Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > April > 02
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Exclusive Report: Preview Party for the Lance Armstrong Foundation Headquarters
He wanted to help at least one other person with cancer. He has, instead, helped millions. Lance Armstrong started his drive against cancer way back in the 1990s, while he was still under a possible death sentence from the disease and before he won seven Tours de France.
Thursday night, a few dozen invited guests previewed the Lance Armstrong Foundation Headquarters, home for 70 or so staff members on East Sixth Street. “We began as friends and family determined to beat the disease,” Armstrong said. “Now it’s a great organization, efficient and effective with a special place to work.”
NASA astronauts Karen Nyberg, Mark Kelly
Guests, staff and board members milled around the former lumber yard and paper warehouse, which the architects at Lake Flato and The Bommarito Group have turned into a buzzing hive of bright activity (LiveStrong yellow is a contributing color). The primary room is shared among all, with saw-toothed skylights high above the cubicles to let in plenty of light. Smaller rooms that look like packing crates are placed at strategic spots for meetings and such.
Public Strategies’ Mark McKinnon, Annie McKinnon
Incredibly, 95 percent of the original building materials were reused and recycled. A Nike-backed fitness room waits off to the side and a “pit” for mass meetings and meals backs the west wall — itself leading to a patio. WiFi ties everyone together and allows them to migrated around the 30,000 square-foot building. (In the foundation’s previous offices on MoPac, there was no space large enough for the staff to meet, and the employees were separated into three separate suites.)
Foundation Employees Nos. 2 & 3: Liz Kreutz, Renee Nicholas
“Dealing with such a heavy subject, it’s good to have such a light, happy place to work,” said Renee Nicholas, Employee No. 3 at the foundation, and dealing with her own breast cancer challenge now.
Jack Reed, Sally Reed, Foundation President Doug Ulman
I talked with Eric Shanteau, the Austin Olympian who overcame testicular cancer to prepare for the World Games in Rome. (He checked out the competition at the NCAA swimming finals in College Station last week.) I met Bill Gimson the “$3 Billion Man,” who was recruited from the Centers for Disease Control to run the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (recall Armstrong’s championing the taxpayer funding proposition).
Becky Treviiño, Philip Chang of the Young Leaders Cancer Council
There was Ramona Treviño, principal of the University of Texas elementary school across the street, and, wearing his jaunty hat, Public Strategies’ Mark McKinnon (he’s on the foundation board). Doug Ulman spoke eloquently — he’s the former Brown University soccer player who went three rounds with cancer, met Armstrong by e-mail, and now is president of the foundation.
UT diversity specialist Martha Oestereich, UT elementary school principal Ramona Treviño
“It’s been a once-of-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of the design and part of the staff teamwork, and to be embedded in the community as we are on East Sixth Street,” Ulman said. “I was always excited to go to work, but now I’m really excited.” The building will open to the public April 21. (According to the foundation’s amazing spokeswoman, Rae Bazzarre, Armstrong discovered the building while on an East Austin bike ride.)
Armstrong’s key players: Mark Higgins, Bill Stapleton
Among the most touching mementoes is a table with five chairs from Z’ Tejas, representing the place where Armstrong first dreamed up LiveStrong with Bill Stapleton, Bart Knaggs, Gary Seghi and John Korioth over lunch. Even the menu is there.
Andy Miller, Dr. Amelie Ramirez, Bill Gimson, head of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas
At the evening’s climax, NASA astronauts Karen Nyberg and Mark Kelly presented Armstrong with his yellow jersey they took into space, where it traveled around the Earth 200 times and a distance of 5.8 million miles.
Clayton Christopher, Natasha McRee
Kelly shared a quick anecdote about hearing that he and his family would get to meet the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. When he asked his daughter, then 8 or 9, if she was excited, she said, “Yes, I get to meet Lance Armstrong!”
Nick Denby, Eric Shanteau, Olympian
Oh, and how was the comeback competitor doing after his extensive collarbone repair? He looked and sounded as healthy as ever. “I feel like a patient again,” he said. “But it’s going good for those of you who were wondering.”
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Media Relations Group 1: UT ME for Amy’s Ice Cream
At the McCombs School of Business, students in Ben Bentzin’s marketing class spend a good chunk of the semester helping out local businesses with recently acquired skills. Banking off that premise, I geared my quickie media-relations workshop for those particular semester-long projects during two of Bentzin’s classes on Thursday.
I’m now tracking several students marketing/media relations groups. It will take a while to enter the reports into the system, but by the end of the weekend, they should be launched. I promise to follow them for at least a month.
As usual, each group of six or more students divided up the tasks of pitching me live — via Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, texting, imaging, phone and face-to-face — and I responded honestly as a working journalist.
Student Group: UT ME
Austin Client: Amy’s Ice Cream
Pitches for stories so far: On the surface, it would seem that Amy’s Ice Cream, the longtime Austin institution, would make an easy pitch for media coverage. Fun food. Fun service. Just fun. Yet UT ME ran into a common obstacle with its first tweets, e-mails, etc. — finding a story angle that the media has not already covered.
It was not until the face-to-face pitch that I heard — a saw mimed — a part of the Amy’s experience I didn’t know about: The employment application sketched on a paper bag. Applicants can do with the bag whatever they want — make it into a balloon, whatever. I didn’t know that. Or maybe I just forgot. Next step: Research to see if we’ve covered that particular element in a big way before, and if so, when? UT ME, your move.
Well done. Well done.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Charity, Faith & Education, Food
