Week 3
by Presley Giacomazzo
We started off Monday by discussing the article, “Kairos Revisited.” The theory of kairos is about “Now is the time, this is your moment.” You must seize the opportunity you are given. We discussed how unique moments create urgency and make whatever you are organizing more exciting. This connects to Ethos because we are excited to seize the opportunity and with our excitement we must create urgency to pass on this excitement to others in our Boise State community.

We created a “Story of Now,” which included our own perspective (Kelsea, Zach and Candace) of what we think will motivate people at Boise State to get involved with Ethos. We directed our “Story of Now” to different audiences such as students, faculty, and administrators. Even more broad audiences such as politically apathetic individuals and motivated protesters.

Later that day we continued our discussion on motto and mantra from the previous week. We hit key points such as advocacy is our mantra and not our motto. To us, advocacy means integrity. We talked about our morals and values as an organization, which lead us to the realization that instead of saying “we listen,” we should ask a question. A great question Dr. Myers asked was “why not you?” This opened my eyes, not only does this question create a sense of urgency, but it also INSPIRES you to get involved in Ethos.
We discussed mottos such as “Opportunity surrounds us.” That stemmed from our thought process of, Ethos is growing people, not things. The word “opportunity” made us think…should we be looking for opportunity or be acting on opportunity? There is plenty of opportunity around us, but people do not see it. That is where Ethos comes in, we are “The More”— another motto we pondered on. We imagined this place where we all come together to create something more. Harvard has a great example with their iLab and their motto, “One Harvard.”
So we wondered: should we completely change our logo and motto?
On Tuesday we started with rebranding, not a different name but a different logo and motto. We stated that our logo needs instant recognition and translation. We also knew we wanted to keep trust, vulnerability, and expression while recreating a new logo and motto.
The key question became: WHAT IS OUR ANCHOR?!

This question drove us mad as we began to examine places like the Boise Bike Project, Women and Children’s alliance and Terry Riley. All three of these places had a “thing” whether it be bikes, woman and children, or health care. They all had something that people could instantly identify them with or by.
We decided ours was stories. Stories that inspire action, which led us back to the theory of kairos. Storytelling had been a main piece of Ethos since the beginning but we didn’t know how to translate storytelling into a powerful movement.
The idea of storytelling led us to many questions: what are we? Are we advocates? Do we have credibility? Are we students helping students tell their stories? — THAT’S IT! We are students helping students tell their stories. A mini motto came about, “Change begins with your story.” IS THAT THE NEW ANCHOR?! Ahh so much excitement and so much confusion all at the same time.

With that we came up with the tentative motto “Stories Connect”; this incorporates people, programs, resources and opportunity, which all is under the big picture of culture.
On Wednesday we met with Luke Jones, Director of Campus Recreation at Boise State, who has plenty of experience with starting and running organizations. Luke informed us that things at Boise State are becoming more student-oriented. He let us know we need to find our “Next experiment.” We need to get beyond assumptions when figuring out the facts. Looking at past alumni could give us answers to questions we have.
Rae Felte, co-founder of the Ethos Project and Digital Marketing Associate at Elevate Publishing, also joined our class and gave us insight to the beginning of the Ethos Project. She put the idea in our heads of “Student run, student done.” …we are still questioning if we like that as our motto. Rae let us know that we still need to determine our “thing.” Who are we? What do we do? How do people identify us? Rae left us with a recently published book called The Purpose Effect, and I’m sure our findings will be included in next week’s blog :)

