Week 4:
U.S. Conference of Mayors

June 18, 2014

Monday:

*Read with showdown music from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly* Today was the day. I took the metro out to the University of Maryland campus to face my biggest academic opponent to-date: the Law School Admissions Test. Bring it on. Check-in was at 12:30, and I was out of there by 5:30, so it took a little while. I cannot say that my brain functioned very much Monday night, and while I feel alright about the test, I’m mainly very excited that it’s over and I can focus on being in DC!

Tuesday:

My first day back at it! The big focus of this week was finishing all of the materials for the Conference. The biggest publication is the Metro Economy report, which Dave puts out annually. The report basically details each metro area’s (363 in total) rate of economic growth, unemployment rate, gross product, and other like information. My job, specifically, was to proofread the report sent to us by IHS Global Insight, the company that compiled the statistics, and check all the numbers to make sure they were correct. This was a multi-day job, as we went through several versions.

Dave and I also worked out what the overall message of the economy report should be. This was definitely the coolest part of my day. Dave asked what the most important stat in the report was, and we discussed the impact of each stat (i.e. is Stat A – this many metro areas are growing at above this rate- or Stat B – this many metros have a projected employment growth at this rate – going to be of more interest to the press? More in line with what the overall message of the report is?). We then crafted a message for a press release, and wrote up some talking points for USCM President Kevin Johnson. It was good to work through what the most important ideas were from the report, a skill I’ve employed many times at Cornell, and to see how simple pieces like press releases and speeches are put together. This is definitely the nuts and bolts stuff I discussed last week.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday:

More Metro Economy report. We proofread through, sent it in, and it will start printing this weekend. Another thing I started working on Friday was a model for individual metro economy reports. Basically, each metro area gets its own single-page report so that each Mayor can glance at the page with his/her metro area so that he/she doesn’t have to sift through some 130 pages of charts and tables in the actual report just to find their numbers. I was able to design that sheet (complete with the USCM logo), and then put each chart into the template and saved a file for each metro area. I will finish this project up on Monday. There were two pretty cool things about doing this: first, I was able to confer with Dave about what exactly should be included, or at least how the categories should be named, on the charts.  Second, I really enjoy designing things, and, while a simple one-pager is no terribly creative task, it was fun to design and propose different styles of handouts.

Things are getting very hectic around the office, and that’s just the way I like it. One more week, and we’ll all be off in Dallas! And, bonus, the World Cup started Thursday, so I’m about to become a huge soccer fan. Can’t wait!