Goodbye, Au Revoir!

The pictures from the Hapa performance night are now available and while the building of the Park will continue, the concerts finale is this coming weekend, and my Ambassador stint along with summer is over! Melissa, the Ambassador Coordinator informed us, the Ambassadors, last week, that today was her last day. I've now sent in my final report and that I guess, along with the last post, marks the end of the Great Summer 2008 OCGP Ambassador adventure. Unless somebody wants me to continue to blog - which I'd love to do!

I did a lot more presentations in September when I booked the Community Room (again) at the Heritage Park Library - pictures here show how I set the room up. I had company, an Ambassador colleague - Marissa, on Sept. 8 but on Sept. 9 I went solo. I/we presented to new residents to Irvine, community college students; free lance researchers, traveling businessmen on lunch breaks, families using the library, as well some of the students in the Homework Kids Club. One of the neat things about these presentations was the opportunity to interact with kids - school, pre-school, and college. Often, the pre-schoolers drew their parents in - the parents seemed to think we were 'selling' something or the balloon rides have a cost! Plus, the young definitely have a different take on the park - for e.g. one of the questions was regarding free wi-fi access at the park, will have the Park have it? I didn't know the answer to the question, but given the number of hours I've spent blogging my Ambassador experience, it would be great to have wi-fi at the Park - then I could blog onsite!

My blog statistics - in the last one month, 22 Aug - 23 Sept. there's been 192 page loads, 82 unique visitors and 23 returning visitors - are pretty encouraging to me. I have done almost nothing to attract or improve traffic to it (definitely no search engine optimization or anything of the sort). I also forgot to share with friends :(. Most people who found it (and I've gotten a few emails!) are community folks, park visitors, and presentation attendees whose pictures I took and put on my blog. I forgot to monitor traffic too and not until Melissa wanted to know did I think of implementing a counter in late Aug. So that's why there's only one month of statistics. Emails indicated that folks appreciated the blog 1) as they got to see their pictures, 2) watch a video of the Flight Crew in performance (like me a few simply missed seeing them when they visited the park), 3) understand many principles that drives the programming and design, and 4) get a sneak peek into the workings of both the City of Irvine volunteer program as well as the OC Great Park (especially to high schoolers and community members who were considering volunteering or working with them). Thanks to the City of Irvine and the OCGP for this opportunity to be an Ambassador. Goodbye everybody, and I look forward to seeing you around Irvine!