Concept and Coding

CONCEPT 

I plan to use this website to display my experience in multiple branches of Public Communications. I wanted to include my most important and most professional pieces I have done over the past three years at Buffalo State College. I am very proud of the work I have done and I think that all of the experience I have from the classes I have taken thus far will definitely help me in the future. I really hope what I have designed so far really brings out my personality and portrays me as a fun, creative, yet professional individual.

Last semester I created an entire portfolio for my Public Relations Writing class. In my portfolio, I have completed many different types of things a Public Relations professional would do on a regular basis throughout their career. This whole portfolio is based on an event planning business that is based in
Buffalo, NY. I plan to eventually land an internship with this business in the future but none of my work has been presented to the actually organization, yet. I would love to be a wedding planner when I grow up and I think that this portfolio shows that with my public relations background, I could be successful in the wedding planning field. I think this portfolio is an extremely important element for my webpage because it displays well written work I have done as well as some design pieces.

Last semester I also took a graphic design class. I created a few different types of  graphic design pieces from magazine layouts, to posters, as well as story books. This class was very important to me because I learned how to use Adobe Creative Suite, which is great experience to have when applying for a job or a internship. I was always afraid of creative suite, but now I feel like I pick up new things extremely easily and I have perfected the magnetic lasso tool in InDesign which is shown throughout all of my work I hoped to publish to this site. I think all of these pieces prove that I have a good eye for design, even in the future if I do not design something myself, I will be able to critique other designs and help out the graphic designer.


For social media, I used it in a few different ways throughout my website. Instead of having a contact page, I created a footer with my contact information and my social media accounts that I created in this class. Then I created a social media page separately to explain each social media page I have ever created. I separated the sites into academic projects as well as volunteer projects.

Academic Projects

BLOGS:
http://buffstate-com-336-erinlovelyy.blogspot.com
http://erinlovelyy.blogspot.com

I have had the chance to use blogs over the past year for my communications classes. A lot of blogs I have written are very casual, some are a little more structured and journalistic. The blog really helps promote me via my writing. I think this is a great thing to display on my site because a lot of people now a days have poor writing skills and it might make me shine above the rest. It shows that my writing is versatile. I can be creative, opinionated or journalistic.

TWITTER:
https://twitter.com/ErinMLackie

This helped me learn how to send a very precise message to many followers all at once. I also learned how twitter can be used for organizations and businesses and not just for socializing. This is important to show on my website because it shows that I am up to date with the social media generation.

FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/erin.meredith.77

This is a project I worked on in class that taught me how to use Facebook to create pages for businesses that do not have a Facebook presence. With this I learned how to create events and promote business via this social networking outlet. I think this is important to display in my website because it shows I know how to administer a Facebook and help promote a company or organization .

Volunteer Projects
https://twitter.com/WNYGlidingStars

This is the first twitter account that I have actually created myself for a real organization. My friend, Shelby, and I are helping the Gliding Stars of Western New York step into the 21st century and expanding their horizons into social media. This twitter account is slowly but surely flourishing and the organizations leaders, as well as Shelby and I, will be updating it constantly with events that are happening, recognizing the skaters and volunteers, and also notifying participants about cancellations for practices. I have learned a lot about Twitter and organizations from our in class twitter project and I think this is important to display in my website because it shows that I am a quick learner and that I can work with social media.

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 CODING 

The closest I have ever gotten to CSS code is when I had a MySpace. I used to change my background and my layouts all the time. From doing that I knew how to change colors, add images, and change fonts for the most part. I was familiar with those code so that was pretty easy for me. Unfortunately, I have never used Dreamweaver before. Once you get the hang of it, it is pretty easy to understand the basic things. I just wish I was more advanced because I wanted to do so much I did not know how to do.

As for organizing my content, I felt that I had a very clear idea in my head when I began in Dreamweaver. The most difficult thing was figuring our how to code that vision. I also really wanted my JPEG files of my projects to show up on the right side of the text that you would be able to click to display that image. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I could not even insert those images to my pages. Hopefully, if  get time next semester I can work on it and learn more about it.

Developing the look was a little difficult. I wanted my site to look prettier. I wanted my body content fill to have scalloped edges instead of straight boxy edges, I wanted different colors that I could not get, and also more font types that I would be able to use. I wanted it to look more modern, but it ended up looking almost out dated. It is cute, but not as pretty and professional as I would have liked.

I am really sad we did not get time to finish the project completely. Hopefully, I can work on this at another time so I can actually use this page to promote myself when looking into new job opportunities and internship opportunities.

Interviewer and Interviewee

Christopher Davis was my interviewer. I think he did a great job interviewing me. Like he wrote on his post, we actually take a lot of classes together. It was nice working with him because he is very laid back and he did not make me feel nervous. I think it was a little different than a normal interview because everyone was interviewing each other all at once and the room was a little hectic. Aside from that, I think it was a fun learning experience. After reading through his notes and his constructive criticism, I think that I can definitely work on how fast I talk. If I slow down, then I think people will understand me better and I will communicate more effectively. 

These are the notes that Christopher recorded while interviewing me

How do you plan on self promoting yourself?

Facebook, blogs and schoolwork say a lot about personality.

Name three goals you have between now and graduation.

To have a full-time internship, to network with people in my field, and to have a full-time job

What employment goals do you have after graduation? Name three of them

To have a full-time job, to own my own business, and working at a Public Relations field.

Name three best case scenario jobs you would like to have and why.

To be a full-time bridal stylist because I love weddings, to open my own business and working at a not-for-profit to help people.

Do you prefer to work professionally with a group or on your own and why?

I prefer to be a group leader or leader.

What contributions can you make to a group dynamic? Name three things

Being a leader, organizational skills, and very driven.

What contributions can you make working independently? Name three things.

Very good focus, friendly manner, very organized, and a very cohesive work.

What are your pet peeves in a work environment?

Unfriendly people, people who slack.

Name three things you feel passionate about professionally - this could be school related, current job related, group or organizationally related - and outline why you feel passionate towards them.

Weddings, true love, and helping people.

How do you handle stress and pressure?

By relaxing and talking to people.

Name the last three jobs you had, and the best success and the worst failure you experienced at each of these jobs.

Target mobile and the best success was that I had the highest sales for my quarter, and my worst failiur was that I let a sale get away from me. Gap Creativity, my best success was customers commented on my friendliness and my worst failiur was a incident on the phone.

How do you handle criticism?

By learning from criticism and trying to accept it.

Outline three strengths you have in school.

Being creative, can work independently and in a group and being personable.

Outline three strengths you have in your workplace.

Being professonal, being interactive, and being friendly.

How has creating a WikiPage strengthened your communication skills? Name and elaborate on three things:

By helping me become a better writer, being descriptive and helpinh me organize my thoughts more.

How will Facebook be used to promote yourself? Name and elaborate on three things:

By showing my skills with graphic design.

How would you promote an organization on Facebook?

Name and elaborate on three things:

By creating events, giving detailed descriptions, and giving weekly updates.

Tweet little birdie TWEET!

How has Twitter been used beyond socializing?

Twitter has been used for many things aside from socializing. Businesses use it to announce sales, organizations use it to promote events, and news outlets use it to notify the public of important and breaking news. It is great to use twitter for all of these things because everyone knows a good businesses become good via word of mouth. Since people are more in tuned with social media now a days, word of mouth is now word of tweets. Twitter is used as customer support for companies, customers can provide feedback and the business can interact with their customers and make them feel important. If you have questions they respond and that’s very helpful.  Things on twitter spread very quickly and information is distributed to many people in one tweet, one re-tweet and one response to a tweet. 

In what ways can Twitter be useful as a journalistic, political and/or organizational tool?  Name and specify these reasons why

Twitter is useful as a journalistic way you will not be able to write an essay with fluff and stuff. You are only able to have a short and sweet way of writing. This provides your followers important, timely, concise news and views. The 140 character limit is Twitters greatest asset, as much as a tiny population of people may not like it, it allows everyone to report things quickly and readers do not stray away from the post because it is not long and tiring. We are in an instant gratification generation, and it is important to get information as wuick as possible.  Even though you’re not able to write much you can still get your point across and still get your points across so it is a very useful way to use in a journalistic way.

You can also use the micro blogging in a political way. The more interactive a political figure is with the public, the better his reputation. If he is personable and persuasive that is all that matters in politics. Figures can use Twitter for political campaigns if they wanted to can communicate with people and keep everyone updated with events, fundraisers and any other activities. Twitter can be used to discuss political issues such as the economy, immigration, womens-rights, healthcare, ect. Some posts about these things can be informative, while others can be misleading. You just have to know what sources are credible and the least bias of them all. Very few political leaders have taken advantage of the technology like Twitter. They are either to stubborn to use it or refuse to spend time to learn how to use it. If only they knew that in many articles about Twitter provide results that the account actually helps increase popularity vote within society revolving around public figures and politics.

What topics/subjects did you choose to follow on Twitter and why?

Perry's Ice Cream: All semester I have been working on a project about Perry's Ice Cream  My group and I for COM 401 have been studying their marketing strategies and we found that their social media sites are actually a great way for them to keep their consumer base up to date with their latest events and news. The biggest thing they need to work on is advertising outside of the web. I thought that maybe I could follow them for this site to learn from their posts and how they post newsworthy, important information in concise messages.

Gap Inc: I work at the Gap in the McKinley Mall and I love my job. The people I work with are fantastic, the management is great and the overall company is so giving. Gap is very into social issues and they are always trying to help people in the U.S. and around the globe. We do a lot of community service and we have a lot of fund raisers for all different organizations. I wanted to follow them for the class to not only keep up on their sales the days I am not working, but also to learn from their customer interaction and their global outreach programs.

Gliding Stars of western New York: Recently I have been volunteering for the Gliding Stars WNY chapter. I followed this organization for this class just so I could keep them in mind when learning about Twitter. I created a Facebook page and the Twitter account for the organization and I want to use what I learned in this class so I can help the organization become successful in the generation of web 2.0. The use of this social media site will help Gliding Stars stay in touch with their members, to send updates on skating practices, and to announce events.

What topic did you choose to tweet about on Twitter and why?

The topic I chose to tweet about was shopping and/or spending and saving money. I am a shopaholic and I love finding good deals and new types of items to buy. All of my posts relate to things I want to buy or things I have bought.

How has this experience using Twitter differentiated from blogging?  From any social media?

My experience using Twitter is different than blogging because I am able to be short and sweet. Blogging is extremely time consuming and I feel like I always run out off things to say. Twitter helps me to narrow my thoughts and make sure everything is concise and informative. Twitter also allows instant interaction which is better than with a blog that you spend a lot more time writing and having very little input from others and not a lot of social interaction. A blog is more like a diary, that no one sees and Twitter is like the short little things that you write inside a bathroom stall and everyone sees. Twitter is great for organizations to interact with consumer base, as opposed to a regular blog that most people tend to steer away from interacting with.

 

Good vs Bad

Erin Lackie COM 336
Twitter Project

 WEBSITES I THINK ARE WELL DESIGNED:

1.) www.Facebook.com: I use Facebook the most because it allows me the ability to keep up with friends and family I do not have time to see as much as I used to. It allows me to see how they are doing and them to see how I am doing. I think that Facebook has become more users friendly over the past few years. They have made improvements on photo sharing, video sharing, as well as interacting within posts and comments. The only thing that needs to be changed is the new news feed that shows the most popular post verses most recent posts. I know you can change this too most recent while navigating via a PC or Mac, but not on a mobile device.

2.) www.Google.com I use Google as my one and only search engine. I also use it for YouTube, blogger, and G mail. I search for images and news on Google as well. I like that you can filter searches to narrow down to what you really want to find. I think, in general, Google is very basic and easy to operate. I would like if Google maybe had apps instead of links at the top to navigate to these different branches of Google. Aside from that, I believe Google is extremely well developed and navigation is a breeze.

 3.) www.yahoo.com : I always use yahoo for my email. I check my email everyday online. That way I can see sales and everything because I am addicted to shopping. I think yahoo is very easy to navigate. Aesthetic wise, it is very busy. The homepage to Google has A LOT going on. They have so many different branches it may be confusing to others, but I have been using yahoo since I can remember and I think it is easy navigate.

4.) www.netflix.com: Navigation is very user friendly. Design wise, it is well designed. It is interactive. These are all the things I look for in a well designed website.

5.) www.gap.com : Gap's website is focused on all their brands and all of their ad campaigns for the season. Aesthetically, the website is flawless. The colors always coordinate, the sales are bright and pop off the screen and the images added make it appealing. The navigation is great and there are forums for each item to rate it and discuss the product. This is a great way to interact with your consumer base and for your customers to tell you what they like and dislike. 

6.) www.msn.com: I am always attracted to MSN's home page. The layout of the site is very appealing and the content matter in the website is very unique, timely and/or important. I keep MSN as my homepage to quickly navigate through news and see the hot topics of the day.

7.) www.ESPN.com: This site is extremly interactive. The score charts at the top keep me up to date on scores, time left in the game, and the teams that have already won their game for the day. Fantasy teams is extremely popular. It is easy to do, navigation is pretty easy and it is interesting to be able to interact with people over the internet via real life games.

8.) www,twitter.com: Twitter keeps all post in chronological order. This makes it easy to read and to pickup from where I left off. Twitters posts are limited to all messages are concise and get straight to the point.

9.) www.YouTube.com: Navigation is easy and it is a Google operated program. I think Google is a great site and YouTube definitely fits well with the aesthetic of its parent site and the design is perfect for  a video sharing site. It is easy to upload a video, interact with other videos and share these videos as well.

10.) www.pogo.com: Pogo is an extremly interactive game site. You get to play games against others as opposed to computers and you can even chat with them while you play,. 

WEBSITES I THINK NEED SOME WORK

 1.) www.buffalostate.edu ‘ Since we go here, I think it is not a surprise that I use this site a lot. My biggest pet peeve about our school website is navigation. Having to click mybuffstate then students and then finally getting into links to navigate elsewhere is just inconvenient. A few branches of the parent website that are not easy to use would be the E. H. Butler Library website. They redesigned the website, but I have no idea to fins what I am looking for on there. It took me about an hour of clicking on different things to find things I needed for a research project. Another branch of the Buffalo State website is banner. When registering for class or searching for classes you have to constantly refresh or it will not conduct the search.

2.) http://q-c-p-solutions.com:  This is my moms website for her new business. I have no idea who she paid to design this, but I have explained to her that it is the worst design ever. The font sucks, the colors suck, the background sucks, the content sucks and there is no navigation through the site at all. It looks very armature and unprofessional.

 3.) www.buffalo.wikispot.org: The navigation on this site is horrendous. The aesthetic is terrible. The fonts are not good and the content for the wikis are either does not exist or not informative enough.

 4.) www.pinterist.com: Their mobile app is better than their actually website.The website is a little over whelming when you are brought to your home screen with everyone's pins. Maybe if there were a way you could pick and choose whose pins you want to see in your feed. 

5.) www.justfab.com: The aesthetic of the website is not that great. There is a lot going on and it gets confusing when you start to shop for the shoes. The filters used to refine searches actually make the search more difficult.

6.) Google+: I have no idea how to use it. This is not a user friendly social media site. Someone please teach me how to get people in my circle!

7.) bing.com: There is just way too much going on. Bing is overwhelming. The homepage is fine, but anything after that is just too much information all at once. the fonts, backgrounds, and advertisements distract me from finding the actually content I am searching for.

8.) blackboard/angel: Navigation sucks. I like that you can change the layout and templates so it is more personal, but navigation sucks and it is hard to interact with one another. Discussion forums are terrible and the messaging feature is too. Outdated technology.

9.) AOL.com: This is outdated as well. The design is not that great.

10.) tumblr.com: Tumblr is pretty much an online diary. Also, you can re-blog things people blog. Most of the time it is just photos or quotes. Tumblr gets boring, the most fun I have had with it is changing my background and layout.

Communications and Facebook

I think it is important for Communications Majors to learn how to use social media because some of us will be involved in marketing and advertising in our near future. I think it will give us another perspective to bring to the table in our professional life. It also doesn't hurt to get a little creative with other aspects of life either! Not only will knowing how to create groups and events help us pass this class, it will help get us noticed in the blue collar world. As for me, I want to stick to event planning and wedding planning which I will be using social media all the time to market for my business and be successful in the generation of web 2.0

Thoughtful and creative posts matter when it comes to Facebook because it will catch someone's eye. It will help create business for the client or company you work for and it will get you noticed by others too! I think it is really important to create something eye popping. It could be for a campaign, an advertisement, a meeting, or an event.

We should be seeing this symbol in every restaurant or small business.It should be used on business card and websites. This symbol stands for a lot more than "Facebook". It stands for social networking, event pages, friends, members, status updates, photo sharing, marketing, advertising, news feed, etc. This can and will help businesses grow. I think this project was definitely interesting and it pointed out a lot of key things that companies and organizations should do when trying to promote their business via social media. 

The three organizations I chose are:

1. Hyde Park Steakhouse Buffalo
2. Queen City Professional Services, Inc
3. McKay's South Buffalo

I chose Hyde Park because I recently went there for dinner, and I actually found really great priced meals on the menu. Not many people I know have been there because it is "too expensive", but I think if they had a Facebook presence they would bring in more business. Every day if specials were posted and more and more people like the page, more and more people will be reached. I personally think the food is absolutely delicious! I used a special that the steakhouse has as an event on Facebook. This helped market and prote their reasonably priced deals.

Next, I have Queen City Professional Services, my mom actually just started this business. She asked me to help her make a Facebook presence because she wants more clients and she wants to be able to connect with her colleagues via Facebook as well. I am not completely sure what exactly she is doing with this company, because she is still in the process of setting goals and objectives for herself, but she wants to work on it with me. I did create a free consultation as an event to help her get clients. She does everything from individual to corporate insurance and  a free consultation will bring more clients to get to know her and her practices before deciding. It makes it more personable but still professional.

Last, I chose McKay's in south Buffalo. I am from south Buffalo and I grew up shopping at this place. Mostly for school uniforms and St. Patrick's Day attire. They carry more than just those things, but they are rarely busy. The store is only known by south Buffalonian's and they should reach out to other places in western New York.  I think this will help their business flourish. They had an instore only deal that anyone could get 30% off all Carhartt items. This will draw business because McKay's is a local, small business and they carry items and products that the general population in the area can use on a regular basis.

Communicating with Creativity

I had a great experience with this project. My group was extremely fun to work with and everyone had a different way to express how they communicate. I chose to communicate through my artwork, Greg chose to do it through media and literature, Aaron communicates through writing, and Calvin does it through photography. I think that all four concepts worked well together. All of our videos individually showed our personalities and still communicate the topic of communications extremely well without words. All of our videos as a group flowed smoothly and we all came together to make sure our concept was portrayed perfectly. Each one of us had our own individual struggles, but once we got into working together and piecing the whole video together, we did a great job. 

My biggest struggle personally was converting my files from windows to work properly on the Mac. It was really difficult because I started my project in Windows Movie Maker and it was finished, it would not open in iMovie because the file was saved as wmmv. So, since my video is a stop motion, I ended up loading all 430 photos onto my dropbox account, and downloaded it onto the Mac I was working on. After they downloaded, I made them into 3 separate slideshows in iPhoto, then I was able to put each slide show into iMovie and start working on editing. Unfortunately, my original computer did not allow me to create a new event, so I was not able to start working right away. Finally, I moved over to another computer and put all the slideshows together. Once they were together I had to blend each clip so it was not visible that it is not only one clip. After, I added my music, and that took forever. I wanted the music to start and end at a specific spot so that it was not awkward when I added it to the group. I ended up clipping the last instrumentals on the song and pasting in in at the point I wanted the lyrics to end. All in all I think I created a wonderful masterpiece. 

As a group, I don't feel like we struggled much together. We all were extremely open to ideas and we all are good a certain things so we each used that to our advantage when putting the group video together in iMovie. Calvin definitely was a great asset to our team because he was a little more familiar with the editing than the rest of us. Aaron's video was awesome, it was really well thought out and he was great at picking music for our group video. Greg brought a lot of fun and he did a great job learning how to work with iMovie and even taught me some things. When working together, we each did a different thing when it came to editing. We split up to duties of cropping, adding music, adding effects and adding transitions. I worked with the transitions and I think that we actually worked really well together when picking them out.

I think we all had trouble when uploading all of our videos. A lot of us had issues uploading to DropBox. I know I had issues with Vimeo, mostly because it took way too much time. Video takes forever to upload compared to YouTube, and it also is not as easy as YouTube to navigate.The easiest video sharing site we used, and the only one I am really familiar with is YouTube. I think that YouTube is definitely more advanced and well known so it made it a lot easier and hassle free. Vimeo is really weird to me; I personally do not like the design of the website nor do I care for the feed that pops up when I log in, when the videos are not relative to me. I logged in today to check out my video again, and my feed was full of cats...I do not even like cats. I guess for Vimeo that top videos are picked by the staff, as with YouTube the top videos are rated by people all around the world. Vimeo is almost ad free, so that is nice. Personally, ads really do not bother me, but sometimes it is nice to be without a million advertisements in your face all at once.I just think I like to stick to what I know and I am more comfortable with it.

Using video as a communication tool instead of writing and photographs is different. You can see the emotions of people, hear sounds and words they are saying, actually communicate more personally. Having instantaneous interaction via video communication is great because you can always be close to people no matter how far away they are. Videos help people with the lack of face to face interaction between people now a days. Photographs are only a millisecond moment in your life and videos can be much longer than that, You can capture more than one moment, you can capture many. Video as a communication tool is also a creative concept. I personally, am all about creative communication. 


I think that the public nature of my video allowed the subject matter to stand out. The fact that I used art work to communicate the message of my life and how I communicate creatively in my own daily life. My video was straight forward, fast paced, and understandable. The public nature was perfect for my topic of creative communication. I think that each video from my group members allowed the subject matter to stand out do to the public nature of their videos as well. Aaron used his journalistic writing and reporting process to convey the message of journalistic communication. Greg used religious literature and movies to display that he is influenced by visual and literary communication. Calvin used photographs that he has taken and video of him taking photographs with all different cameras to tell us about him as a photographer and that he communicates via photography. All of the public nature of each video explains the subject matter of different forms of communication that relate to ourselves. 

 

Self Portrait

Web 2.0

WHAT DO I THINK WEB 2.0 IS?

I think web 2.0 is all about an interactive inter-web. I think it makes complete sense why they named it this. It is a whole new generation of using the internet, just like when the new iPhone comes out, it is the next generation, so it is the next number.

Even though I think that it is cool that they recognize this new generation of the internet, I do not think it needs all of the hype. In our world, everything is constantly evolving. If you believe in the theory of evolution, we evolved from apes, and crocodiles evolved from dinosaurs. It would only make sense that the internet would evolve from only being able post limited information to responding to it. It is now ingrained into us to constantly learn, change, and be different.

I think Web 2.0 is allowing us to continue our growth as humans. Every day we learn something new, we make changes to things in our lives, and we all do everything differently. When technology evolves we all have to learn to use it, some people like to change it, and all technology has something a little different about it. I think this is what makes Web 2.0 something great, and I also think this will lead to the next generation in the involvement of the internet.

I remember when web 2.0 was just starting, I always used AOL Instant Messenger. I thought it was great I was able to interact with my friends without having to call them.I used Photo Bucket all the time and it was great because I could then embed those images into MySpace and share with all of my friends. Then came Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, etc. The list is now endless of ways everyone world wide can interact with each other via the internet.

WHAT WEB 2.0 ACTUALLY IS: 

How many know that the internet has now been classified into different generations? Probably not many, just those who classified the generations, those whom have done research about it and those who live their life in the world of web publishing. Web 1.0 was the generation of publishing to the internet. During this generation there was no social interaction via the inter-web. Web 2.0 is the generation we are in today, the interactive internet, but this is not a new concept.

In 2005, Tim O'Reilly, the President and CEO of O'Reilly  Media, Inc.writes "The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the fall of 2001 marked a turning point for the web." This was when the interactive web began.

Jennifer Kyrnin from About.com explains "Web 2.0 is really starting to mean a combination of the technology (like AJAX) allowing the customers to actually interact with the information." in her article, Getting Beyond the Hype of Web 2.0.

According to  CBS News "Web 2.0 represents an important shift in the way digital information is created, shared, stored, distributed, and manipulated. In the years ahead, it will have a significant impact in the way businesses use both the Internet and enterprise-level IT applications"

In conclusion, web 2.0 progressed from the non-interactive internet of web 1.0. This concept of web generations has been around for about 10 years and for the past 10 years we have been in the web 2.0 generation of interactive internet. Although some will argue the true definition of web 2.0, but it all comes down to the fact that people can now interact and communicate with one another via the web.  No one is sure when web 3.0 will come around, but when it does, it will make another significant impact for individuals and for businesses.

Wiki.Wiki.Wiki

I have never done a WIKI before in my life. I never really use Wikipedia or anything because I have been told all throughout my school career that they are an unreliable source of information. I would like to tell all my teachers and professors who have said that, they are WRONG! A lot of us in the class struggled with our wikis because we had to make sure everything was properly cited, that our information is 100 percent accurate, and it had to be professionally written. With all of the strict guidelines and the tough admins, there is no way people can post inaccurate information.

THE IDEA FOR MY WIKI

My grandmother owns Melanie's Sweets Unlimited, a local bakery here in Buffalo. She has been around for about 35 years, and she really does not have any modern advertising or marketing skills. I believe, because of this she is losing out on a huge opportunity. I figured that not a lot of people really know about the bakery, unless your parents or grandparents have taken you there, then a wiki would be great to give people history on her bakery. Plus, I decided to use BufWiki, which apparently tourists and other people visiting Buffalo use to find something to do. Why not go to the old Broadway Market and get a feel for old Buffalo while you're in town?

NO ADVERTISING ON WIKIS

I thought that maybe I can make this article more towards advertising for my grandmothers business. Then, we were taught that if it even could be marketing anything about the business, we could not have it. Wikis are supposed to be strictly factual. I could not find any historic background on her bakery at all, so I decided to interview her myself. My grandmother loves attention, so she was thrilled to do the interview.

THE INTERVIEW

My grandmother was thrilled to see me when I came in for the interview. She had me wait a while because she had to make sure the cookies got out of the oven in time and the cake she frosted was put in the refrigerator, but it was okay because I got some great information from her. I began to ask questions about when she opened, why she opened, what locations she had, why they closed, so on and so forth. I found out a lot of things that I personally did not even know about my grandmother and her business.

THE ARTICLE

 I began writing the article almost immediately after the interview. It was really difficult to make sure my article was mostly factual because I like to write a lot of fluff sometimes, and I definitely use words to make things sound better that could be considered advertising. I finally got into a good flow and kept writing and writing. I made it to about 900 words and I had nothing else to say. Then I remembered a brief conversation I had with my grandmother about holidays and Easter. Those are the more busy times at the Broadway Market, where her stand is located. She was telling me about her polish baked goods and how she is a big part of the Polish community. I expanded upon that and got a little over 1000 words. I was so excited to start coding and everything.

CREATING THE WIKI

I wanted to create a wiki on BufWiki. Since my grandmother is local, and she is all about supporting Buffalo, I figured a BufWiki would be perfect. So I started studying the codes so that I would be ready to post. I had my external links ready to be posted and my images as well. Then I check the class blog and I read through it and I thought that our wiki was supposed to be published before class the one day....so I published it. Guess what! IT WAS TAKEN DOWN! I felt bad because then Professor Pabico had to deal with the rude admin. Thank God she found out a way for us to post them with them not getting closed down immediately!

RE-CREATING MY WHOLE WIKI

Well I had all the article saved, but I did not saved the coding with the text. MY BAD! So, when I went over what I needed to fix with Professor Pabico, I figured it was fine because I had to redo a lot of my article. I had to go through and take out certain words that could hint towards me advertising, I had to make mine more like a wiki that was on Wikipedia, and I had to add the interview section to the wiki because I had no sources to cite. After I got all of that done, it was all uphill from there. I got to code everything and at the end of class I finally was done and over this wiki. I published it, and publishing something on the internet never felt so good!

FINISHING MY WIKI
I was so nervous that as soon as I finished that my wiki would be taken down immediately. The next thought that popped in my head was that I never want to create a wiki again. After that I was looking through BufWiki and there was like not real wiki pages.I think that these admins should be just a little more lenient so that people actually will use the site. It would help them out, it would help out Buffalo, and it would help out businesses a lot. I understand they are trying to keep their cite clean and creditable, but if it is not popular people won't use it either. I feel that if someone (like myself) went and interviewed the owner of a business and wanted to post a wiki about them and the company, that we should be able to. The owner is not going to lie to us or give us false information. Just because I could not cite anything, because there is no information about the business does not mean it is not creditable.

Melanie's Sweets Unlimited

Location: 999 Broadway St, Buffalo, NY 14212

Phone: 716 895-1959

Hours: Monday- Saturday: 8:00 am- 5:00 pm

Sunday: Closed

Owner(s): Melanie Krygier-LaMastra

Payment Method: Cash, Credit Card, and Benefits Card

Prices: $5 - $20

'''Melanie's Sweets Unlimited''' is a local ice cream shop and bakery that has recently downsized to one location, back to her roots, in the Broadway Market. Melanie Krygier-Lamastra came from a long line of bakers. Her father owned a bakery that was a Buffalo staple back in the mid 1900's. She faced a lot of diversity being a woman trying to make a name for herself in the 1970's and 1980's, but she had a desire to be a great baker in the Queen City. Melanie has been in business for 35 years, and has fulfilled her dreams.

While working for her father, Melanie opened Broadway Quality Bakery in the Broadway Market in 1978. At her first bakery she only made and sold baked goods.  She then decided it was time to expand, so she opened Melanie's Sweets Unlimited. In the front of the Broadway Market, Melanie began selling a variety of sweets such as candies, chocolates, ice cream, and her homemade- hand decorated cakes. After being there for three years, Melanie decided it was time to find a new location to again expand her business.

In 1981, she opened shop in the outskirts of the city, on Harlem road in Cheektowaga. Her shop was located right next door to the Polish Villa on the corner of Harlem road and Clinton road. This location was mainly an ice cream shop, and she used this location in conjunction with her Broadway Market location to bake all of her homemade, made from scratch, cakes. She mainly served Charlap's ice cream and John Becks custard. Eventually she switched over to Perry's Ice Cream and Upstate Farms custard for her sundaes and shakes. Even though business was steady, Melanie decided it was time to close up shop on Harlem Road in 2005.

In 1987, Melanie opened shop downtown, in the Theatre District, right next door to Shea's Performing Arts Center. This location was one of Melanie’s most popular shops in Buffalo. Here she served ice cream, sandwiches, soups, and her Buffalo famous treats. She kept her cake case filled with all different cakes. Her award winning red velvet, and other traditional cakes such as German chocolate, carrot cake, dark forest, and triple chocolate cake. She catered to the theatergoers and the performers from the theaters in the area. She was open all year to serve hot soups and sandwiches to the workers, and performers at Shea’s for lunch and dinner. Also, it was a great place for night goers to visit for a late night snack before heading to the bars and clubs. Melanie unfortunately lost her lease in 2011 and was not able to re-sign due to expansion of offices in the building.

Aside from her everyday treats and sweets, Melanie is known for her special occasion cakes. She has been making wedding cakes from scratch and hand decorating them since she started 35 years ago. She makes all of the butter cream roses by hand, she pipes details with precision, and she creates a traditional wedding cake with butter cream frosting and decorations. She has a collage of pictures of cakes that she has decorated outside of her stand in the Broadway market. Most cakes she makes are hand frosted, without fondant. She uses traditional decorating techniques and that’s what separates her from the new bakeries setting up shop in the area.

Melanie's Sweets Unlimited is also a popular vendor for a lot of summer festivals in the Buffalo area. She started doing various little festivals. Melanie then stepped into the bigger festivals such as the Polish festival, the Wing festival, and most importantly The Taste of Buffalo. Melanie participated in the Taste of Buffalo from 1989 until 2006, and she recently made a brief come back in 2011. She won Buffalo's Best Cannoli in 1989 and all other years until 2005. Melanie hangs her award proudly in her stand at the Broadway Market.  She has also won the best Red Velvet cake at the Polish Festival in Cheektowaga, New York. Melanie has also been recognized in the Buffalo News for being a spokesperson for the Market. She has been on all of the local news stations in Buffalo for her special cakes around the holiday season. Her hummingbird cake has even been featured in an article in the Buffalo News for how different and tasty it is.

Like previously mentioned, Melanie sells a variety of sweets.  A lot of products carried at Melanie’s Sweets Unlimited are from other local companies. She has Alethea's Chocolates , Crystal Beach products, and Costanzo's rolls. Melanie sells a lot of Alethea’s sponge candy and sugar free chocolates at her stand, but her most popular items aside from her cakes are the Crystal beach products. Many people in Buffalo used to go up to crystal beach for a little getaway, and no one left without getting a famous Crystal Beach sucker. Since Crystal Beach is no longer in operation, the closest you can get to it is through its suckers, sugar waffles, and Loganberry syrup.  Melanie gets these products delivered fresh every week and a lot of her customers come in just to buy the taste of nostalgia.

Another time to come in to the Market for some nostalgic moments would be around Easter and Christmas. Most people in Buffalo grew up visiting The Market at these times if the year. At Easter, her wonderfully decorated lamb, chicken, egg, and rabbit shaped cakes are a top seller.  Not many people know this, but Melanie follows a lot of Polish tradition, and is well known in the Polish community in Buffalo. She carries special polish baked goods for all different polish celebrations. At Easter time she makes placek, chalka, babka and the traditional lamb cakes as previously mentioned. To start off her Easter season she bakes fresh paczki for Fat Tuesday.