The New and Improved Brazen Careerist!

August 24, 2009 — Kristina Summers

A couple years ago I received an email from a person I’d never heard of who asked me to be a part of a site with a concept that was totally foreign to me. That person was Ryan Paugh and the site, Brazen Careerist. He told me that as an important part of the gen-y blogging community, I would make an excellent addition to the team of bloggers he was putting together for a new kind of online social community.

My only experience with the whole gen-y movement up to that point was that I had read Penelope Trunk’s (co-founder of Brazen) book, “The Brazen Careerist” and had listed it on my fledgling blog (still a class assignment at the time) as one of the best resources for new bloggers and newbies to the career world in general. I received a nice response from her and thought I’d hit the big time, getting a response from a real live author!

I agreed to be a part of this new venture and have never regretted it. When the site launched I was proud to be on those early email blasts full of the most interesting posts. I made contacts and considered myself among elite company as I came to know and respect many of the contributors through their blogs.

So much has changed since that day. My blog grows all the time, and I have become a person who is proud to be referred to as a blogger. As Brazen has grown as well I now consider it a challenge to remain at the top of my game, to get a mention in that weekly email. Both my writing quality and my self-confidence have also grown.

None of that would be possible without Brazen Careerist and their online network of wonderful bloggers. Because of the exposure I have received through the syndication of my blog, I have developed a professional reputation as a blogger and social media consultant. I have been asked to speak at conferences, and had my blog picked up by more than a dozen different web sites. Pretty cool.

Now, Brazen is changing, for the better. Tomorrow Brazen Careerist will launch with a whole new look and feel but will continue the excellent service known well by all who have used the site for networking, career advice or simply putting forth an opinion.

Make sure to check out the changes! I know I will!

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Everyday Public Relations is Going Green!

August 24, 2009 — Kristina Summers


WARNING: The following post contains some controversial opinions but is not meant to offend. These are simply my thoughts and ideas. Feel free to share your own, and all constructive criticism is welcome as always; but please no unsupported arguments or religious debates. Thanks.

A long time coming, Everyday Public Relations is making some changes. While still focused primarily on PR in our everyday lives, you may begin to notice that more and more posts have a conservation angle to them. You’ll see ideas and tips for those who practice “green” PR as well as helpful social media hints for those in the conservation world.

To better explain this change let me start by telling you that I have these two great passions in life. (I actually have more, but only two relate to my career directly.) I love PR & Communications and I love conservation work. I have been lucky so far in that I get to combine the two on a regular basis. Working for a conservation organization as a public affairs officer has really been the best job I’ve ever had.

I do not however come into the world of conservation as a blind idealist or a hopeless treehugger. My viewpoints on the subject may seem a little extreme, and are hard to define, but I will try, in an effort to help my readers understand the nature of some of my posts.

Here goes: The planet Earth is the greatest evolutionary miracle that man has ever known. “What about people?” you cry. We (humans) are but one species, a blink of an eye on a planet that has seen more change, more wonder than any other that we currently know about. Throughout the studies done to explore space, our final frontier, it has been determined that our home planet is the only one of its kind – and is that way because everything came together so perfectly, at just the right time. Practically the definition of a miracle.

Now whether you attribute this miracle to God, the Big Bang or some other theory is your opinion and not something I care to debate. I do not judge and do not care for those who do.

Humans will not be around forever. Sad, I suppose but true. Eventually the Earth will die, as everything that exists and has ever exists does. It is an unavoidable truth-the planet’s lifespan will one day conclude.

Now that we are all depressed thinking about the end of the world let me say this. The timing of that inevitable event depends largely on our treatment of this blue and green world we call home. This is what I want to change.

I love this planet, down to its smallest bugs. I’m fascinated by life. To that end I want to share the wonder I experience on a daily basis with as many people and future generations as I can. I want my kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and so forth to know the simple joy of a summer night listening to a chorus of frogs; the majestic imposing beauty of the Rocky Mountains; the frozen seemingly endless oceans of the south pole with so much life teeming underneath the ice; the intracacies of a mountain bog’s eco-system and the awe of a fire rushing across a prairie-renewing life from its ashy wake. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

There is not a ton of money in conservation work or what has been dubbed “green pr” by some. Often you work long hours for little pay, much of your efforts being difficult and thankless. If you don’t love it, or have some greater calling, you burn out fast. It is demanding and despite the growing green movement, often your audience is stubborn, set in their ways. money driven or simply indifferent, which is the worst of all.

So…that being said, and I know I’ve gone on a good while now, my blog is changing, I think for the better. I want to really reach out to those who are using their PR and communications skills for more than just to make a profit. If I can help those working for a better world via PR and social media then I have been successful. There will still be solid tips on using public relations, and social media in the new world of work, there will simply be the added component of using what I know to help others help the planet…for as long as it remains our home.

Hope you stick around and join the conservation. I look forward to your comments.

Posted in PR, advice, blog, bloggers, business, career, challenges, change, communications, conservation, education, enviromental activism, environment, ethics, gen x, gen y, happiness, income, money, natural resources, new bloggers, news, nonprofit public-relations career e-news blogging, nonprofit public-relations career e-news blogging enviroment activism NRDC earthjustice wildlife network, planet, public affairs, public relations, reason, social media, sucessful, wildlife, work. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Everyday Public Relations is Going Green!

August 24, 2009 — Kristina Summers


WARNING: The following post contains some controversial opinions but is not meant to offend. These are simply my thoughts and ideas. Feel free to share your own, and all constructive criticism is welcome as always; but please no unsupported arguments or religious debates. Thanks.

A long time coming, Everyday Public Relations is making some changes. While still focused primarily on PR in our everyday lives, you may begin to notice that more and more posts have a conservation angle to them. You’ll see ideas and tips for those who practice “green” PR as well as helpful social media hints for those in the conservation world.

To better explain this change let me start by telling you that I have these two great passions in life. (I actually have more, but only two relate to my career directly.) I love PR & Communications and I love conservation work. I have been lucky so far in that I get to combine the two on a regular basis. Working for a conservation organization as a public affairs officer has really been the best job I’ve ever had.

I do not however come into the world of conservation as a blind idealist or a hopeless treehugger. My viewpoints on the subject may seem a little extreme, and are hard to define, but I will try, in an effort to help my readers understand the nature of some of my posts.

Here goes: The planet Earth is the greatest evolutionary miracle that man has ever known. “What about people?” you cry. We (humans) are but one species, a blink of an eye on a planet that has seen more change, more wonder than any other that we currently know about. Throughout the studies done to explore space, our final frontier, it has been determined that our home planet is the only one of its kind – and is that way because everything came together so perfectly, at just the right time. Practically the definition of a miracle.

Now whether you attribute this miracle to God, the Big Bang or some other theory is your opinion and not something I care to debate. I do not judge and do not care for those who do.

Humans will not be around forever. Sad, I suppose but true. Eventually the Earth will die, as everything that exists and has ever exists does. It is an unavoidable truth-the planet’s lifespan will one day conclude.

Now that we are all depressed thinking about the end of the world let me say this. The timing of that inevitable event depends largely on our treatment of this blue and green world we call home. This is what I want to change.

I love this planet, down to its smallest bugs. I’m fascinated by life. To that end I want to share the wonder I experience on a daily basis with as many people and future generations as I can. I want my kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and so forth to know the simple joy of a summer night listening to a chorus of frogs; the majestic imposing beauty of the Rocky Mountains; the frozen seemingly endless oceans of the south pole with so much life teeming underneath the ice; the intracacies of a mountain bog’s eco-system and the awe of a fire rushing across a prairie-renewing life from its ashy wake. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

There is not a ton of money in conservation work or what has been dubbed “green pr” by some. Often you work long hours for little pay, much of your efforts being difficult and thankless. If you don’t love it, or have some greater calling, you burn out fast. It is demanding and despite the growing green movement, often your audience is stubborn, set in their ways. money driven or simply indifferent, which is the worst of all.

So…that being said, and I know I’ve gone on a good while now, my blog is changing, I think for the better. I want to really reach out to those who are using their PR and communications skills for more than just to make a profit. If I can help those working for a better world via PR and social media then I have been successful. There will still be solid tips on using public relations, and social media in the new world of work, there will simply be the added component of using what I know to help others help the planet…for as long as it remains our home.

Hope you stick around and join the conservation. I look forward to your comments.

Posted in Green PR, change, conservation, environment, nonprofit public-relations career e-news blogging enviroment activism NRDC earthjustice wildlife network, public affairs, public relations. 3 Comments »

Working 9-5 (no longer)

August 20, 2009 — Kristina Summers

The days of working Monday through Friday, 9-5 are over, whether some of the “old guard” want to admit or not.

I think that one of the hardest things that many of my colleagues (many of them older) have had to deal with is that the new generation of workers flooding out of colleges are not the traditional sort. We don’t want to work our 8 hour days and then forget about the office. And this is not because of some masochistic work-a-holic tendency either. We are not lazy; We want to pay our dues, we just do it differently and the opportunities opened up to us via social media allow us to work more on our own terms.

For instance, rather than being bound to a desk or a land line phone, I take my work with me. I put in the hours when I am well rested and more efficient, making my productivity higher. Unfortunately those hours often do not fall between the traditional 8 hour office day.

I also am continually trying to further educate myself, which means that I am still in school and even when I am not, I look around for seminars and workshops that will help me do what I do, better. Well as many of you might know, going to school and working full time often don’t mix. You tend to get pushed into late evening classes or disregarded at work. I’ve even had it implied that my education is interfering with my work simply because my co-workers don’t see my happy shining face behind my desk each day promptly at 8am.

To heck with that. I register for my classes, the good ones, during peak times (in a responsible manner of course) getting most on the same day, which means that I do end up out of the office at least one day a week.

Well, no offense, but I do not believe it is necessary any longer to put in 8 straight hours a day, five days a week in order to qualify that you have a career. Sometimes I think I got more respect working as a bartender than I do now in a “respectable” agency environment. It’s no wonder so many of us have become entrepreneurs, working on our own time-tables.

I’ve been told that I tend to march to the beat of my own drummer, and that is fine with me. I come in early on days when I don’t have class and stay late as well. When I have class or when I feel like eating breakfast with the kids I come in a little later. If I am feeling especially sluggish in the afternoon I may take off for the afternoon but them get cranked back up around 10pm. I’ve even been known to take a day off during the week and then come in on a weekend. Sound crazy? Maybe, but the point is I get my work (and then some) done and receive no complaints about the quality (or the quantity).

So my point is this. I work when I work and I refuse to be boxed in by a ridiculously outdated stereotype. I always have my blackberry, so I’m never really out of touch anyways. The kind of work I do could be (in truth) done from just about any location with WiFi so I am thinking that maybe they should be glad I am not sitting in a beach side bar and grill sipping a cold beer and phoning it in.

Our generation gets that ideas and inspiration come at all times of day and night and that if you wait until that clock reads 9am – you could lose that spark. Don’t become obsessed with work, but work around your schedule and your life, rather than the machine. Studies show that happy workers are more productive anyhow so maybe the old guard should take a lesson from us and take off to go fishing around 3pm some beautiful Tuesday afternoon. It could totally change their perspective.

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Are you over your JOB?

August 4, 2009 — Kristina Summers

The economy is down, times are tough, we are all tightening our belts and trying to cut costs and hearing again and again that things will turn around…eventually…But what about those that can’t wait?

I came across a blog not too long ago called The Chief Happiness Officer. Although he is another part of the world, where things are much different (the world makes a little more sense if your Danish I suppose), he often makes a great point about having one life, so why be miserable? There are no do-overs. I admire his thinking.

Right now, there are those that are trapped in jobs where they are not necessarily treated fairly but have no choice but to hold one. Times are tough and walking away from a career affects more than your paycheck, especially if you have a family to consider.

On the other hand, how do you keep on making that commute and completing the mundane tasks assigned as everything you love, the reasons you went to work in the first place are slowly and deliberately stripped away leaving you exposed…and then they kick you once more for good measure and tell you to “play ball.”

I wrote once that there are people in the working world that can lift you up, and then there are those that absolutely suck the life force right out of you. For whatever reason the problems with the economy are hitting the former at a disproportionate rate. More and more of the individuals I admire are receiving the pink slip while the leeches that secretly latch on to your ideas and then suck them from you until they become fat off your accomplishments and fall back down to the ground only to be picked up by the next unsuspecting and passionate newbie continue to rise to the top, rewarded with corner offices and Emmy’s they didn’t earn and don’t deserve.

When do you put your foot down and say ENOUGH of this SHIT!

I asked in the beginning about the people that can’t wait for things to get better. Are you one of those that is tired of having your ideas stolen by ridiculous high-school-esque game-players while you continue to pound out 60 hour work weeks for the same low salary that can’t even feed your family, much less buy school supplies? If so, what do you do?

When times are tough, I have always found a way to muscle through and come out on the other side a stronger person for it. But now as my confidence is chipped away I fear that if I stay where I am I will become a “true company woman”, passionless and embittered, draining the next generation of do-gooders that come into the office, living off their energy like some sort of corporate vampire. I don’t want to be that person.

I want to hold on to my dreams not those of another.

To Be Continued…..

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When is Enough, ENOUGH?

August 4, 2009 — Kristina Summers


The economy is down, times are tough, we are all tightening our belts and trying to cut costs and hearing again and again that things will turn around…eventually…But what about those that can’t wait?

I came across a blog not too long ago called The Chief Happiness Officer. Although he is another part of the world, where things are much different (the world makes a little more sense if your Danish I suppose), he often makes a great point about having one life, so why be miserable? There are no do-overs. I admire his thinking.

Right now, there are those that are trapped in jobs where they are not necessarily treated fairly but have no choice but to hold one. Times are tough and walking away from a career affects more than your paycheck, especially if you have a family to consider.

On the other hand, how do you keep on making that commute and completing the mundane tasks assigned as everything you love, the reasons you went to work in the first place are slowly and deliberately stripped away leaving you exposed…and then they kick you once more for good measure and tell you to “play ball.”

I wrote once that there are people in the working world that can lift you up, and then there are those that absolutely suck the life force right out of you. For whatever reason the problems with the economy are hitting the former at a disproportionate rate. More and more of the individuals I admire are receiving the pink slip while the leeches that secretly latch on to your ideas and then suck them from you until they become fat off your accomplishments and fall back down to the ground only to be picked up by the next unsuspecting and passionate newbie continue to rise to the top, rewarded with corner offices and Emmy’s they didn’t earn and don’t deserve.

When do you put your foot down and say ENOUGH of this SHIT!

I asked in the beginning about the people that can’t wait for things to get better. Are you one of those that is tired of having your ideas stolen by ridiculous high-school-esque game-players while you continue to pound out 60 hour work weeks for the same low salary that can’t even feed your family, much less buy school supplies? If so, what do you do?

When times are tough, I have always found a way to muscle through and come out on the other side a stronger person for it. But now as my confidence is chipped away I fear that if I stay where I am I will become a “true company woman”, passionless and embittered, draining the next generation of do-gooders that come into the office, living off their energy like some sort of corporate vampire. I don’t want to be that person.

I want to hold on to my dreams not those of another.

To Be Continued…..

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