It's about the journey, not the destination

How to Use Jibber Jobber

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:29:00 +0000

I am wrapping up my active job search for the time being - I have decided to accept a job that I was offered, but I wanted to share some details on a cool tool I learned about during my job search process.

I've been using Jibber Jobber for a few weeks now to help manage my job search, and thought I'd outline the overall process for using Jibber Jobber, as well as some tips I've learned along the way! The best of Jibber Jobber is through its premium account features, which you have access to during the first 14 days of the time. My "free premium" time recently ran out, and I'm still exploring whether JJ is worth using on the free version, or exactly how I should use Jibber Jobber without access to its coolest features.

Set up your contacts. You can easily import your contacts from LinkedIn, Gmail, Outlook or whatever other email or contact database you might have. They even have a video on how to do this (doublecheck!). You can also rate your contacts, which is an interesting feature that I'll talk about more in a bit.

Set up your companies. These are target companies, recruiters you work with, or even job boards that you use. You can also rank these companies!

Search for jobs within the Jibber Jobber context. Search for jobs on Indeed.com, Yahoo, Careerbuilder, from within Jibber Jobber. If you find a job that interests you, you can easily add it to your JJ job list.

Add jobs to your Jibber Jobber job list. In addition to adding them from the job searchs, you can also manually add a job.

Log thoughts and create action items. This is like a journal of what you're doing. You can log to a contact, a company, or a specific job. When you log an action taken, you can also create an Action Item. These can make up your to-do list for the job search or even just in general networking. These will be translated more generally throughout the application --> e.g. see a list of action items for this week, related to networking.
For example, log that I sent in my resume and cover letter to XYZ Consulting. I can make an action item to call my contact at XYZ Consulting after 5 days to check that they've received my resume and ask about follow-up. Jibber Jobber sends me an email reminder before this action item is due. I can also view all my action items at a glance for this week.

These are the basics on how to use Jibber Jobber, which took me a little while to figure out. Now I appreciate how the process (sometimes seemingly tedious) can help to streamline the job search, a proactive networking strategy, and also save all of your information in one place for you to come back to next time you need to look for a new job or freshen up with new ideas from my network.

Participate/Take Action

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:48:00 +0000

In the spirit of the election, I thought I would share a tidbit learned from a previous job, and something that has been important for the detail-oriented person that I am to practice:

Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

As we think about who should be the next president, or should fill other positions, it's important to consider from among the options we have -- and move forward. Take a step. Any step.

You can spend tons of time to make the right decision, but what is the value of that extra time? Are you wasting time that could be spent moving forward on that decision (whether right or wrong) and getting a better idea of whether your decision made was actually the right one? Sometimes planning too much is over-planning.

One example - start to write a paper after making a basic outline and doing adequate research, but then you decide that your hypothesis wasn't right, or that you don't have enough research. But now you have a more clear understanding of what was lacking and can either start over or work from what you have.

In software development there is a term for planning just a few steps at a time. Agile software development has you develop and complete baby-steps of the software development life cycle (from requirements to ready-for-release) rather than planning and developing larger scale development projects - that might be more likely to be delayed, have bugs, etc.

While micro-projects or minimal planning may not be the best for all situations, this can sometimes be an efficient way to get things done. You move forward on something, even if the overall picture isn't complete. And any action, including voting -- is getting us one step closer to where we'd like to be, even if we don't see the complete picture or know if it's the right complete picture.

Tools for the Job Search

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:48:00 +0000

I have been in a full-time job search for the past month now, and I wanted to share some of the tools that I have found most helpful or otherwise entertaining:

-Indeed.com - a must for any job searching. It searches all of the other job boards!
-LinkedIn - This is a good site even if you're not specifically looking for a job. It's a professional networking site that allows you to see the compounding value of your network. As you connect with more people, the people that they know can become part of your loose network!
-jibberjobber - I'm playing with this as a tool to track my job hunt and networking efforts. It's takes a bit of learning… We'll see how much I continue to use it for my job tracking.

Job/Career-related Blogs I have enjoyed:
-Penelopetrunk.com - This is one of the first blogs that I checked out, and it has lots of good advice, and not just about career topics. Explore the categories that interest you in her archives!
-Keppie Careers - a good site that's regularly updated and focused to the job search and resume creation!
-Water Cooler Wisdom - Alexandra Levit provides interesting thoughts on what's going on in the work environment. While not specifically about the job search, she's very interesting to read!
-Dan Schwabel's Personal Branding Blog - personal branding guru! Tons of stuff, although I sometimes find it a bit daunting to package oneself as forcefully as I sometimes feel that he presents.

A month in Chicago

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:42:00 +0000

I've been in Chicago for just over a month now, and I'm really liking the city! Overall, I've found people here to be friendly, and I seem to enjoy myself more in the more urban environment than Madison, WI.

What have I been up to?

Lots of running, especially in the Bucktown/Wicker Park area. I recently ran the Bucktown 5k and did very well for myself!
Hot Yoga. This is yoga in a 105 degree room, for 90 minutes. Yes, it's very sweaty, but I like it, and you get to do each pose twice, so you get an immediate chance to improve upon your first try.
Exploring the city. I saw a bunch of "aircraft" try to fly but mostly fall into Lake Michigan, explored a Mexican street market, and also seen more of the city's nightlife. Whatever you might be looking for, there is definitely something to do in Chicago.
Meeting up with old friends.
Reading more.
Searching for my next job.

The job search has been my main focus, but I would be going crazy if it weren't for the other fun things going on! I'm definitely enjoying my free time here, although I appreciate the more active and slightly more structured environment of an office. But I'm sure that once I start a job, I'll be looking back wistfully on these more open-ended days!

Book Review: "Eat, Pray, Love"

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:49:00 +0000

Right now, I'm in between jobs and so I have some extra time to enjoy reading and ponder a bit about what I've read.

I recently finished re-reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. What book isn't great that pronounces the wonders of eating pasta and pizza?
Gilbert tells her stories, and weaves her history into how she got to her present state (of living four months each in Italy, India and Indonesia for a year), in an incredible way. As a writer, I look to her writing as a guide or other inspiration on writing style.

As we get into more crazy world and lives, there are three simple things that we can maximize within our lives:

While Gilbert goes off on a round-the-world trip to seek these out, it's important to also cultivate these within our daily lives as well. With the extra time on my hands right now, it's something that I'm working on too!

An end to real life?

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 01:03:00 +0000

Reading CNN.com today I saw this article about the rising popularity of virtual reality. While I am all about taking advantage of technologies in order to make life easier and more productive, part of me wonders whether it's actually beneficial to be spending more time online rather than in real life. Small ways we do this are texting versus calling, or sending emails to a person in our same office environment. Do we get the same emotional and personal impact out of these interactions as we do out of a hug or a conversation?

Thoughts on virtual reality?

Reflections from the window - project evaluations

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:19:00 +0000

As one of the last steps of the summer program with AMIGOS (and any good project methodology), we took some time to evaluate how the program went. We had some interesting conversations among the staff team as to how to implement the evaluations, in addition to the topics discussed within the evaluations.

We used a participatory evaluation method, which succinctly, means to involve participants in the evaluation process. For AMIGOS, this meant to get the opinions of people from all aspects of involvement with the program: host families, youth group members who worked with our volunteers, partnering agency contacts, to even community members who weren't involved with the program much.

The evaluation process looked different based on the different levels at which we evaluated

At the community level, supervisors might have coordinated a town meeting to evaluate the project in a group with community members. In some communities, a town meeting wasn't feasible; these supervisors might have conducted multiple interviews with various community members and key players, or even distributed surveys to community members.
At the partnering agency level, directors and supervisors met with PLAN contacts that we had worked with. We evaluated how the summer went: successes, challenges, suggestions. Based on the AMIGOS mission statement, what did we do well? what difficulties did we encounter? what suggestions do we have for next year?

One of the interesting topics of discussion when we were planning out our evaluation methodologies was whether the presence of our youth volunteers (who had been living and working in the communities) would affect the responses in the evaluation. While communities might be more reticient to discuss the challenges of their volunteers when the vols are right there, there was also the consideration of how to teach or pass along knowledge about the evaluation process to volunteers. None of our project supervisors (responsible for directly overseeing volunteers in the communities) had ever done a participatory evaluation before, either because the eval process was different when they were a volunteer, or more likely, that the participatory evaluation had always been conducted post-volunteer departure from the communities.

Here's an interesting document on involving youth in the participatory evaluation process published by the Program for Youth and Community at the University of Michigan.

In the end, we came to a consensus on a two-part participatory evaluation. First, that there would be some sort of participatory evaluation in all communities while the volunteers were still there. In general, this was the meaty evaluation step, although in some communities supervisors encountered challenges that prevented them from doing a thorough evaluation at this point. Next, supervisors returned to each community after volunteers left the country in order to check that everything was indeed OK with the volunteers and to complete the participatory evaluation process as needed.

The final step of the evaluation process was to complete the documentation on these evaluations. We created a number of documents based on the multi-faceted evaluation process:

Community-specific evaluation summaries - for next year's staff to review and learn from at the beginning of the summer
Partnering Agency evaluation matrix - based on the notes from three different partnering agency evaluation meetings we held (with the three PLAN offices with which we worked)
Final Evaluation documents - we created one in Spanish and a summary in English that narrated our evaluation of the project. I focused on the key issues we had encountered throughout the summer, as well as common threads from all of our participatory evaluation encounters. These documents also included a more quantitative component that enumerated all of the projects we worked on this summer (# of hours of children's camps, # of murals painted, etc.)

What have your experiences been on evaluations of projects? Self-evaluations?

Taino Art Workshop Update

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 14:51:00 +0000

An update on the Taino art workshop project that I have been working on this summer. (read previous posting here) The project is to build a workshop space in one of the rural Dominican communities for practicing and teaching the Taino-style sculpture that they do:

After some significant roadblocks, we purchased materials and started construction on the workshop!

Since I last wrote, we discovered some challenges to community mobilization and support for the project. When we went out to visit, expecting a ground-breaking ceremony, the preparatory work that we expected to be completed was not done yet. There had been some challenges with the maestro (the main expert on the project) in completing the work in a timely manner, as well as with the local youth to rally community support to keep this project going.

It didn't look good. With the short time frame that we have for the AMIGOS projects, we had to look at how we could best get the community on board with a youth-based project, and to understand that the project was not just for the few youth leading the project organization.

PLAN and the AMIGOS project director went out to this community the next evening for a meeting, and there were some amazing turnaround results!

The community members committed to getting the preparatory work and materials completed within 5 days
They appointed an adult leader/laison for the project

We delivered the materials a few days later, just before the end of the summer AMIGOS volunteer program. It was a lot of fun to get the materials from a ferreteria (hardware store) and deliver them in a huge truck out to this community. El Capa is a bit difficult to get to -- you have to cross a river -- so it was quite a different perspective travelling in a vehicle that I knew wouldn't get stuck or have any trouble in the river.

After the end of the AMIGOS project this summer, I went back to El Capa to check on the progress of the art workshop construction. The construction was moving along, and below you can see the posts and wire set up in preparation for pouring concrete walls. The group of adults monitoring the project has been active and working closely with the youth members on making sure the project progresses, and resolving issues that had come up. It was also good to see the community, and also say goodbye to some of the great people I met there. Here are some photos from the visit:

Overall, it has been a positive experience in seeing a community come together for a long-term sustainable project directed from within the same community. I look forward to seeing the progress in the coming months on this construction!

The power of possibility

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:19:00 +0000

From the seed of an idea, to a project with a targeted completion within a few months:

Once upon a time there was an AMIGOS DR community with an interest in practicing Taino sculpture. Youth within this community had found Taino (a Caribbean indigenous culture) art pieces within the nearby mountains and taught themselves how to sculpt pieces in a similar style.

Some youth within the community had one of those "pie in the sky" ideas - "Wouldn't it be great if we had materials to host a formal workshop to not only practice and improve our art, but also to pass along the knowledge to the younger children in the community?" I heard about this idea when discussing possible grant opportunities with PLAN. From what I understood, the youth in this community had already begun soliciting funding for this project, and that the main components were sculpture tools and machinery, as well as organizational assistence and mentorship.

After discussing the idea with PLAN contacts in more detail, we decided to move forward toward crafting a proposal for AMIGOS. Going out to the community of El Capa, it soon became clear that while there was much passion for this project, there had not been much, if any, planning for this particular project. The project proposal, with detailed project objectives and justifications, was missing. Additionally, there was no location for the taller yet. Given the tight timeline that AMIGOS works under during the summer, this seemed like a challenge to accomplish within little more than a month.

PLAN, however, latched onto the vision of the workshop. Not only is it an excellent microenterprise opportunity (strengthening the financial opportunities within this rural community), but it is focused on cultural preservation as well as upon youth leadership. The teenaged and young adult leaders of the Neo-Taino Artesan Group would lead this workshop, gaining valuable experience managing a small organization/business, as well as experience in teaching other young people about Taino culture and art.

PLAN led the process of guiding the youth through the visioning process for the taller, from that "pie in the sky" idea all the way down to the number of nails needed for constructing a building capable of holding this dual-fold workshop (artist workshop as well as training workshop).

After several long days of this planning and detailing, I submitted the grant application, and a period of waiting on the judgement, the grant was approved! While there is little time left with AMIGOS volunteers in the community, PLAN has taken ownership of this project and all levels of the organization within the DR are committed to seeing this project to completion. Within a few months, there should be a working edifice for practicing the art. For the next year, the youth in charge of the project will have training on organization management, managing funds.
For the next years, this community will be empowered to make a name for itself as leaders in contemporary Taino sculpture and as preserving a key part of the Dominican Taino culture.

And I'm off tomorrow to see the ground-breaking ceremony for this project.

Sustainable Community Development

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:17:00 +0000

One of the areas of focus this summer with the AMIGOS program has been on the promotion of sustainable community development. While AMIGOS has a long history of working in Latin American countries on promoting community development, and has been working toward community development, this has been a major focus within the Dominican Republic project this year.

Most AMIGOS projects have some sort of Community Based Initiative (CBI), a small project initiated from within a community for volunteers and community members to focus on during the AMIGOS volunteer's time in the community.

How are we different? Here's how:

Emphasize the importance of the process of the CBI. While the actual painting of a mural, or the construction of a playground is important, we have worked on training the community youth on the process of the community, its values and strengths, and the visioning process of what possibilities we have for further strengthening these values. As the community and youth become more familiar with this process, they are able to carry out this process (and the subsequent proposal planning and implementation) on their own.
We changed the terminology based on cultural meanings. While Community Based Initiative typically translates to "proyecto comunitario" in Spanish, the term proyecto carries the connotation of a large construction-based project. Instead, we are using the term "Iniciativa pequena de la comunidad" to better convey the community-based focus as well as the small-ness of our initiatives (most of our initiatives are within the $350 USD range).
Encourage communities to participate in fundraising outside of the AMIGOS proposal process. Many of our communities are supporting significant portions of the "iniciativas pequenas" - some more than 50%, and one is completely supporting the financial aspects of the initiative!

Between these key points of focus in our project, as well as focused training to our volunteers as well as community youth on the Community Based Initiatives and process, we have been having a successful, and in my mind - sustainable, process for working within our communities this summer!

Collaboration - the meaning of partnership

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:59:00 +0000

Here in the Dominican Republic, AMIGOS is working with a partnering organization on all aspects of our project. We are collaborating with PLAN International, an international development organization focused on youth participation.

We have worked jointly with PLAN in all aspects of the program planning, implementation and evaluation process. The first project-related activities this summer was meeting with the national level contacts to establish focus for our volunteer program and a chronology for the summer.

Some of the joys of working with a partnering agency:

Our partner contacts know and understand the communities and cultures we work in much better than we do. They have established relationships with our contacts in communities, and know best on how to approach challenging situations. There have been more than one occasion where sharing the challenges we are experiencing with our PLAN contacts have helped to ensure a swift resolution to the issues at hand.
Our PLAN contacts also have worked with the AMIGOS programs in previous years and have the first-hand experience of lessons learned. As the AMIGOS project leadership changes yearly, we strive to benefit from the lessons learned, and the strength of our partnering agency relationship helps to ensure this.
More fun! We have forged some great friendships with the people at the PLAN offices, and have enjoyed getting together on the weekends, or exploring some of the cultural opportunities (namely the craziness that was the Dias Patronales festival).

One of the challenges with our partnering agency relationships is that through AMIGOS we have a short timeframe to build our relationships and to leverage them for the success of the program. We are lucky to have such dynamic contacts within PLAN for this reason, and I imagine that there would be further strength by having continuity within the AMIGOS program over time as well.

Overall the partnering process between AMIGOS and PLAN has been a positive relationship building. Like any relationship (think about our personal and family relationships), it takes time to build and a lot of give and take. But this relationship is one that has a great effect upon the success of the AMIGOS program in the Dominican Republic.

Latin American Youth Involvement

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:38:00 +0000

Our project this summer is one of the AMIGOS projects at the forefront of Latin American youth involvement. We are including six Dominican volunteers in what has traditionally been a US volunteer-based program, and these six volunteers will be working, living and sharing side-by-side with their US counterparts. Two Dominican youth will be participating as AMIGOS volunteers in the Costa Rica project, and also must be properly prepared for their experiences there.

So far we are in the recruiting and training phases. Here are some of the similarities and differences from my experiences with training and recruiting American youth:

Similar:

Dominican Youth are very eager to participate in AMIGOS. We had nine people apply for the eight volunteer spots available between the DR and Costa Rica programs, and some have already started asking about supervisor-level opportunities.
They are very excited for the program and happy to participate in all activities!
They are familiar with some of the same dinamicas (energizers) as we use in our US training (Human Knot, Captain's Coming, Name Games...)

Differences:

DR youth appear to be more mature as a whole than the US volunteer participants. Part of this may be due to some of the age differences (16 is the minimum age for US volunteers, whereas our partnering agency put the minimum age of 18 for Dominican volunteers)
Even with the age differences, Dominican youth have expressed very clear commitment toward our standards of conduct and the working aspects of the program.

We have part 2 of our Dominican volunteer training program on Wednesday, so look for updates then!

Making the Best of Challenges

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:54:00 +0000

My time in the Dominican Republic has included quite a lot of time on finding "opportunities," or otherwise working on resolutions to problems that have arisen. One of the most recent challenges has been working through water supply issues to the house I'm living in.

It took about a week to find a staff house in San Juan for my project team, which included several days of looking for houses (low availability) and talking with landlords about the possibility of renting for only 3 months, but we finally found a nice house. It's in a nice neighborhood on the edge of town and is about a 15 minute walk into downtown San Juan. The house has a lot of space for the nine people we have living in the house on weekends, when all of the supervisors have come back from their community visits.

But after the first night of being in the house, we ran out of water.

Not that the water turned off temporarily, but that the water storage tank (fed by the city water supply) went dry. We had firefighters fill the water cistern the next day (Sunday) and thought our problems were over. And it happened again on Monday - dry. (Free water delivered by the municipality solved that problem).

After working with the ingenieros (engineers) on possible leaks within the cistern or other water pump equipment, we thought the problem was fixed. But the day after the project supervisors arrived (completing the D.R. Staff team), the cistern went dry again - and on a weekend.

Weekend + nine people = smelly people. Sunday is a rest day in the Dominican Republic, and most offices are closed (all stores close by 2 pm as well). We made an emergency pit stop at a hotel for some bathing Sunday afternoon.

Monday morning, I started working the phones to get an engineer, landlord, or someone from the water company to understand our problem. It didn't seem like it, but it paid off. Magically, overnight, the water cistern had filled up. A "key" had been turned off previously, preventing water from coming from the city into our house.

Lessons Learned: persistence, don't give up, creative solutions (hotel showers) and working the phones can help to solve problems.

We've now been 5 days without water issues!

Dominican Republic!

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:16:00 +0000

Well, I have arrived in the Dominican Republic about 10 days ago, and have been busy since getting acclimated and getting our project this summer off the ground!

I arrived in Santo Domingo a day before my companñeros did, and so I went to our hotel Pension La Quisqueyana and began to get to know Santo Domingo. I´ve been to the D.R. twice before, but I´ve never spent much time in Santo Domingo on my own, so it was nice to walk around and get to know the neighborhood I was in. I waited til the sun cooled a bit, and then walked out to the ocean, and around and around and around! Finally I found a great little sandwich shop and had a nice ham and cheese sandwich.

When Mason and Liz arrived the next day, I had explored some more and showed them around. We stayed in Santo Domingo for the weekend to hang out, eat some pizza on El Conde, and get ready for our first PLAN meeting!

Monday morning we met with the PLAN International office and had a great meeting to plan out the work between Plan and AMIGOS this summer. It was interesting to meet so many people and to learn more about how this international non-profit operates in the capital city and surrounding areas.

After our meeting we went directly to the bus station to head to San Juan de la Maguana, the host city for AMIGOS this summer. We spent most of our time in San Juan looking for a house and beginning to meet with the San Juan PLAN office to start collaborations for our summer.

Project Supervisors arrive tomorrow, so we´ve got a lot to do before they arrive!

Chi-town

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:26:00 +0000

I've been in Chicago as an official/unofficial resident, and here are some of the highlights so far:

Metra (commuter rail) trip up to Evanston for an evening out.
Exploring the nearby shopping district (BR & JCrew are just across the bridge!)
Going to some interesting restaurants in Chicago: an old-hotel restaurant with a piano player, and an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant!
Signing up for a week of yoga for $20 and having the first session be a 1-on-1 yoga session :)
Walking around a lot because I'm not familiar with the area yet...
Going to Trader Joe's for grocery shopping and then walking home.

Before I leave for the D.R. I still need to figure out my car/parking situation. Currently it's sitting outside the apartment on the street, but not quite the best place for it to be lonely for 3 months. Hmmm... craig's list calls my name.

Moved!

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Tue, 13 May 2008 00:18:00 +0000

Well, it went through without anyone getting maimed or killed. After days of packing up (ok, procrastinating, and then packing) the movers came and packed up most of my stuff and then put it into storage. A couple of the highlights:

It being a completely different moving company that showed up than the World Moving Services that I had gotten my estimate from and had corresponded with up until then. And they showed up in an Enterprise Rental Truck.
The movers telling me that day that they wouldn't be able to deliver my stuff to Chicago (a 2.5 hour drive) until the next day. And that next day being 4 pm the next day - not 9 am...
Movers packing in what had filled a 1 bedroom apartment in Madison into a 7.5 x 10 foot storage space in Chicago. Since I am moving into an already-furnished apartment (thanks Mike!) there was no need for any of my furniture right now.
Me not having to do any of the heavy lifting. Actually, I did lift a lot of boxes and did almost all of the moving of things from the old apartment into the new.
Paring down the stuff you don't want - moving was a great opportunity to go through stuff and see what is not worth transporting. Many donations to Goodwill were made, and possibly a few to the Salvation Army here in Chi-town as well. (and the pleasant discoveries of things you didn't use recently, but find while packing for the move).

Leaving Madison

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:00:00 +0000

I'm leaving Madison, Wisconsin, where I have lived for the past two years, to put roots down in Chicago, Illinois. What will I miss about Madison:

Running path right outside my apartment building
Lakes all over - it's hard not to find a lake in the downtown!
Friendly people - especially the MH3!
Constant cultural or other events going on (I've been to more jazz, 5ks, & Ironmans in Madison than anywhere else)
Good food - Madison has a great farmer's market and a lot of restaurants
Local pride - lots of Madison-owned or locally-owned shops and cafes.
Memorial Union Terrace - part of the UW, this is a great place to sit with friends and listen to music, have a beer and watch the lake, or have an ice cream.

If you have never been, Madison is a great place. I highly recommend visiting in the spring or summer, particularly if you are not a winter-lover. We got over 100 inches this winter, much more than I remember getting in the two previous winters I lived here.

I was particularly surprised by the overall athleticism of Madison. The city hosts 5k or other running event most weekends during the summer, and you can find many biking events and cycling trails throughout the region. While in Madison, I've met a large number of long distance runners and other endurance athletes. This was very different than my initial expectations of Madison (which was more along the lines of the cheese-eating, beer-drinking images. Not that you can't find that in Madison...).

Welcome!

noreply@blogger.com (Lauren @ www.laurenruns.com) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:23:00 +0000

Welcome! I created this blog to share my thoughts and experiences with others. I am excited to embark upon a few major transitions: moving to Chicago and also working on a non-profit project in the Dominican Republic this summer!

I'm excited for both endeavors. Chicago is a great city, and I'm happy to be closer to some good friends. My time in the D.R. this summer will be working with a non-profit organization that focuses on youth leadership and community development in Latin America. This is an organization that is close to my heart, and I'm thrilled to be working with them again this summer.

I'll be moving in mid-May to Chicago, and going to the D.R. in late May, so please stay tuned for upcoming postings and photos!