To the notepad!

Hey All! How's life? Cold I'm sure, but getting warmer...

Well, the work on the Senior Sendoff has really begun.  What is the Senior Sendoff? you may ask.  This is a program /one day festival that the Alumni Relations department at URI puts on every year to celebrate graduation with a few hundred seniors. The goal is to get them interested in the alumni programs.  The festival is usually themed with decorations, food, music, t-shirts and give-aways. This lovely little event happens to be my baby for the semester, from concept to completion.

Currently, brainstorming is the hot topic on the agenda. I sat there for a few days, staring at a blank notebook page, wondering what in the world should this event be?  What would seniors find interesting, entertaining? What could I work with easily?  When then I thought... What in the world....?  World... Around the world!  Cool idea right?  For graduating College, getting ready to go out into the real world, and URI's new thing is the think big, think global.  It works. The notebook is no longer blank, and that's a start. Now for the real note scrawling to begin.  What kind of food are we going to get?  Decorations?  How is it going to fit in the budget?  What should be put on the t-shirts? Pretty soon I have about six running documents full of random ideas, mostly ridiculous, the occasionally plausible, and some almost mundane.  But I have a hell of a lot to draw from now right?  I'm still working on it; I like to find a ton of ideas, and then narrow it down.  But how do you get to that point?

Well, Brainstorming for your event can be done in a bunch of different ways. The important thing to remember about this process is that anything goes.  No idea should be ignored, no matter how absurd it is, it could lead to something that is actually do able.

So some basic brainstorming techniques for you?

  Free Association:  I've already mentioned this one a little. Its what I used to come up with my theme of Around the World.  This is when you kind of just sit and think writing down whatever pops into your head.  Trying this in different settings is really effective because words or signs or other things that you might notice in different places could inspire totally different trains of thought.  This also works if you already have a basic idea like "Around the World"  Then you could do a more focused word association and think about whatever images come to mind in a particular category (food, decorations, games) etc with that theme.  You can go through and separate the lists later, right now you basically just want to capture the flood of ideas before they drizzle away or dry up.  Once you've done that, its good to put your paper aside for a day or so and then come back to it in a different place and different state of mind.  Keep the paper with you at all times though, you never know when an idea will bite!

Well that's all for tonight, but next time I'll be back with  more specific brainstorming techniques and tips to do individually and with groups.  TTFN!