Project
This semester I had the opportunity to help the local Trout Unlimited chapter in the area, known as the Snake River Cutthroats, prepare for their upcoming Eastern Idaho Fly Tying Expo set to happen on March 24th and 25th. Most of my work for this project was focused on making improvements to the Snake River Cutthroat’s website. I was tasked with creating a “vendor information” page that would showcase all of the different vendors who will attend this year’s expo. The Cutthroats wanted their vendors to be well-represented at this year’s show, so they decided a vendor information page would be a good thing to create in order to provide vendors at this years expo with exposure to the public.
In addition to the vendor information page, I was also able to create a S.W.O.T Analysis and “ribbon boards” for the expo as well. This year the Eastern Idaho Fly Tying Expo will be held in the Mountain America Events Center in Idaho Falls. This is the first year the expo will be held in this venue and I wanted to be able to create a S.W.O.T Analysis for the Cutthroats so that they could reference it as they move into new territory with the expo.
I was also able to create “ribbon boards” for the electronic ribbon board that runs around the inside of the arena in the Mountain America Center. The ribbon boards I have created include the logos of vendors who are in attendance, as well as a short description of the product or service they have to offer. These ribbon boards will be displayed throughout the duration of the show on the electronic ribbon board inside the Mountain America Center and will provide good advertising for those vendors in attendance.
To take you through my project, I will provide examples of the work I completed throughout the rest of this blog. I want people to be able to see behind the scenes of this project, and what preparation was needed in order get ready for this years fly tying expo.
https://snakerivercutthroats.org/east-idaho-fly-tying-expo/vendor-information/
Process
Above is a link to the “vendor information” page on the Snake River Cutthroats website. It contains a comprehensive list of all the vendors who will attend this years show with their accompanying logo. I personally emailed each one of these vendors and corresponded with them to get permission to use their logos. I then uploaded their logos to the vendor information page on the Snake River Cutthroat’s website. There is an embedded “hot link” for each of the vendor logos. The hope was that the “hot link” would better allow the public to interact with the different vendors who will attend the upcoming the expo.
These vendor logos above are an example of the what the “vendor information” page looks like on the Snake River Cutthroat’s website. These are also some local businesses that will have vendor booths at the expo.
Above is an example of the vendor application page each vendor had to fill out in order to get a booth for the show. These vendor applications also gave me and the rest of Snake River Cutthroats permission to use vendor logos for expo use.
Below I will include images from the S.W.O.T Analysis I created for the expo. Like I mentioned before, this is the first year the expo will be held in the Mountain America Events Center and I thought it would be good to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, the Snake River Cutthroats could face at his year’s expo.
Below I will include some examples of the “ribbon boards” that will be displayed on the electronic ribbon board inside the Mountain America Events Center. Again, this will give vendors an opportunity to advertise and gain exposure during the expo.
Each one of these “ribbon boards” is sized to the correct dimensions for the electronic ribbon board at the Mountain America Events Center. Each vendor should have their logo, business name, and a short description of what their booth offers displayed on the electric ribbon board. The “ribbon boards will provide good exposure and advertising for those vendors who will be at the show.
Moving the Needle
Currently, because the show has not yet happened, I have not measured the success of my correspondence with the vendors who will be in attendance at this year’s expo. With that said, I do plan on visiting with each vendor over the course of the two days the show will be in operation. I will ask each vendor what they are satisfied with concerning the show, and what they would like to see differently at next year’s show. I will then record these responses in a word doc and get them to Scott Brewer and Dave Pace, who are on the board of the Snake River Cutthroats. I know most of these vendors and have formed relationships with with them, so I want to know their thoughts about what is good with this years expo, and what could potentially change to make next years’s expo better. The feedback these vendors provide will be crucial as the expo moves forward in its new location.
Strategies
Above is the strategies sheet I created for this project. It includes all of the strategies I needed to complete this project.
Time Sheet
Above is the time sheet for my project. I spent a little over 50 hours of total time invested in this project.
Project Summary
Overall, I enjoyed working with the Snake River Cutthroats as they prepared to get ready for this year’s Eastern Idaho Fly Tying Expo. I was by far the youngest person to be helping with the Expo and it was really neat to be able to learn from a lot of the guys who were seasoned in preparing for an event like this. One of the biggest things I learned was to continually follow up with the people I was working with. Things changed a lot from day to day so it was crucial to always be ready to check an email or work on a certain aspect of the project. Through the duration of the project, I felt like I became a much better communicator as I navigated my way through many different relationships with the people I was working with. All in all, I very much enjoyed working on this project and I am excited to see how this year’s expo will pan out.
