Part 1: Developing a theme
Concept developing Commencement 2013 at WVU
For the past two years, I’ve been able to work closely on West Virginia University’s Commencement coverage. It’s the most fun I have all year, not only because I get to write some interesting stories on graduates, but because I get to spend time thinking creatively.
This year, a co-worker Morgan Copeland and I were tasked with coming up with a theme for our graduation coverage. Last year, we focused on “memories” - a key point around any graduation ceremony, as these grads look back at their time in college and look toward the future at the same time.
We wanted to do something different. While that was a success, neither of us find fun in cookie-cutter situations.
So, we sat in a room for two days and talked. We watched clips from Comedy Central clips, wrote on our dry erase wall in our “war room” in the office and just threw out ideas - some that sucks; others that had potential.
On that second day, I drove to work listening to a CD of an artist that I was introduced to by a good friend of mine last summer. At that point, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis wasn’t a big deal. Nobody thought thrift shopping was cool, and when people said, alright, OK, alright, OK over and over again, they’d get yelled at for not paying attention. Well, on that album, there’s a song called Ten Thousand Hours. It goes into the “Ten Thousand Hour Rule” from Malcolm Gladwell. If you don’t know about it, it basically says that it takes 10,000 hours to perfect something.
I got to work with that song in my head, and when Morgan and I sat down to concept develop this Commencement plan, it came up. It went something like …
“Do you know that 10,000-hour rule?”
“Yea?”
“I wonder how long a person is in college. It has to be longer than 10,000 hours.”
And away we went.
