The Purple Onion (1/15)

Hey There,

We got a later start today as our first meeting was scheduled for 1:30pm at a PR firm called Porter Novelli. From there we moved down the road to meet with Creative Commons, a non-profit license/ copyright firm, at 3pm.

We were greeted by a woman named Karen Hartland at Porter Novelli. Karen was part of PN’s special media and was in charge of training employees and customers how to leverage different types of social media in order to improve their public relations activities. Public relations has to do with managing the way the public perceives a specific entity (e.x. a corporation, organization, individual, government, etc.). Thus, with various social platforms on the rise like Facebook and Twitter, PR firms are using these social platforms to shape the perceptions of the public. The world of PR is puzzling to me. It appears to me that people in PR get paid to do what everyone else does everyday, but for entities other than themselves. Yet, PR firms only attempt to make the reputations of particular entities as positive as they can. Thus, public relations agents are really just illusionists, constantly trying to paint the perfect picture and manage "the damage" of their clients. The office certainly seemed like a cool environment with tones of magazines, a flat screen TV, a PS3 and God of War 3.

We finished our milk and cookies at Porter Novelli and heading on down to Creative Commons. This is a new and cool organization. Originally born from academia, the idea behind Creative Commons was to provide greater information sharing over the Internet by allowing users to easily license their content (pictures, essays, etc.) in order to proclaim how they wanted their material to be used and shared. The Creative Commons website (creativecommons.org) allows you to license you content in multiple ways. During our meeting we had three young employees describe their business plan and software coding specifics.

We departed Creative Commons and milled around Union Square for about an hour until your stomach began to grow. This feeling was abated when we inhaled some scrumptious clam chowder at Boudin on the Fisherman's Wharf. From there we returned to our hotel to regroup with some of our classmates and head to a comedy club called the Purple Onion.

The Purple Onion was part of many comedy clubs hosting a San Francisco wide comedy tour in dubbed the "Sketchfest tour." 8 different comedians have 10 minute gigs in succession. We found this club simply by googling "comedy clubs in San Francisco" and choosing the cheapest one within reasonable proximity. We were standing in line for 30 minutes painfully watching as the people who reserved tickets walked past wondering if we going to get in. Suddenly there was a bit of commotion behind me further up the stairs we were standing on. As I turned around to investigate I was awestruck to find a short, gray and unshaven man politely moving down the stairs - Robin Williams!! I couldn't believe it! Here we were standing in line to the cheapest comedy club we could find and Robin Williams just went inside!

After the show started we were granted entrance into the show to fill in the gaps. I haven't laughed that hard in an extremely long time. While some comedians were a bit of a let down, my cheeks actually hurt from laughing so hard as a result of the others. It was a bit surreal to hear Robin William's cackle amid all the laughter in the club. Before the beginning of the next show at the Purple Onion the members of our class managed to get a picture with Robin. What a night! Laughing the hardest I ever have and meeting a celebrity.

Truly exceptional!

-Adam