing anything about them or what their identity looks like, I created my own designs for my "client". Being in Athens, it's not very difficult to find good bands to use as clients, either. I selected 3 bands, all diverse in their musical style and fan base, and proceeded to design album packaging for each group. My main goal was to create packaging different from the typical jewel case everyone has seen for over a decade. At the same time, thinking of 3 different ways to present new and interesting packaging for each band.

To wrap this mini-bio up, after months of working, and by working, I mean actual effort put forth into making a good project, everything came together in the end. Sleep was scarce during those months for everyone in my class, but everyone was extremely happy after seeing their finished works hung up in a gallery downtown.

You've probably already guessed that my teachers passed me and gave me good marks for my project. Otherwise, I'd still be sitting in class, getting one step closer to falling into the bottle. I can proudly say that I'm now working at the best darn Web site design company in all of Athens. Seriously, I am extremely relieved to have a job right out of college. Before, when I would sit around doing nothing, I wasn't getting paid. Now, I can sit around all day and do nothing, and get paid! Just kidding, Stephanie.