Making Progress

As my American flag painted nails (still decorated from the 4th) type this I am patiently waiting for my leads friend Merchant Circle to be back up and running.  Lately the website has been crashing. It could be because of how fast and how much our office alone uses the site. I'm not complaining to take a break from leads even though I have actually grown to almost like them.  I don't want to admit that I actually like them just incase I start to hate them again.  At this point the only time I get frustrated with the process is when I go through about 100 different companies only to find 15-20 leads, like in my enemy Manta's lists.  Hopefully it will be back up soon so I can continue the competition with myself on how many leads I can find a day, my top is 133 (but I think we had extra lead time that day) and second best is 102.  It is really satisfying for me to hit over 100 that is pretty much my goal every day but the lists have gotten harder and harder and it has become less likely for me to get to those types of numbers.  Lately I've been sticking to the 80-90 range which isn't too bad but maybe one day soon I'll hit the 100 mark again and complete my ultimate goal for that day. 

The 50 project is continuing to come along and the issue of finding popular good local rock bands for different states has been defeated! I am not sure who exactly figured it out but we can customize the search engines in ReverbNation and find local rock bands for each particular state. This was super helpful and yesterday I found 10 bands per state to try to contact. I actually enjoyed being able to listen to the different songs the potential bands for the project had up on ReverbNation.  Rock isn't usually my music of choice (as Ron would point out I am somewhat of a Bieber fan....although I like other more mature artists as well even if you don't believe me) but some of these bands were seriously talented.  As I was searching through the bands I was thinking about how many songs there are in this world each with their own words and beat and how hard these bands work.  Even though they are unsigned to a label and don't know if their career will ever take off they continue to promote their bands and pursue their dreams.  As Ron once said in a meeting it is one of the hardest jobs.  Hopefully some of the bands I have found will take the 50 project as an opportunity to gain press and agree to performing at the concert.  In the end it will be really great to know that the bands I found have become part of the project.  If possible I would love to attend the concert but I assume I'll be away at school when it all comes together.  I guess we will have to see how things turn out.  The bigger challenge still seems to be finding bullying stories from different states.  Often the people I find are representatives or people who have been in the anti-bullying business as a career path guiding school teachers and students on how to control bullying.  Instead we are looking more for personal stories of those who have been bullied first hand.  My latest thought on how to search for these people is going to be looking for books that have been written by individuals who have been bullied for their looks, a disease, being gay, etc.  I think this could be a good way to find people who would be willing to speak about their bullying stories as the stories I find are often anonymous or do not say where the person is from.  I am thinking that if I can figure out how to find books written by people who have been bullied these authors would have their own websites and I could go from there.  Not sure if this method would work but I'm going to give it a try and maybe I will be somewhat successful.  I am still working on ideas on how else to find bullying stories as my Google searches for "[enter state here] bullying advocates" or "[enter state here] bully speakers" have not been very successful.  Usually when I find a bully story I will find a name and I jump from one page to another Googling the name until I can finally find a way to contact the person.  This hasn't proved easy but I think that eventually I will find a method that works.

Until tomorrow, this week is going by so fast!

Rebecca Miller
Studying Journalism and Mass Communication 
University of Wisconsin Madison