recounting the first

each weekend a planner (or sometimes planners) will visit the school, teach a lesson and hang out with the class. typically, the planner will talk about a selected topic, assign the class 2 projects, one for the weekend and one campaign for the weekly campaigns class, then allow their energy and brains to be drained by all of us wannabe-planners. 

speaker #1 was christopher owens from the richards group in dallas.  it was good to open school with chris as the first speaker, if not for his enthusiasm, then for his empathy.  chris was a planner in the school's second bootcamp. 

the week was about filling our toolboxes with the 'proper tools to succeed at bootcamp and beyond.' it was an introduction to what the planner's role is in communications, specifically a combination of storyteller and strategist. we also learned that planning is not necessary for communications but 'creates better communications.' 

one of the greatest things about chris was that he wanted us to ask him questions regardless of their triteness. he liberally gave advice as a former graduate who had to build a planning department in his former agency by himself, fully capable but not entirely directed, then eventually made it over to the richards group and worked on campaigns like patron tequila, red lobster and the home depot. 

the other most useful thing chris filled us in on was the power of resourcefulness. in ad school, there are no iconoculture accounts, no reams of mintel data available or syndicated research libraries.  there is the interwebs. the internets. the tubes. and you find that if you become good at wielding search engines, google labs and idea communities like flickr, psfk etc, you can build a great case and story for your strategies.  also, using these things doesn't end in ad school, they're helpful in an agency role, too. i think it was essentially more helpful that we didn't have tons of available pre-researched data. it made us think and tirelessly find information.