Do you ever wonder what it is I actually do, day-to-day, in the office? If you’ve read some of my past blog posts or my About Me page, then you know I handle communications, social media, meeting planning and a myriad of other things for the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association and three other poultry-related organizations.
But what does that mean, exactly?
In the case of today, it means my “to do list” is all over the board. In fact, I jokingly likened it to a Pollock painting on Facebook today. Okay, that was perhaps a little extreme and I really wrote that all in fun, but sometimes I look at all these projects I am prioritizing and wonder how it’s all going to get done.
I get that way on Mondays, especially. I can’t be the only one like this, right?
So just for fun, here are 10 different things I worked on in the office today (and, truth be told, some at home tonight after getting Joe to bed):
1. I updated several documents for Friday’s Board of Directors meeting of the Chicken and Egg Association of Minnesota. These included a spreadsheet for its golf outing in August, basically showing final attendance, sponsors, expenses and a comparison to these same numbers last year, as well as a social media update on its Facebook and Twitter accounts.
2. I re-organized some of Minnesota Turkey’s Pinterest boards and pinned a whole bunch of yummy turkey appetizer recipes to a new board. I also freaked out just a little when I realized that there are several links on http://www.minnesotaturkey.com that aren’t working right now. Breathe, Lara, breathe … all in good time.
3. I edited a short article that will be printed in eBites, a month e-newsletter for the Minnesota Farmers Feed Us project. This nifty e-newsletter goes out to about 8,000 people who have requested more information about Minnesota farmers and agriculture industries.
4. I researched restaurants options in Bloomington, Minnesota for an upcoming Board of Directors meeting for the Midwest Poultry Federation, one of the additional poultry organizations I work for and I emailed a rooming list of participants over to the hotel where we are holding the meeting.
5. I developed a request for proposal for updating the Midwest Poultry Federation’s website, and emailed this out to two different marketing agencies. I can’t believe I am admitting this, but this particular website hasn’t been re-designed in probably close to 8 years and it’s definitely starting to look its age. Ack!
6. I started pulling together a comparison of proposals for the location of the 2016 and 2017 Midwest Poultry Federation Convention, the largest regional poultry show in the U.S. that is held annually in the Twin Cities in March. I’m in charge of all the contracts for the convention space as well as any hotels we use – along with all the communications, marketing, speaker coordination and attendee registration for the show.
7. I opened a Google Analytics account for the Chicken and Egg Association of Minnesota and embedded the necessary code within each web page at http://www.mnchicken.org so that we can start tracking more information about who is visiting this website, how long they are staying and what web pages are the most popular.
8. I pulled together my notes on a new “Issues Management-Communications Committee” for Minnesota Turkey, including a timeline of meetings and hot topics that could be covered.
9. I designed an ad promoting the Minnesota Turkey website for recipes and our speakers bureau for presentations on turkey farming for the newsletter of an organization whose members are the Family and Consumer Science (FACS) teachers in Minnesota high schools.
10. I pulled together information on handouts and giveaways for Saturday’s “Celebrate Food and Ag Day” at the University of Minnesota’s Gopher football game. I’ll be attending, along with several of our staff, so I needed to organize our schedule, order game tickets and make sure parking passes were in order. (Are you going to the game? Look for Minnesota Turkey on the concourse before the game and at halftime – if you get there early enough, we’ve giving away some fun can coolies!)
Variety? Yes. Some interesting, some more mundane. But that’s a day in the work life of me – and probably for most people who work for nonprofit/associations like I do. It sounds super cliche, but we really do wear a lot of hats. (I didn’t even tell you I had to review documents from our health insurance company regarding our renewal date for 2014. Boring. But necessary. Or the phone call I took about new research on LED lighting in turkey barns. That was actually pretty cool.)
Mostly it’s good to have my job.
However, right now, after re-reading this list, I think I’m going to call it a night and watch the rest of the San Diego-Houston football game. I’ve got my fantasy football team to think of, after all. I’m playing Teacher Man this week and my win hinges on Andre Johnson doing nothing. We’ll see how that goes for me.
Have a great week, everyone!