Fine Arts Career Services

This week has been one of the busiest of my life. As you may know, The Austin City Limits music festival was this past weekend, Oct. 2-4 @ Zilker Park, and my company, C3 Presents, was the production company behind the masterpiece. As you can imagine, the week preceding the Festival was filled with an exorbitant amount of business activity, planning, and making sure all dilemmas are resolved before the festival’s doors open for the first time. Naturally, not EVERYTHING can be done, but we did make strides to make it the best event possible, and despite the setbacks, I feel we delivered.

Mrs. H. had me finish the ‘tin can of dirt’ this week. This included more re-labeling as well as more deliveries to various sponsors. Some went to restaurants, radio stations, press, etc. and the individuals who got to see these being delivered seemed to like the idea very much and more importantly expressed further interest in the upcoming weekend, which is exactly the aim of this specific marketing campaign. So all said and done on this project, I deem a success. However, we ended up with a bit too many of the products and had to increase orders to each delivery point in order to rid ourselves of them before Friday rolled around.

Mr. P. had me working on something very interesting earlier in the week. One of his clients, who has a tour approaching as well as many new prospects for product endorsement as well as overseas management needed help with some pitches. In other words, I was responsible for mocking up two pitches to various companies to either ask for such endorsement or see if they were interested in managing him. Suffice to say, I have not caught wind as to whether or not any responses have been received by Mr. P., but seeing how long the process took, I hope good things come from it. We revised, and edited, and even asked for more outside help to get the pitches looking and sounding absolutely perfect. By the end of the process, Mr. P. seemed pleased with the work we had accomplished and proceeded to send them to their respective destinations.

Though those were my only two major projects of the week, (actually only two days, since the festival began on Friday) the rest of my time in the office was spent helping out with miscellaneous tasks to better help others in their preparation for the weekend ahead. Anything from helping out at reception, entering information on various websites, (three in all) to making sure the volunteer packets were in order before they arrived on site on Friday.

The office took some time off around the festival to make sure all energy was focused on the event, so my next day of work will be this upcoming Wednesday and I look very forward to getting back into the office and seeing what needs to be done in order to make sure all housekeeping issues are taken care of and that any discrepancies are sorted out as well.

More to come!

-DGray

As you may know, it is the week prior to the Austin City Limits Music Festival and needless to say, things have been rather busy around C3 Presents. Many of the employees have changed work location to ‘on site’ at the festival, in order to take the necessary preparations for the weekend’s activities.

Myself on the other hand, (though this will change Wed. Sept. 30th) well I’ve been even more busy than usual with the work needing to be done at the office itself. Once again, over the past week I have helped out at reception, and again, due to The Festival being only days away, more and more people are calling the office to obtain information concerning the event. Everything from the typical FAQs found on the website, to more specific artist related questions. Either way, the questions go through reception and that  means the phone is constantly ringing.

I have also been working with Mrs. H. and Brooke again on the ‘dirt in cans’ project. In fact, most of yesterday was actually spent re-labeling the tin cans with a more appropriate sticker, one that has all the CORRECT headliners displayed neatly for the patrons to enjoy. Over the next couple days I will be delivering said product to various spots around town to help promote the festival as much as possible leading up to it’s beginning.

I was also put in contact with M. McD. of artist management last week and have been helping her out as well. In order to promote ACL after shows, parties, etc. She asked if I could put up posters at various hot spots around town. I suggested the campus area as well as some healthy promotion on the South Lamar area, both of which seemed valid seeing as she said, “that would be great!”

As always, the ongoing project with Mr. P. continues to flourish. I have had good luck in finding more and more information to add to the spreadsheet and the more I do it, the easier it gets to initially find the information. However, this week Mr. P. has been on site at the Festival quite a bit and I have not been able to check in with him nearly as much as I would otherwise.

Finally, Mrs. E. requested my help with a small project at the end of the week as well. She needed information regarding concerts, events, comedy shows, etc. posted online in order to cross reference the information we had with the information the venue had on the event as well. This did not take long at all, but nevertheless was a good learning experience in the aspect of discovering what information is truly relevant when it comes to ‘putting on a show’ as well as understanding what parts of that information one needs in order to construct a full closure on the going’s on of the respective evenings.

All in all, it has been a rather busy week, but one filled with much anticipation for the weekend ahead. In fact, we all hope to see you at the Festival this weekend, enjoying what we work so hard to make happen for concert lovers everywhere. More to come..

-Dylan

This weekend, when speaking of work related to the internship, was spent buried into my laptop doing research and homework. Though dull at some points, it is work experience that in invaluable.

My ongoing project with Mr. P is going swimmingly, and substantial head way is being made in both information and format. To this point, I think he has been impressed with my work, the information I’ve presented, but even more so with my dedication to the work itself. It took a whole day’s worth of work to research and input the information for the other spreadsheet he had me doing, and I was also able to present him new material in the ongoing project as well. I don’t know, I felt good about it. Anyway, we worked for an  hour or so Monday morning fine tuning the format, but overall, again, I think he is impressed. I then continued on the other spreadsheet Brooke had given me the week prior. I also worked on this over the weekend, but was unable to finish. However, I was nearing the end and knew I could finish by day’s end. And true to my goal, I finished by 4:30 and was out the door around 5:15 after a final check in with Mr. P.

On Wednesday, I began the day by working reception for a long while. It has definitely been interesting working reception here and there over the past few days. It’s a very fast way to learn who does what in the office. Judging by the nature of the call, you learn to infer not only what division that employee works with, but also what subjects and FAQs goes along with each said division. Not only that, but it sure does help with one’s ability to multitask. There’s over 40 people in the office, and all the calls go through 1 receptionist. Needless to say, it can get rather hectic. After relief did arrive, I busied myself in the intern bull pin and continued to input data for Mr. P’s project.

Friday finally comes and my day runs long, but exhilarating. I arrive and make my usual run around the office to see where my help is most needed that day. I find it to be with Mrs. R., and she needs more organizational help with merchandise. I spend the next portion of the day organizing and labeling the products in similar fashions as before, but now after sorting them by size and gender, I was to fold and prepare them for pick up or delivery. After this was complete, I disposed of the cardboard boxes that held the merchandise and continued over to reception where I did that dance for roughly and hour.

The last part of my day was spent with Mr. P more closely examining the information in one of the spreadsheets. He proceeded to give me yet another online resource to even further help in the identification of information for the spreadsheet. With this tool, I was able to retrieve far more information about each artist, and thusly, had that much more information to input. I spent the remainder of that day inputing more information, knowing full well that this job would too last me through the weekend. We printed off other needed information for me to have over the weekend before I left for the day. Lots to do, and even more to come.

-DGray

Week 2:

Over the weekend I was able to make a lot of head way on Mr. P’s ongoing project for Artist Management. Finding all the information I needed proved to be extremely difficult, but I got all that I could, which seemed to be sufficient as I received a “good job” from Mr. P. for the info I had at that point. Nothing like a good ‘ol pat on the back. When I got to the office, I first checked in with Mrs. W. to see what was on my agenda for the day. She said that I’d be needed with Mrs. H., Mr. P., and Mrs. R. who had me work with merchandising. I didn’t get to work with Mrs. R. until the following day, though.

But before I get ahead of myself, I made my stop by Mr. P’s office, and had the encounter mentioned previously and then headed to reception to work the phones between shifts. I stayed there for about two hours in which time I answered phones, as well as made further progress on Mr. P’s project. Once the receptionist relief came in, I moved back to Mr. P’s office and spent the remainder of the day developing a new spreadsheet for determining again, information I cannot specify.

The next day was spent doing more research for Mr. P., as well as finally working with Mrs. R. who needed help with some organizing of her SWAG (Stuff we all get). In other words, the merchandise the company keeps on hand to sweeten the deal with current and potential clients, sponsors, co-branders, employees, etc. Thus, the remainder of that afternoon, with the exception of the final hour in which I continued my ever-going research, was spent dividing, categorizing, labeling, and constructing bins in the proper order in which to hold all the merchandise.

Friday, roles around and things get a little more interesting. The first part of the day was spent with Mr. P., discussing what I had found so far, as well as sitting in on a call between he and an Agent located in the Denver area I believe. The topics of discussion were of a mutual client and more specifically, what was being done about his/her career at the given moment. This was a small, but great moment for me to really understand how this business works. Just a matter of, how things get done, the dialogue between two different professionals in the business and how the tone changes within the conversation, as well as getting in on official dealings of future plans. For me, very fascinating and revealing stuff.

After working with him for close a good while, I figured it would be best to get back to the intern bull pin and work out some of the requests he has for me. Before doing that however, I stopped by Mrs. H’s office to see if she, or Brooke had anything for me. In fact, they did. Brooke had compiled a fair amount of feedback data taken about sponsors in their relation to one of the many festivals C3 promotes throughout the year. It was my job to sort the data by percentage and relay the information back to her via spreadsheet. Needless to say, it took a long time to go through 27 pages of data and tally each individual vote. As of Sunday, (9/13) I’m still very much still working on this project. More to come

-DGray

So this week began my first week of work at C3 Presents here in Austin, Texas. Though exciting, it has been extremely busy. It’s only been two days and already I’ve began working with four different divisions of the company. The first, Human Resources. Mrs. W. , HR Director of C3, is actually the person who hired me at this position, but she is also my supervisor. Thus far, I have checked in with Mrs. W. on a daily basis so she can give me an overview as to how the office functions as well as putting me in contact with the other departments in which I will be working.

Naturally, these encounters were put into place within the first minutes of my first day. The second department I was introduced to was Festival Promotion with Mrs. H. and her assistant Brooke. To my liking, I was put to work immediately with a delivery job pertaining to dirt.. No, in all seriousness I was to be delivering a clever marketing product C3 had come up with as a free gift to it’s (potential) sponsors. In a small tin can labeled “ACL Music Fest” was an even smaller bag of dirt which came from the same batch that was used to lay the new grass down in Zilker Park this year, specifically for the festival, in hopes they will use the dirt to create their own small patch of grass. The idea was to give the sponsor the opportunity to, “take a little bit of ACL home with you” when the appropriate time came.

The next day of work, Friday, began with me making the deliveries to the various sponsors around town. I explained to Mrs. W. that Mrs. H. had given me the project and that I would be late to work for that reason. Needless to say, after class that day I got in my car and made the specified deliveries. This didn’t take as long as I expected, and was at work before 1p that day. When I arrived I checked in with Mrs. W. and she asked if I could help up at Reception. There I met Bex, the receptionist, and she proceeded to give me a run down of how the front desk works. She showed me how to use the phones, take messages the correct way, as well as various other clerical aspects of running the front of an office. I continued to work at the front desk until about 3p at which time I was introduced to Mr. P. of Artist Management.

For the remainder of the afternoon I worked with Mr. P. on developing spreadsheets he wanted made in order to best sort data on artists. The specifics cannot be divulged, but needless to say it is an intense project, one that requires vast amounts of research and poignant attention to detail. However, this assignment has been the most enjoyable more me thus far, simply due to the nature of the work. Being a Music Business student, artist representation is definitely a field of interest to me, and the more I work with it, the more I’ll like it, hopefully.

That just about concludes my first week at work at C3. I’ve got a little homework over the weekend for Mr. P., but aside from that, I’m not exactly sure what next week will bring my way

-DGray