Tracie Hitz's blog

When I was back in Kickapoo for Mother's Day on Sunday, my Mom handed me a pretty hefty check to give to Zac for Humayliation.  She wanted to make sure her money was added this week because Old Hat's good friend, Jeff Champeau, is matching donations through Friday up to $1,000 - a truly generous gesture that we all admire.

I know it’s difficult to change. With the rate technology is going, it’s easy to just give up.  Stick with what works.  I get it.  I didn’t want to convert my awesome movie collection from VHS to DVD.  I didn’t want to get a Blackberry.  But every time someone convinced me that it was a good idea, I was happy they did.  I mean, if things were left up to me, my hair would still look like this.

Four days left before we crown the winner of the Old Hat Minute to Win It! For those of you who might not have it in the budget to go to the NACMA Convention in Dallas in June or for those who would rather put that money to use implementing a great idea you get from attending the convention, this contest is for you!  Even if you haven't started on the challenges, you can still enter.  Just get them filmed by this Thursday ... all you need to do is:

The Week 1 Challenge is The T-Shirt Roll

Roll three t-shirts in one minute!  There are many different techniques, but you just have to end up with a "throwable" shirt like Brian Hicks at Xavier did with his Fold, Roll and Tape Technique.

As you know, I started the #PDBookClub because I love reading books about professional development.  I decided to run the book club via Twitter because I saw how well it worked for the #sbchat on Sunday nights and #social4tixsales on Tuesday nights. There are several other chats out there for sports biz professionals (#sportsprchat, #smsportschat), but those are the two I check out the most.

March 30, 2012 Update:

This is the last week of challenges and it's the wildcard round. This means you can make your own minute challenge to complete.  Maybe it's a contest you implemented at one of your games or just something you've always wanted to try.  Show us what it is because you will be judged on creativity, originality and execution.  Check out an example, Dane the Intern, picked from his daily routine of stocking the pop machine.

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!