Yesterday was a day full of surprises.  At the planning meeting, it turned out that we have 2 more people in the group than we planned on and leading the group around Chicago is still only sketchy.  Ugh. With budgets so tight right now, adding more people this late in the game makes things… well… interesting.

But the pleasant surprise was that our student intern flew through all the projects given to him and even finished early!  So now I’m hoping I have enough planned for him to do today.  Having another person here is going to be very helpful, especially during the Chinese visit.

As I get things ready for our new staff member’s orientation, I am realizing how very helpful it would be to have templates of a lot of our documents.  For example, when we need a schedule hand-out created we could just give the schedule template and the spreadsheet of event information and anyone in the office could then put together a hand-out that looks consistent with our other hand-outs.  But creating templates takes time and that is a precious commodity right now.

We’re also getting ready for a planning meeting this afternoon to wrap up the details on the China program.  Only a week away!

Yesterday I did prepping for this and that. Coral got our last minute questions ready for today’s meeting. I got projects prepped for the student intern, and I’m getting things organized to start working on the fall program once the China program is over. Of course, we could always do much more prep but there is only so much time.

We interviewed the student intern today and this is going to work out great!  I’m trying to get an orientation outlined for Thursday when the student starts.  Lots to do between now and then and so little time!

Also got a request in email to advertise or announce applications for a couple library awards.  Which brings me back to a question I’ve been grappling with a lot — what is the best communication tool for us?  Our website does not get that much traffic and most of the traffic we do get is for the Associates application.  In Facebook, on the other hand, we have the Mortenson Center group with over 200 members now.  But if I post a link to the group for these announcements, will that go to people’s news feeds?  How do we know it will get seen?  Well we don’t.  No matter what tool we use.

I’m thinking about starting a Twitter account for the Center and creating a Facebook “persona” too.  Still exploring these options.

Back from my semi-vacation to find out we’re getting a student intern after all!  Exciting!  Drafting up a project plan for the 10 weeks the student will be with us and hoping the student won’t be too bored.

Getting things confirmed for the day with the City.  Got a couple more pieces of info for scheduling of the Fall Associates Program.

My Chinese class is done and I am out of the office all week!  Woo hoo!  ‘Course I’ll spending the whole time on packing boxes and applying for jobs but for some of us, that’s the best kind of vacation we can get.

A lot of loose ends have been wrapped up this week.  We had a good meeting on Wednesday – figured out who’s driving where when and settled on a food provider for most of the meals.  Also have a great outline shaping up for the day with the City.  Sent out emails to all the speakers asking for their PowerPoint files since we’ll need the interpreters to look over them beforehand.

This afternoon a couple of us went over to the Levis Faculty Center to plan out the Opening — we’ll have the group photo outside by the fountain, or on the 2nd floor couches if weather is bad.  Social time will be on the 2nd floor patio, followed by Ceremony with the screen showing a slideshow.  Then downstairs for dinner.  Excellent, excellent.  I think this will work out much better for photos.

The program for the Chinese library directors is about three weeks away and we’re running up on the time when a lot of the details need to be settled and confirmed.  Invitations are getting sent out, speakers are double-checked, making our lists and checking them twice… at least.  Still waiting to hear exactly how many visitors we have in the program… at least ten, but maybe eleven?

Last couple days have been about transportation and location.  The vehicles we wanted to get from the campus pool are already reserved so we have to come up with a different plan that will still be within budget.  Also, the building originally picked out for the Opening Ceremony is too expensive and has a high school dance the same night as our ceremony.  So that’s out.  On to Plan B at many levels.

After last week’s focus on scheduling speakers, this week’s focus has started with food.  Yes, food.  A very essential yet easily overlooked detail in event planning.  We’ll have visitors over the holiday weekend of July 4th and figuring out the logistics of feeding them is proving a little bit tricky.

Also followed up on the marketing grant project with a very brief summary of our ad and the results from it.  Basically, I think we learned from the experience that we need to look closer at online marketing over paper marketing.  Video? Social Networking? Gotta think about this more.