Tag: Macy’s

Field Trip!

Field Trip!

I have one of the best Digital Media professors. Dr. Kamerer seems to have made it his mission to ensure that every student who passes through his classes will get a job. He works very hard to give us marketable skills and goes above and beyond the call of duty of a normal professor.

So it was pretty awesome to get a chance to go on a field trip with him and my digital media class. It’s a Tuesday night class, from 4:15 – 6:45 p.m. There’s about 8 of us in the class, and it’s all Seniors. This means that he can afford to be a little more loose with the class structure.

Last week (before Thanksgiving break) people were asking if he was going to cancel our Tuesday night class since Thanksgiving break started on Wednesday. He answered a student’s the question by saying, “Yes, we’re having class on Tuesday… [pause, looks around room] … OK, be honest now, how many of you are just not going to be here whether or not we have class?”

A few raised their hands, and so he decided that he’d plan an “alternate” activity to explore the week’s topic, mobile technology.

our "Alternate activity"

The next week we went out to explore some mobile apps and field test them at Macy’s and ShopTop. We checked out ShopKick and SCVNGR. I liked SCVNGR a lot more, but we overall decided that both of the apps took us out of the shopping experience, and until they were buttery smooth, they detracted from customer engagement.

But the cool part was just wandering around Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue and going through stores with our smartphones DURING CLASS TIME. Even cooler was that about an hour and a half into our two and a half hour class Dr. K asked us how we felt about going to a nearby grill for burgers and fries.

So the last half of class was us eating burgers and fries at a place near campus, on his dime, before he left to catch his flight to Kansas for Thanksgiving. The rest of us stuck around and had some good classmate bonding time. It was a heck of a night.

Christmas… already?!

Christmas… already?!

It’s crazy to think Chicago is already getting ready for the Christmas season.  I’m starting to see some lights and decorations go up around town.  I always thought of the Christmas season starting the day after Thanksgiving, probably because that’s Black Friday. That’s when I shop til I drop and buy all of my Christmas presents for everyone.

Anyways, a few friends and I went down to State Street Saturday night  for the annual Macy’s Christmas tree lighting.  The huge, beautiful tree is located on the seventh floor of Macys (yes, it has 7+ floors).  There is also about twenty mini trees, all different colors, surrounding the big tree.

Giuliana and Bill Rancic were on hand to count down and officially light the tree.  If you didn’t know, Giuliana is the E! News correspondent and Bill is the winner of the first season of The Apprentice, a Chicago native and Loyola Alum! They also have their own show on the style network.

Seeing the two at the tree lighting was a huge deal for my pop culture obsessed self.  Unfortunately, in order to meet them and have them sign a copy of their book, “I do, Now What?“, you had to spend one hundred and fifty dollars on items in Macy’s hotel collection. As if I, a broke college student, had that kind of money to blow. Still, I got a few low quality pictures of them.

I am so happy I went to the tree lighting.  Seeing Macy’s all decorated definitely got me into the Christmas spirit.  Now, the weather just has to be consistent enough so we can actually get some snow instead of the 55 degree day we had the other day.  THEN it will feel like Christmas!

Here’s Giuliana and Bill talking with their audience after the lighting.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a picture of the lighting of the tree because of the awful angle I had.