#concaic

A few months ago, I attended a "Commercial Engineering" (Business Administration and Economics Major) Pre-Grad Congress which was held in my own home town (Congreso CONCAIC 2013). The topic on it was "tomorrow's challenges". At first I was skeptic, perhaps even pessimistic about it, but if its anything my spiritual journeys have taught me is to keep judgements on the low and be open to what could happen. As the three day went on, I took notes, trying to make one big conclusion from it, which I did, and I wrote it down.

Out of the blue, I wrote a big 3 Word-page summary on the entire congress and my take on it. This was something that I never planned, it just happened out of the blue! Once I finished it I asked for help from a school friend that went on to study journalism. She was too afraid to cut it down for me, saying it had a very hip and straight voice, she liked it! But I was already sure that it was way too long.

Not knowing what to do next, I started to pass it out to my friends and student body members of my faculty. I didn't get that much feedback, mainly because most of my friends don't read much anyways, but I did get good feedback from where it mattered. The president, vice-president and another guy from their team congratulated me, saying it was excellent, and they wanted to make it public. I agreed right away, and was psyched!

Yet, it all seemed to be just words, until about a month later, they came to me with the idea to make an actual magazine about the congress, and my article had inspired that in other universities. So I had one goal: make the article shorter. I already had written the article, all I needed to do now as make it shorter. But first, I needed to do a little research:

WikiHow can be amazing! It gave me the basic things I needed to write:

Get to now your audience

Identify the needs of your relationship

Be unique and write with passion!

Do some research.

When writing take in consideration: length, have an outline, style structure and voice, editing, and respect others while ignoring trolls.

Tips: Don't miss deadlines, apologize for mistakes and seek for help (courses, friends, feedback, etc.!)

CoppyBlogger's: Write an article in 20 minutes:

Make a list with ideas.

Let your ideas incumbate

Edit those ideas (Pick the ones you need and don't!)

Use bullet points!

Be short and precise (500 words or less)

Come back to it later

When writing various articles: do the best ideas first!

I even took a few notes from Wikipedia's guide to writing Wikipedia Articles, especially: "One line paragraphs should only be used when you want to extremely point something out."

Article Teller's "How to write an article" gave me good tips, but nothing that didn't begin to repeat the three before. I watched a youtube video, and once I realized they all started to say the same thing, I knew I had researched enough!

So I applied my notes. I identified my audience, and the ways I could connect with them. I was pretty confident with my style, since I already had been congratulated by various people on it. There wasn't too much research to be done since I was there, and the goal was simple: make it shorter.

I grabbed a piece of paper and sorted out the ideas. Once that was done, I re-read and cut up my old version to make a new. I re-organized it a bit to make it more logical and to stand out some points and viola! A 1.5 Word-page article that was just submit to be presented to other universities (in an informal matter).

If all goes well, it'll spark some interest and it'll be for real. I'd be really interested in making the magazine a reality, but that would be an entirely different learning story!