Paid or Unpaid, that is the question.

Graduation is less than a month away, and there a million and one decisions that have to be made in a short period of time!

One thing I believe is on the mind of a lot of students graduating: Is taking another unpaid (or barely paid) internship after graduation the right decision?

This is an increasingly pertinent question, with many articles popping up, like the NYTimes Article: The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not?

What makes more sense? Taking a full time salary job that's so so, or taking an unpaid internship in the industry you want to be in, doing what you want to do?

What's more important? ...money? experience? networking? benefits? Are times so desperate that we should give in and have the "take what you can get" attitude?

I feel like that is the attitude many older adults are pushing on us...but I guess I'm like a hopeless romantic when it comes to my career, and I have faith that someday a perfect job will come and sweep me off my feet, and carry me off into the horizon with benefits and a 401K in tow!

(cartoon care of toothpaste for dinner!)

Evan Roth inspires again...IN PERSON

::Evan Roth at Hofstra::

Evan Roth spoke at Hofstra today, and partially due to me I believe, as I prompted my Professor to invite him to "Not All Artists are Starving" in March. Although he couldn't make it because he was in Paris, he offered to speak when he was in NYC for the Seven on Seven event at the New Museum...thus...TODAY happened.

::Major Points::

"Weekend Projects"

Good ideas can happen in a short amount of time and be published in a day or two. Quick projects can have big impacts on people. Think smarter not harder.

Publishing online early and often is extremely important. Because of stuff being online, people can easily see what you've done. In other words, having an online presence! (dont have one? check out promoteYOU!)

Always continue to publish. Worried about people stealing your work?...don't. Sharing ideas is really important, and projects develop of life of their own.

Use social media to your advantage. In his class, Viral Media for Artists...they learn about making/packaging things in a way where people will find your work. For example, at Boing Boing, a popular blog, you can suggest a link. They tell you how to, and this good start to getting through to any blog publisher.

Tying into mainstream press and the blogging world can help market your projects. Look for memes (internet/pop culture topic trends). No big companies know how to do this...they spend money on viral ad campaigns trying to look sincere, but people see through the bullshit.

::Projects by Evan Roth::

His earliest inspiration was hearing "Straight outta Compton"...and curse words...He used this inspiration for a project while he was at Grad school at Parsons. It was a reduction project...he took all the words out at the album Straight outta Compton" and only left the swears...there was about 6 minutes of explicit content left. He eventually got a cease and desist letter.

Graffiti Taxonomy...

Inspired by Edward Tufte, who did research on typography and was recently hired by Obama to do information graphics to demonstrate the financial situation we are in now.

Collected data (photographed tags in NYC), cleaned then up in photoshop, isolated letters, put them in a new format...a poster, and wheat pasted them in the location that the data was collected. This enable people who aren't familiar with graffiti to see it in a different way...and appreciate it.

Started the Graffiti Research Lab...combining graffiti and technology. First project was LED throwies....the videos and project turned into contagious media...ending in open source, and a how-to on instructables.

He also started the Free Art and Technology Lab...combining pop culture with open source culture.

F.A.T. presents Fuck Google -- at Transmedia in Berlin.

"We all love their products, but no one corporation should own all of our data."

BAD ASS MOTHER FUCKER project (in playing with SEO)

It only took Evan Roth 13 days to get his website the number one hit for bad ass mother fucker.

Tech note: the title tag and H1 tag are most important to getting google analytics to put up your site. Key words associated with URL also help.

USA USB. Experiment using memes to promote a project. It worked...he released this around 9/11 and it got a lot of publicity.

Evan Roth at Hofstra!

Today, Evan Roth is coming to my school to speak!! I've been a huge admirer of his since about a year ago when I had to do a paper on him for my new media class. I really need to go to be now. I wish I had $$ to got the Seven on Seven event he's in NYC for! More on his awesomeness coming soon.

The 2010 Eat Out Awards Ceremony at Le Poisson Rouge

At Time Out we've been preparing for the Eat Out Awards for quite some time! Last week myself, another intern, and my supervisor, Brooke, went on a walk through at the venue, Le Poisson Rouge.

As someone interested in event planning, I love going to walk throughs and watching people work, listening to them talk. It takes great communication and people skills to plan events...you work with so many people and you have the chance to make everyone you're working with happy, and that's what I love about it. I also love the aspect of collaboration that goes on when you get to work with creative people.

Finally, the big night! I was working the day of the event so I got to be there helping from start to finish! We arrived at 2pm (doors didn't open until 6!) to start setting up the venue. We had the semi daunting task of fitting enough chairs and tables for everyone to sit AND move around. I got a great work out lifting chairs over my head! Myself and another Marketing Intern took charge of the Guest List and welcomed the guests. It was a great turnout, and the guests really had a great time. There was free Stella and wine, so who wouldn't have an awesome time!?

I was able to talk to a lot of the other interns about the current job market and how tough it's been. There are a lot of interns in the marketing department, mostly PR or Marketing & Events, and within the group there's a wide variety of situations. Some interns have been out of school for almost a year, and some are in college, one in high school! I also spoke with another co-worker about his story, how he got where he is. From that conversation I took the fact that it's time to start applying for jobs that aren't appealing as I'd like them to be, because just getting a foot in the door anywhere, can lead to something great!