Work Work Work........ and Hollywood

Hello to all,

So I finally got to go check out more of the city on Wednesday. I took a tour with Father John, the priest from our church, through Wilshire Blvd. and Hollywood to Rodeo Drive and Santa Monica. It was really cool to see the Chinese theatre and the handprints in the cement.

Above is the project we have been working for a couple weeks now. We finally got approval to go through with this concept, "Cityscape", and will begin production today and next week. Our interactive people Nick and Lorie did a killer job on this concept and it will be amazing when it is finally up and running in August. The purpose of this site is to create awareness for LA Times events such as Festival of Books and the Envelope Screening Series. I am really excited about this site, unfortunately I will be back in Minnesota when we launch it so that is disappointing but it will still be awesome to see some of my work on the LA Times website.

God Bless

Tofu and the Padres

Tuesday night I got to go to the Padres v. Twins game in San Diego. The new pictures should be up in the new slide show thing i added. Great game and beautiful stadium. I cant wait for the Twins new stadium.

I will start the tofu section off by saying that I will never eat Tofu again.

So I brought lettuce to work and we have a salad bar in our cafeteria so I was going to go get some ceasar dressing and chicken and cheese to put on my lettuce. So i get to the chicken and I see there are two different kinds. So i choose the smaller cubed chicken because it looks better and pay and im off to eat my salad. I stop at our refrigerator on the way back up and Graham, one of our copywriters, says "oh you got some tofu," and I said no, of course not just some chicken. I was puzzled as to why he said that because there is no way I would ever get tofu. I start eating my salad and something is definitely wrong here. The chicken was very squishy, wait a second............it wasn't chicken at all. I messed up big time and got tofu.

NO GOOD!

So needless to say I will be the laughing stock of the office for awhile for my little Tofu experience.

God Bless

A Trip to..........Mcdonald's

For Thursday's lunch our department decided to take a little field trip down Broadway street to the local McDonald's. Little did I know that I was going to get a lesson in Hollywood history . On our way we stopped by the Bradbury building, where the majority of Blade Runner and Heat was filmed. I wish I would of seen either of them to see where in the building we were but it was still pretty cool. Also, anyone who has seen the latest Transformers movie, Broadway street is the scene where there flying helicopters down the middle of the street.

NOW, wow the most interesting and weird part of the trip was that my co-workers and I were walking by a pretty nice knife shop, when I was informed that it was THE knife shop that OJ Simpson bought the knife that he "didn't kill" his former wife with. I guess he was here shooting a movie and stopped by the store and bought the knife. I was a little skeptical of it at first but it was part of the trial showing the receipt for "Ross Cutlery" on broadway Street.

Anyways, it is unbelievable to me that even walking to McDonald's I get a lesson in Hollywood History.

P.S. Maggie comes one week from today, I cannot wait

God Bless

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

First of all, really ridiculous name and to long. Second of all, I got to go to their game Sunday night, fabulous stadium so I will forgive them for the stupid name. Great game against the Braves, the Angels won 2-0. Im starting my third week at the Times and this week is turning out to be a busy one. I will post some of the other work that my team is working on soon you all can check it out.

God Bless

Example

Also, here is a link to one of the jobs we just finished for banners on our website and some flash promotions for new media executions.

http://creativegroup.latimes.com/online_marketing/index.html

As project manager for this project, I was in charge of meeting with our client, in this case the interactive department of the Times, and working with out copywriters and graphic designers to get the job done. We had to create three different size banners for each newsletter so that they can put them throughout the www.latimes.com website.

Busy at the Times

Today ends my second week working at the Times and it has been a great few weeks. Yesterday they were filming a movie across the street from us and I though it was pretty cool but the rest of my co-workers weren't to amused because this happens all the time around here. I just finished up a production calendar for the two Microsites that I am project manager for, and the template that I created for these will be used from now on for all production calendars. So I was pretty stressed to make it good and I am pretty happy with the final product so lets hope my bosses like it as well. I am hoping to explore more around LA this weekend. I went to Trader Joe's in San Dimas last night, its about 20 minutes away from my home in Baldwin Park, so that was a little interesting. I hope all is well back in Minnesota and have a great weekend.

God Bless

Getting in the swing of things

So I have been experimenting with LA public transportation when my ride has to stay late, and its pretty efficient but expensive to ride. People here call the month of June, "June Gloom", because its always gloomy and "cold" they say, but I think the weather is perfect. The house I'm living in does not have AC so I am not looking forward to the 100 degree plus days, I think I'm going to melt. Also people are predicting a earthquake for this summer, oh great, I leave tornadoes and walk in to earthquakes. Work is going very good, we have a couple of photo shoots in the next couple of weeks for one of our campaigns so that is cool to be able to be involved in wardrobe fittings and choosing the models for our shoots. I hope all is well back in MN.

God Bless
Mike, or Nuevo Miguel, thats my nickname in my department

Project Manager

Hello All

So I was appointed project manager for a few different projects for our LA Times website. We had some preliminary meetings yesterday and I am really excited to work with the art and copy writing guys to make this work. What we are doing is creating a microsite for all of our LA Times events, for both B2B and B2C. It will be challenging but fun and definitely a chance to get my feet wet.

I possibly will be going to a Dodgers' Game this weekend which would be awesome and we are going to Famous Dave's tomorrow night, apparently a big deal out here, I thought that was pretty funny.

God Bless
Mike

First Day

Today was my first day at the Times. It was amazing. The advertising department is very laid back but I can tell they get the job done and the Times building is filled with amazing history. I can tell I am going to learn a lot and they said I will be a project manager a couple times this summer so I am looking forward to that.

God Bless