Detroit

That is Canada, across the river.

Well, I'm back from Detroit. It was definitely a learning experience for me. I went to 3-4 sessions a day for 4 days with many different topics including Entertainment PR, Agency vs. Corporate PR, Ethics in PR and Event Planning. I met lots of different people, student and professional. It was weird being around so many type A personalities. Being a type B, I am definitely a minority in my chosen profession. I spent time with the Biola chapter president, Sandi Reece, the chapter secretary, Val Russel, and our faculty adviser, Prof Bower. I am the vice president, if you didn't know...


The city was nothing like what we had imagined. This photo is of the GM Renaissance Center, where our hotel was, with 7 interconnected buildings. The tall one in the back is our hotel- the main section of the center. It is surrounded by four office buildings, and connected via skyway to two other hotels. The conference took place in our hotel as well as one of the skyway connected hotels, so we didn't get out much, which was fine since there wasn't much to see. The city is very empty, not filled with people like New York or any other big city. It is also based in the auto industry and other "office jobs," not in commerce or tourism. We didn't find many resturants or shops. If we had a rental car, I'm sure we would have found an area better suited for tourism, but we didn't. The mode of transportation around the city was the people mover, which took us to the sports stadiums (home of the Detroit Redwings- hockey, Tigers- Baseball, and Lions- football) and to Greektown. There were other stops, but I think they just take you to other hotels and offices.

Detroit Tigers

Greektown

Our new friends from Colorado

One thing that was pushed was networking. Our problem was that, already being from a big city, we weren’t looking for contacts to get us out of where we were, so we searched for people already from the LA area, without much luck. On our West Coast PRSA/PRSSA dinner in Greektown, we ened up sitting next to professionals from San Diego and at the joint conference social, we made friends with students from Colorado. It was great fun, and who knows where these contacts will get us, but we didn't try quite as hard to get business cards as many other students did.

Overall, I think it was a quite successful trip. Next year the conference is in San Diego! That means a much larger group can go from Biola and we will be paying much less. I'm excited to see what comes from that!