Rachele Cermak | Life Stream & Portfolio

I am passionate about slam poetry. I want everyone that attends an event to get goosebumps, hate a piece, cheer for a poet, boo a judge and tear-up a little bit. Just feel something!

The National Poetry Slam is in its 21st year and it coming to Saint Paul August 3 – 7. This is a big deal!! 80 teams from all over the world will be competing over 5 days. Most cities will plan for this a year or two out. Saint Paul only had five months (the contract was signed in February). Now Nationals is two months away!

I love getting people excited about slam, not just because I write and get a natural high when performing, but because it’s guaranteed to make you understand life from different perspectives. So when asked if I would like to use my understand of social Internet environments, I gladly accepted the staff role as NPS 2010 Community Manager.

My first step in the marketing plan: Simple community awareness. We’re starting with a Facebook page and Website that people can search for and receive basic information from about slam. Our event will be posted on like-minded Facebook Fan Pages. Press Releases will be sent out on the local and national level.

Second step will start in July, as we accelerate the excitement. This will include releasing the line-up of venues that have signed on to support NPS and hold bouts over the week. This line-up will be posted on every major online events calendar so visitors can quickly share the information. Facebook will also be a major tool in not just sharing the event, but allowing for conversation to start surrounding it.

Two weeks before Nationals we’re going to push our Twitter page which will help poets keep up to the second tabs on all of the events. I’m going to have designated Tweeters in each bout that will post the scores. Each of these people will be listed under the NPS Twitter profile as “Scores” so people can easily follow along with whats happening.

Once the events start I want to have something occur connected with Foursquare, so that when people check-in to so many bouts that they can be recognized for it. But I don’t know how easy it is to create a badge for the event.

I have other ideas that I’ll most likely be sharing soon, just have to approve them first. But in the mean time if you have any contributions on how social media would help the National Poetry Slam, I’d be 100% open to comments and discussion about it.

Oh, and don’t forgot to “like” the Facebook Page.  Thanks!

The Untiedt’s farm thousands of acres of land in the Waverly, Minnesota, area. Jerry Untiedt hired me in May 2009 to photograph their farm during the seasonal progression of growth. After compiling these photographs, Jerry asked me in January 2010 to complete the second phase of his marketing plan and create a website for him.

I took the lead on design and project management and secured a developer to build the Drupal powered website. While designing I knew the photos I took needed to find a home – actually multiple homes – on the site. I took over 48 GB of photos during the six months of documentation. The design also needed to immediately communicate what their unique selling point is – “We Grow For You!” The site had to be about sincere interactions since in their direct marketing at roadside stands they constantly explain why their products are superior. This knowledge could not be lost on the site and had to have a space allotted to share it.

Thus www.UntiedtsWeGrowForYou.com has the ability to store a photo gallery for each product they grow, include a rotating home page slide show to promote what’s hot that week, visually share information about growing methods, crop time lines, different locations, employees and a publicly open stream of photographs for news articles. The site includes a blog and Twitter feed so that people can read about seasonal updates or those more timely posts – found simply on the home page.

The fully functioning site launched May 2010. My design changed a bit from the PSD files to what the Drupal site ended up looking like but the functionality I intended for it to have remained intact. I’ll be posting photos of my design soon. But for now,
View the Site.

This year’s season started so early Megan hasn’t had time to add all of the page content or photography, but the ability exists. This site can walk a user through what farming means to them. It can visually share their growing methods, passionate staff, and where to find their products. This site will allow them to truly share, through the digital interface, what growing for you for the last 40 years has meant.