Rewind

Started my day off with some anti-bullying researching and blogging. Some of the things that happen across our country are mind boggling, kids being duct taped to chairs in school, all the harassment that takes place online, and all of the organizations out there that are against bullying yet it's still so prevalent. One in every three kids is bullied and the youth rate of suicide is continuing to increase, that should be enough in itself to raise awareness in parents, teachers, police officers, and anyone else in power that can play a vital roll in decreasing these numbers. 

I digress... 

On the 1Loud Street front today, I researched more Kickstarters and tried to breakdown a list of what our goals should be and what we should start working on and assigning to each other. I think, aside from the video, we need to analyze our priorities as far as what needs to get done. How else we are going to promote the Kickstarter aside fro the actual donation page, how we are going to reach out to musicians, and planning our first batch of tutorial videos.

Hopefully next week when the whole core team is together we can delve deeper into 1Loud Street.

Until next time...

Brenden Groom

Marketing & PR

1Loud Street

Conceptualize

Another day down. Researching Kickstarters and reading articles and interviews by successful Kickstarter campaigners, trying to take away any tips and details that may help us in our journey. Some insightful things to read, especially from the unsuccessful ones who talk about things that didn't work.

Everyone seems to have similar ideas for the video attached to the campaign, which has got me thinking that maybe ours needs to contain an element (or two) that aren't in most or any other campaigns. I hope this week allows for some of our ideas and the blueprint for the project to come to fruition.

I kept mulling over what our philosophy and mission statement for 1Loud Street should be, I think my favorite version is:

“To create a community for musicians to succeed in the music industry. Allowing the route from point A to point Z to be tangible and navigable.”

Until next time...

Brenden Groom

Marketing & PR Intern

Rapper

Day 1

Hello!
My name is Bijan Hennessey.  I am an actively performing musician and a recent Umass Lowell graduate.

This has been an excellent first day! The other interns and I researched the different ways that blogs and other online resources can be used to promote music. I really enjoyed this assignment because I was able to apply the knowledge that I have gained from being the primary booking agent for the band My Missing Half to it. 

I am very excited to continue working with all of you!
-Bijan

Final days of summer

It's the last week of August. The days are getting shorter, the air is getting cooler, and the summer's winding down, but we're just getting started building these projects for Sentient. I spent the majority of this morning researching sites that are comparable to 1Loud Street's concept, just to see what we're competing with. I couldn't find anything that quite matched 1Loud Street's vision - a site built for musicians to act as sort of a vessel to get them from Point A to Point B. Most music websites are primarily dedicated to uploading, streaming, downloading, and sharing music. There is hardly anything that directs musicians to the path of success and in today's market, it is crucial that musicians not only know how to get their ships from Point A to Point B, but that they also know how to navigate the waters intelligently and cautiously. 1Loud Street has the potential to fill that void.

Angela Nicholas
PR Intern

Tech... Tac... (Toe) Tician

Rolling solo today, I tried to dig as much in as I could thinking about the Kickstarter campaign. Researched more into successful and some not so successful Kickstarters and found some common threads. One being, the way the people running them stack their donation tiers. It led me to brainstorm some ideas that could help us build our tier of donations. You need the lower tier $1-$5 donation because some people just like to support things, though it will only generate a low level of money, it will increase our "backer" count and put money into the process to get it "kickstarted." (hey see what I did there?) Then you have the mid ground tiers that are enough to entice people to try it even if they aren't sure if they buy into our product yet. Lastly, it's the heavier tiers, people who believe in what we will do will be great and help musicians and will get us money fast. I drew up a list of some ideas that'll hopefully serve as an outline to get the process rolling next week.

On top of that, I did some more writing and storyboarding for ideas to use in the introductory video for the Kickstarter. I fully believe the power of the video we first release will set the course for how well our crowd funding goes. If it's informative, not too long, and well written it should do everything it needs to to showcase why 1Loud Street is better than anything else out there for musicians and promoters alike.

Hopefully next week yields some more progress.

Until then...

Brenden Groom

Marketing & PR

Middle Child

Get Your Shovel Ready...

We are about to dig in. Embarking on a long journey to an uncharted land where prosperity is not promised, but in a world were success is never certain, sometimes the hardworking, headstrong must take risks and believe in themselves in order to succeed. That being said, we spent time today laying our the foundation of what we will be doing for 1Loud Street the next couple of months.

I spent time today doing research on successful Kickstarters, reading articles, watching their videos, investigating the products. Afterwards, I spent some time snooping around seeing if there was anything like what we are building out there now. Yes there are the Reverbnations and Bandcamps, but what we have here is a community not just focused on the musician, but focused on helping the musician get to their destination.

We created a Google Doc for the core team to use to communicate our progress, tasks, ideas, etc. especially since some of our time here doesn't overlap. In there today I input all of my brainstorming and ideas that I have gathered over the past two days as well as created some dialogue and talking points for our crowd-funding video. It feels good to let the creativity ooze onto the paper (and keyboard) for this project.

Until next time...

Brenden Groom
Marketing & PR
1Loud Street - Core Team

"PR Exists To Manipulate"

Finally, I've been waiting for this day. We finally had the elusive 1Loud Street meeting with Ron, Laura, and the core team. We gathered in the conference room for most of the day exploring the philosophy behind the website and what we plan to accomplish with it, as well as how to monetize it. The basis really, is telling the artists what they need to hear not necessarily what they want to hear. Being an artist (in my eyes not Ron's), I am uberly excited to start digging into this project and using both my creative passion for music and a project that I believe in. 

As a group we spent some time compiling lists of ideas for what we should be focusing on and for the crowd-funding campaign. With all of the tasks ahead of us in order to get this project off the ground, we need to continue to utilize our time carefully and discipline ourselves to accomplish our goals and continue moving this website forward. 

Until next time...

Brenden Groom

PR & Marketing

1 Loud Street beginnings...

Today, the other interns and I met with Ron and Laura to further discuss our goals for 1 Loud Street and to began the process of mapping our tasks and priorities for the project. We spoke about the roles we'll play in the development of the site and how we can all contribute our skills and knowledge to launch 1 Loud Street into a successful business platform, as well as an efficient tool for musicians. It's a hefty task, but I think the other interns and I are prepared to tackle it. Plus, I think it's something we all genuinely believe in and are interested in contributing what we can.


Angela Nicholas
PR Intern

Last Day

This is my last day here at Esente. It's been a good journey, and I've learned a lot along the way. Today involved a lot of blogging about various different things, and also a little bit of work on photoshop. This is definitely a good place to work and intern, because each day is totally unique and the novel experiences make your time at work a lot easier. Also thanks to Ron and Laura for helping me along the way, and hopefully my work has benefited the company.

-Akshay Daftardar
PR and Design Intern

Nothing

Nothing? That's what came out of our meeting today, for sure. Well, not really. You had to be there, it's an inside joke... Anyways, today started off in a long-winded, informative meeting about all of our futures here. Planning for how we all need to start managing our time and the projects we are all working on, as well as using our individual strengths to achieve our goals.

It was certainly a different day being the only intern here. Looking forward to when myself, Mike, and Angela all meet up next week to discuss how we are going to tackle 1Loud Street. I believe in all the things that Ron wants to do with Sentient, I think all of the projects have potential to become very successful and useful applications.

Until next time...

Brenden Groom
Marketing & PR

Na na na na. Na na na na. Hey hey hey. Goodbye

So today is the last day for me at Esente.  Ron definitely made my last day special with the videos of botflies and spiders and everything else.  This was a great summer and I am glad that I was able to be a graphic design Intern at Esente (even though graphic design interns don't exist here according to Ron).  

-Matt Bell

Mammals Have Eyebrows

Today I (regrettably) learned about botflies (and the most effective removal solution, should one be contracted), the differences between dolphins and porpoises, mammals with eyebrows, spider mothers (and their creepy little spider babies), and the sole characteristic that differs blackheads and whiteheads. Gross, but informative...? There was also discussion about racial profiling, funeral homes, and how the media chooses to tell one side of any given story and, subsequently, how the audiences chooses the story they wish to hear, regardless of the truth.

So, you know, normal Wednesday.

On the other end of things, the other interns and I blogged about recent articles for the anti-bullying and drunk driving prevention campaigns, and continued to promote Jayna Lininger's music through social media postings and country music blogs.

- Angela

Botflies Are Not Flies

Today Ron helped remind me that I hate spiders. Arachnophobia status. If I see a spider in my apartment I pray that my girlfriend is home to take care of it. Okay, I'm not that bad... anymore. But still, watching videos today while we were debriefing was enough to get me.

Apart from that, we did some legwork today for the blogs, finding articles to post about for drunk driving and bullying. It's pretty ridiculous how many accidents really do occur when you start researching into it and finding all these articles that are being posted every few hours.

Another interesting tidbit of knowledge Ron helped me realize today was how to analyze the news and see how the media manipulates the same stories in order to make their point, or in most cases create their point. There's definitely people who use these tactics for personal gain or for dubious reasons, I'm not saying I am going to change the way that media portrays things, but I do have a degree on my moral compass that I won't compromise for the sake of getting ahead. I digress.

Excited to start working more on One Loud Street next week.

Until next time...

Brenden Groom
Marketing & PR
Arachnophobe

Click here for a comprehensive bot fly removal guide

Today, I started off working on a drunk driving poster, and then worked on some Jayna fan art. I also advertised a little bit for her through a pseudonym and a fake gmail account. All was going smoothly, and things took a turn for the hilarious when we had a meeting with Ron and Laura. We started out talking about some serious topics such as the recent shooting in Saint Louis, but ended it off by watching videos on Youtube about bot fly removals and pimple popping. It was a solid work day, but as usual had an unexpected addition that made the day unique.

Until next time,
Akshay Daftardar
PR and Design Intern

Photoshop all day long

We started the day by checking the emails, and I basically worked on photoshop all day after that. I think I made some nice progress on one of the drunk driving posters. Besides that, we helped Ron wrap up the frames.

-Akshay Daftardar
PR + Design Intern

It's The Final Countdown

So I now have a total of 1 more day at Esente.  Today I finished what I started last wednesday which was editing the band cover photos to take out the black profile picture boxes and format them correctly.  I also worked on fan art for Jayna.

-Matt Bell

And then there were three

The summer is coming to a finish, and soon so is my time here. It seems short, yet very well spent. I feel like I've been able to further my knowledge of the music industry as well as Photoshop here. Today was a quiet day, and there were only 3 interns at the table. However, I got to blog, search the internet for more newspapers who may have published about 12 pack of life, and work on Photoshop to create some drunk driving posters and also some fan art for Jayna. All in all, it was a relatively successful and productive day. 

-Akshay Daftardar

PR and Design Intern

Time To Make Some Noise

The stage has been set, the microphones are live, it's time to shine. The most important thing we focused on today was planning for 1 Loud Street, a music platform with the musicians in mind first. As a musician myself, I'm extremely interested. Being able to work on something that uses both my creative talents and my passion for music has me salivating at the idea. Prior to our day ending meeting with Ron, we continued working on the 12 Pack Of Life project; answering emails, looking up news stories, and blog posts. An exciting little nugget of information came from one of the New Jersey bands emailing us about the possibility about maybe getting a television spot on News 12 with Della Crews. Kim Yarson, the musician who emailed, has been on her show before and suggested we reach out to her. I wrote up a draft email to send out to her, hopefully it turns into some more publicity for Jayna Lininger.

As another week ends, I'm looking forward to working on 1 Loud Street.

Until next time...

Brenden Groom
Marketing & PR
Lover of Cats

The intern table is getting smaller and smaller by the day as the summer winds down, but with the next season quickly approaching there are so many exciting opportunities on the horizon. I'm looking forward to working on getting Jayna Lininger's name known and music heard, and contributing to all the new web and app projects. I'm two weeks into my internship experience here and there has yet to be a dull day.

Angela
PR Intern

"For last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words await another voice"

My final post here is done for the benefit of future interns. In my final hours at esente as a design and marketing intern, I reflect. I reflect on good times and tough times; on challenges and accomplishments. If you try to sum up the whole experience in one word, you may find it difficult, and here's why: variety. Unlike most internships, and even a good deal of careers, there is very little monotony in a day as an esente intern. Think of each day almost as more of a new project, rather than a day at work. Coming in every day you are tasked with something different. Now, to be realistic, there are still certainly repetitive tasks, as there are with any job, but the main project each day, the meat of the internship, is a new and fresh task you are offered. Whether it be drafting press releases, coordinating email blasts, collaborating on marketing strategy, or simply designing posters and CD covers, each project is new and different!

Here's the boil down of it all. If you're like me, you're looking up this company all over the internet, You saw an ad for the internship on LinkedIn, or Monster, or Craiglist, etc.. and said "well this *sounds* interesting, but is it legit?" You're not wrong in asking that either, take my word on it. I have the unique perspective of having spent a couple years working out of college before doing this internship, and I've been caught in a few scam/dud jobs over that time. There is always the risk of something sketchy with an internship, simply because it is Free. Work. That's what it simplifies to. An internship is an opportunity for a company to hire part time workers for free! Now that's half of the story, the other half being that YOU as the worker are gaining experience, work hours, job knowledge, training, advice and insight from peers and seniors, etc...

BUT

You won't get any of that if you don't seek it out. If you apply for this internship, or any internship and say "awesome, I get to go in for 8 hrs, 3 times a week, and just hang out" then that's what you're going to do, and 8 weeks later you'll leave and have gained nothing. Or you can go in every day, take that new task they give you, and run with it. You do that, and you're golden. From the 8 weeks I was here, I can now say that I've done everything that a professional designer or marketing associate would do! I can put that on my resume, tell future employers, build on those skills, create a career out of it.

That's the secret to being an esente intern, and to being any intern. Take what you're given and run with it. Make it your own and it will benefit you forever.

With my final paragraph as an intern, I want to thank the Esente group, Ron, Laura, Kayleigh, and all the amazing interns I got to work with this summer. You are all inspiring, and I am going to cherish this experience forever. Best of luck in all your future endeavors and hopefully we'll all be working together again, as career marketers, designers, and PR professionals. To all of you new interns coming in or considering this, best of luck to you as well, and give this place a shot. You won't regret it.


Signing off,

Mike D
Design Intern