I'm starting this a little late in the year, but I just thought to myself (as I sit I'm my hotel room alone) "why not blog about your year and your new job?" Then the next thing I thought was "Why do that? who cares?" Then I read a friends blog and I thought "ya know what? It's for me! it's a way for me to discuss things, even if only with myself" I may not have any followers, but that's OK. I am doing this for me, and if anyone would like to read it and follow along, Great. If not, no big deal. So where to start.......
So, I am on the road working a gig for GM through a company that I have worked for for years, Eventlink. For a multitude of reasons that would take me entirely too long to go over, I have not always been a fan of Eventlink. There never really seemed to be much support from them in previous matters. However, My opinion of them as a company has drastically changed. Since going through my employment change, Eventlink has supported me to the best of their ability and provided me with work that I would not have otherwise had. As I am coming to learn, there are (as usual) reasons that Eventlink didn't seem "supportive" in the past. Now, even though I may not agree with the reasons, at least now I know for sure what was really going on. See, at first I thought nothing was being done about my (and others) concerns because no one cared. However, the fact is, they cared, but there were bigger concerns preventing them from acting on those concerns. I don't agree with them not acting on the concerns, but at least now I know why.
So enough of that, what's going on now and where am I. Well..
The tour I am working is called "Main Street In Motion". It's a General Motors event that allows consumers to come test drive a lot of the new Chevy, GMC and Buick products, as well as some competitors, at no cost. That's right, its a free event. And yes, they get to drive the new Corvettes.
www.mainstreetinmotion.com
I was asked if I would be interested in coming in as a lead for the Chevy Volt course. Being that I had NO JOB, yet I still had bills, I said "sure". Actually I said "Absolutely".
So this "tour" is set to be twenty-four cities in a span of just ten months. This will be the most consistent travel I have ever done. I have traveled for my work before, and have been gone from home quite a bit. But never on as consistent of a basis as what I am about to face. So of course I had to talk to my wife about it.
Adrienne wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea, however, she also knew that I needed to work. We discussed the dates that I would be traveling and she concluded that we could do it for this year and see how things went, and then we would go from there.
The Chevy Volt is an electric car being offered by GM. It has been in development for years and now its available to the public. You can find a bunch of information on the Chevy site www.chevrolet.com/Volt its an interesting car to say the least, and nothing like anything I have worked with before, so this would certainly be a new challenge for me.
My role was to be the "tent Lead" for this car. See, the way the tour works, we go to large parking lots and set up a mini city. We have five driving courses, giant tents with vehicles in them on display, outside display vehicles, demos etc. Each of the five driving courses has a lead, I would be the lead for the Volt course.
What does that mean? Well basically it means that I come to the event a day earlier than the rest of the team and make sure the route for the drive is established. (sometimes we stay on the premises of the facility we rented, and sometimes we go out on public roads.
I also make sure the tent and trailer are all set and ready to go, tables, chairs, tv's, vehicle staging etc. Once that has all been taken care of, I get on Google maps and draw an overlay of the route and the staging area and send the image out to the Volt team, along with a break schedule for our team.
Once the event is kicked off and going, we all work together to get people in the cars and go for their test drive. Ill explain more on that later.
As a matter of fact, I'll continue this later. I am tired and headed to bed. Its only 9:30pm here in LA, but my body is still on East Coast time, so it feels like 12:30. Good night.
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