Tracie Hitz's blog

I love traveling to see all of my friends around the country. I'm getting good at it considering I went to 35 places last year!

I've gotten really good at preparing for these trips, much like Santa fitting all of his presents in that tiny sleigh. On Tuesday, I packed for seven days for two locations, New York and Florida and I was able to fit everything I needed, including my winter coat and my swimsuit in a carry-on bag.

Reading the Social BOOM for our first Professional Development Book Club meeting was a great pick by @PolarBearPete. The things we learned will be put into action as part of our discussion today, which is pretty cool. I've already started doing some of the things Jeffrey Gitomer suggested personally, as well as for my job so I'm looking forward to hearing what everyone else got out of the book. Click here to add your Twitter handle and/or grap the handles of other group members so you can create a PDBookClub Twitter list.

Reading just got even cooler with the creation of the Professional Development Book Club. Y'all probably figured out that I'm a bit of a nerd since I attended and worked at Northwestern so why try to hide it anymore?  I read so much when I was little, I had to get these super cool glasses!  I thought ditching the glasses and coming to Old Hat might make me cooler, but you can't take the nerd out of the girl.

The last few weeks the spirit of the holidays has put the Old Hat crew in a sharing mood as we have been reflecting on our favorite moments of 2011.  Between going to clients' campuses and a record-number of clients visiting us in Norman, we remembered just how much fun it is spending time with everyone.  And what a great way to share ideas and brainstorm new ones. 

I'm not sure giving something away is considered a sale, but Old Hat got into the spirit of Black Friday/Cyber Monday by offering up FREE ideas with FREE shipping!  After a great response to our quick social media advertising blitz on Friday, we are delivering some of our best ideas to some of our favorite people on Cyber Monday.  We are truly thankful for everyone who participated.  After 13 years of working at Northwestern, I know how nerve racking it can be to try something new so we hope our Black Friday experiment shows you that it's cool to go outside your comfort zone.  We hope these ideas will provide you with the tools you need to try something new on your campuses. And if it doesn't work, learn from it and keep on trying!

As Dustin mentioned last week in his blog, we were headed up to Manhattan last weekend to see the K-State Cat Train in action.  We were thrilled Joni Smoller asked us to recreate such an important part of the gameday tradition for the Cats this summer so we couldn't wait to be there to experience it.  We thought as long as we were there, we would experience everything about the gameday, which it was good that we had two K-State alums with us to show us around.  We met Dustin at his friends' tailgate, which was complete with an RV with a satellite TV playing the MSU-Nebraska game.

I have always been a fan of overcommunicating, especially at work.  The more I knew what was going on at Northwestern, the more I felt I could contribute to the overall mission of the department.  I love all of the new ways to communicate, especially ones that involve writing.  I have a degree in Journalism so sometimes I forget about the spoken word, which I realized when I called one of my closest friends, Katie, last week and she picked up the phone and said, "Is something wrong?  We never talk on the phone."  With as much as I like to talk, she was right.  It got me thinking about how much I rely on email, text, IM, Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with people.

I am a nerd.  I have blogged about that before, but the last few weeks have been no exception.  I can take something fun and make it practical.  Luckily, I can also make anything practical more fun so it's hard to tell when I'm working. That's a sign that I love my job. Often times I will be taking a vacation to visit friends or family, but no matter where I land, there is always a team or university nearby ... and  I just have to pop in to see my friends there. I'm thrilled that Erin Kraebber is now at Bradley because I get to see her whenever I go back to Kickapoo to see my family.  I love it when worlds collide!

Everyone knows that I don’t need much of a reason to turn something simple into a bigger event.  I’ve been known to celebrate my birthday for a week.  Throw together pub crawls for new employees.  I even ran a half marathon in April just so I could get some friends together at the honky tonks in Nashville.

Before I moved from Chicago last year, I crammed in everything I loved doing or meant to do there into just a few weeks.  Twenty-four straight days of Hitzapalooza was filled with some of my favorite things, like going to see a friend’s band play, checking out a new concert hall (twice), going to tourist spots like Navy Pier and the Hancock, eating sushi downtown, attending sporting events and eating at five of my favorite deep dish pizza places. 

I've only made three big moves in my life since moving out of my parents' house in Kickapoo that I lived in since I was born.  The same house my parents still live in today, just with a lot more stuff, including nine pinball machines that I wish were there when I was growing up!