Monday, May 17, 2010

Women of Vision - the Aftermath


So one of the major things after any event is the PR cleanup. And boy was there a lot of clean up last week.  Let me start by saying Women of Vision was an enormous success.  We had a record breaking number of attendees, all our speakers did a tremendous job and I had the great pleasure of being Arianna Huffington's handler throughout the event. 

I was very glad that in a previous position I had the opportunity to work with celebrities so I was prepared for all the contingencies.  Arianna was lovely to work with - well prepared, charming and so happy to help us with photographs, etc.  Her speech was a crowd pleaser. 

Our three winners were all amazing.  I was a bit stunned that all three chose to wear red and black but it looks great in all the photos.  Arianna had shared her talk's theme of embracing risk prior to the event and I'd notified the three winners.  Each of them talked from her own perspective about embracing risk, and making a difference in the world. 

Post event the work continued. I actually went home and did a final review of the newsletter we were issuing the next day since it was part of the launch of our Anita Borg Top Company for Technical Women Award.  I also fixed a few glitches along the way.

Then Thursday began the work with the press.  We had 11 press people attend Women of Vision. The next day was spent working on our post event press release then issuing it to the 11 press people along with a picture of Arianna and the winners.  The press release itself went out the following morning. The coverage has been amazing - San Jose Mercury News, Forbes, Silicon Valley Watcher all wrote about the event and more are still pending.  We also posted the winners biographical videos on youtube so they could be linked to as well from the press release.

This week the work continues - I'll be editing the footage from the event and getting it back to our editors so we'll be able to launch the videos on Youtube in our next newsletter.  I'm also waiting for the photos to come in so we can distribute them to the media as well as our sponsors, Arianna, the winners, etc.  And of course we're tracking the coverage as it comes in.

I'd like to thank a few people who make my job possible - Megan McKenna from Total Media Group; Denise Nelson from Ventana Public Relations, Dang Le from Jungle Digital Printing and Alex Atkins from Alexander Atkins Design.  These are the folks who make everything possible in doing the marketing for our events. I couldn't do it without them. 

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Jerri - I got wind of your new post through Google Alerts. Thank you VERY much for thanking Total Media Group and everyone else who did a little bit to help in the event. I say little bit because you're the one who made it all happen. It's always a pleasure to work with you, and this WOV 2010 was by far my favorite!

Unknown said...

And I posted this way too fast. The most important is CONGRATS on all the press footage! I am so excited for you and your colleagues. This is something that needed to happen, but is not an easy feat. To get that many press people, and all that follow up is tremendous.