Unbounded

[first of four parts]

March 27, 2006

I have been staring at the blank computer screen for the longest time and I’ve finally decided to put all my thoughts into writing.

All thoughts, relevant experiences, and ideas that should be shared and passed on to the succeeding batch of officers. My way of knotting all the loose ends. My way of closing this particular chapter. My EVP dossiers.

First, the easy part. All of my SMS files are now burned in 5 CD’s.

Now hard part, writing all of the ideas. I have a number of observations and recommendations on different isses and I will try to discuss everything to the best of my abilities in this letter. I’ve divided them into four parts:

1.0 On Activities in General
2.0 On Being an EVP
3.0 On Development
4.0 On Philosophies

Quite a serious tone no? Nah. Just my two cents.

Now prepare to be bored to death. Read on..


-Glenn


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1.0 On Activities in General

1.1 Tradition

"I don't want anybody buying my life's work and turning it into something it wasn't meant to be. A man wants to leave something behind the way he made it. And he wants it to be run the way he ran it...with a sense of honor, of dedication, of truth."
-Bill Parish

I believe Mr. Parish’s humble words of wisdom sums everything, even to the tiniest of details (If you must ask who Mr. Bill Parish is, he’s the guy Sir Anthony Hopkins played in Meet Joe Black. This was in reference to the issue where a company buyout was imminent). When it comes to activities, it’s only logical that successful activities be kept and improved while activities that flopped be reassessed and changed if necessary. Now with that line of thinking comes Tradition - where you retain the qualities of the time and tested activities. Reputation will naturally follow and play its part.

Here are a number of recurring activities from other organizations that seem to follow a tradition (and solid participation from its members if I might add):

• Business Management Society’s Practicum Bazaar.
• Society of Philosophy in Action’s Talk series.

Albeit that these activities are actually academically related and ties up with their departments, hence its natural recurrence, they have their weights.

• Ateneo Junior Marketing Association’s Shindig
• Chemistry Society’s Lab paraphernalia selling

These two examples are extremes – the former being an annual grandiose acquaintance party, while the latter is a small scale activity.

I’m not saying that we blindly follow suit. What I want to point out rather is that we retain the identity of activities that are proven successful. I’m talking about:

• Our annual culminating activities (Psyched).

Now actually, this tradition dates back to its founding year, but successful repackaging, branding, and marketing of the activity as Psyched in SY 2004-2005, along with its unique teaser release experienced relatively huge success.

In Psyched’05, Twenty-one individual designs were produced and posted around the campus to hype up the event. It had its share of controversy and hype when it was asked to be removed from posting by a professor of the Psychology department on the grounds that some of its depictions were “obscene”. The organization decided to decline and stressed that its sole intention was to show as holistic representation of the field, be it good or bad.

Adding to the air of controversy and hype was that a number of teaser posters were mysteriously missing. Speculations arose as to if it were stolen by the students or taken by the professor. The act was both flattering and frustrating. Flattering, because it was an act of appreciation. Frustrating, because a whole deal of investment was poured into its production and with the promotional materials stolen, information dissemination was weakened. The organization could not afford to produce more.

An example of unique and effective (and controversial if I may add) promotions.

• Our mid-year acquaintance party

In SY 2004-2005, the acquaintance party was organization wide and was dubbed Psychedelic Reloaded, in reference to Psychedelic, then the old branding of the annual culminating concert. It was a small scale but successful get-together in Intramuros.

But in SY 2005-2006, it expanded as a tie-up activity between Psyche of ADMU, Mandala and Psychedelics of UP, Miriam College’s Psychology Guild, and the Royal and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines’ Psychology Society (UST-Psychsoc for short. LOL). The event was named Bipolar: An extreme Psych party and was held in Elbow room, Metrowalk.

This was the first time ever that Psychology organizations collaborated to make one huge acquaintance party, uniting students of the same field in their respective schools.

It is also heartwarming to know that a number of other alliances took this as their benchmark, as they themselves planned to make one of their own (the Political Science alliance was once heard to be planning one but it did not push though. Psychfed will have a year end party in a bar in Taft avenue at the end of March, 2006.) social activities.

• Talks: (Piling Piling Araw, Dream Analysis, and other pop Psych talks)
• Convocations (AB and BS. Although this is a tie-up with the department, so it will naturally occur every schoolyear.)
• Information Dissemination activities (MD Awareness, WOW! SMS, etc.)
• Waiter for A Day
• The new SMS Mobile Library

If it works, stick with it. If not, consider revising or scrapping the next time around. It would be easier for both parties (the organization and members) since it’s less work for the organization to think up of new activities, and identification and recall to the members.

But what about it being too repetitive? That’s for you to discern.

1.2 Identity

The topic of “identity” is just about as important as “tradition”. My take on this is that as much as possible, established identities must be made on recurring/special activities. Logos, names, and time of release are but a few examples. Here are a few examples:

• Psyched
• SMS Reviewer Distributions
• Piling Piling Araw
• WOW! SMS
• MD Awareness
• Waiter for A Day
• Mobile Library

All are recurring activities and most have their own logos. All have established names and regular times at which they occur. It all helps with the identification by the members.

The key is consistency and recall.

1.3 Foresight

Plan everything from the members' perspective.

Members are naturally looking up to the activities at every start of the schoolyear and term (see related documents on member surveys). Give them a sense of foresight by providing them the list of upcoming activities and short descriptions as to what is to expected. Primers at the start of every term, General Activities, and Monthly updates are the most ideal venues.

Have this regularly done by the Internals and the Membership (which should do the duty of Human Resource) and I’m certain that it’ll take a big chunk on member participation. Most members admit that they are being left in the dark by not being aware of the incoming activities (see related documents on member surveys).

1.4 Minor Publications

Here’s a topic that’s close to my heart. Journalism. Minor publications are never appreciated. And there’s a reason as to why. What follows are excerpts from my previous post on the SMS yahoogroups:

...Well what I've noticed over the years was that organization newsletters suffered from poor layouting and insubstantial articles (some articles are even copy-pasted). So overall, it's a terrible investment of one's resources. The organization newsletters would just probably end up as dog poo wrappers.

Along with our organization's vision of elevating its standards (the newsletter actually experienced a major change when half of its articles were in Filipino, a resultant of the revolutionary themed year that was 2004), we repackaged our branding (and yet we failed miserably. It was an internal problem), we decided to revamp the newsletter. I stressed that the articles should have the usual news articles but should focus more on feature interviews/articles, as a way of humanizing the newsletter and ultimately, the organization's image…

…The idea was great, but sadly it wasn't lived up. To my knowledge, only one issue was produced (from the expected two issue per schoolyear change).

I sincerely hope the next batch of officers would carry on the organization's efforts of elevating its bar of professionalism [and specifically to the AVP for Publications]…

…We've sparked the fire, now it's your turn to set it ablaze.
So SMS officers batch 2006-2007, go kick ass.

My point then was that the organization should humanize the newsletter. I’ve noticed that for the past years, nobody really gave a hoot on reading what’s inside it. After all, most of it is about boring news articles about certain activities written in a way that it was grandiose. Add plagiarized articles, and the usual “fun page” (that’s never really fun since some of them have inside jokes that only the officers would get). Who would ever be interested in reading that?

Yes, it’s a whole lot of effort. Some may even see it as an efforts made in vain. I agree with that because it will not be initially appreciated. But with proper promotion, and especially dedication for the duty of making a quality publication, all one should think about is serving beyond the call of duty and raise the bar of excellence whenever he can.

[end of part 1]