New Exhibit

This week, I was given many small projects to work on. An editor at Ferguson Publishing Company is currently working on a book, which describes animal-related careers and features interviews with professionals working in the field. The editor wanted to interview a curator, aquarist and an aquarium director for his book, so I was in charge of arranging these interviews. I also researched other large aquariums and compared their ticket prices to the Georgia Aquariums. I also worked on our Web site. We have decided add a celebrity page to our Web site, which will showcase different celebrities who have been to the Aquarium. I had to find places on the Web site where we could link the celebrity page. Here is the link to the celebrity page, which includes Jordin Sparks, Usher, Martha Stewart and many more: http://test.georgiaaquarium.org/celebrities/.

We also opened a new exhibit last week. We partnered with GEICO and now have six Geckos located in the atrium. We announced the new exhibit to media on Tuesday. We also pitched to media in the Atlanta area an event we hosted Tuesday evening where Mayor Franklin presented a Phoenix award to GEICO. On Wednesday, a reporter from the AJC came to shoot some photos of the new Geckos. I took the lead on showing him around the new exhibit.

"Get Married", a television show on Lifetime Network, also came to film a segment about weddings at the Aquarium. The Georgia Aquarium has an event facility that is perfect for weddings. "Get Married" filmed the facility as well as an interview with Will Ramsey, the director of group sales.

Martha Stewart Show

I should also mention that the Martha Stewart Show aired footage from the book signing and animal feeds at the Georgia Aquarium on Thursday, March 5. You should definitely check it out if you missed it. I was actually on the show!! You would have no idea it was me, but I was the girl walking across the large window by myself. It was dark but at least I was on TV.

Returning to Work

I know it has been a while since my last post, but I was down in Mexico enjoying the sun. Last week was Spring Break, so it was very hard to come back to work today from a great vacation.

Two weeks ago I spent most of the week updating a press release for the extension of yoga at the Georgia Aquarium. The other intern and I also created a media alert as well as found contact information for editors at numerous yoga and health magazine and/or Web sites. I missed out on pitching to these editors because I was away on spring break.

I did, however, pitch our summer camp to some family/parent magazines and Web sites. I was hoping these outlets would talk about our summer camp in their magazines or would place information on their online calendar. I'm currently following up with each outlet to see how my pitching went!!!

I should also mention that when I was flying to Mexico on Air Tran, I read the magazine provided to the passengers. The Air Tran magazine had two mentions of the Georgia Aquarium. Air Tran is having a contest with the Aquarium to see who can guess the number of fish we added to our Tropical Diver exhibit. The winner receives a free trip to Cancun provided by Air Tran. Ilya Kovalchuk and Kari Lehtonen, two Atlanta Trashers players, also mentioned the Georgia Aquarium. They said we were one of their favorite places in Atlanta. The Georgia Aquarium follows me where ever I go!! I was excited to see this great coverage for us, so I brought home a copy for work.

Snowed In

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to update my blog. As some of you may know, Athens, Georgia received six inches of snow on Sunday, and the storm caused most of Athens to lose Internet and cable. This was quite a surprise. I could not come to work on Monday because my car was snowed in.

In one of my previous post, I mentioned that we released two new animals in the Aquarium. I can finally tell you that these animals are great hammerheads sharks. We now have the largest collection of great hammerheads sharks anywhere in North America! Last week, we drafted a press release for the announcement and pitched it to the media.

Last week, I also helped with two media shoots. On Wednesday, we had a life shoot with CBS featuring our new yoga program. I had never participated in a life shoot before. I had to be at the aquarium at 4:30 in the morning. We had over 4 hits on CBS, and I even was even on the news- but only in the background. I also did a shoot with a guy from the ACC basketball tournament. The tournament will take place in Atlanta next month. The ACC took shots of the Aquarium, which they will use to create videos that will play on the scoreboards during the game.