有效改善广州市政会议 Effectively improving Town Hall Meeting in Guangzhou.doc

effectively improving town hall meeting in guangzhou有效改善广州市政会议论文摘要新闻文化处为美国驻广州总领事馆负责公共事务和处理美国政府官方信息，并在领事区内代表美国政府全面执行公共外交的活动。它在广东、广西、福建和海南创立、推动和协调信息、教育和文化交流项目，促进发展美中两国之间的关系。它的功能是创作、推广及协调信息、教育及文化交流项目，为美国国家的利益服务并为增强和发展美中两国的关系作贡献。我处的文化交流项目包括美国演讲者项目，国际交流访问学者项目，可视电话会议，每周论坛和美国电影夜。我处将在2007年三月至六月在广州各大高校举办一个名“town hall meeting”的互动演讲项目。该演讲项目的互动性较强，在演讲过程中观众能随时提问及发表他们不同的意见，从而达到相互了解及影响的效应。举办该项目的目的在于让更多人能了解美国的文化和美国社会，提高中国在校师生的美语演说能力。但由于高校学生的活动比较多，而且对我处所提供的资源知之甚少。我们计划在举办该项目推广的前六周举办一个新闻发布会，邀请广州各大媒体及学校的记者参与，希望通过他们的正面报道，对广州各高校的师生及教育/教育行政管理部门部等管理部门进行广泛的宣传，推动此项目在各大学的开展，让更多的老师及学生与我们合作举办此活动。我们利用六周时间从2007年2月2号至3月14日完成了这一项目的初步分析、调查、计划和实施。本论文通过媒体公关理论、前期目标客户电话调查、swot分析等调研方法确定了此宣传计划的目标方向。在中期的计划执行过程中，通过采用项目结构表、项目进度流程表、项目活动时间表等检查评估形式确保计划内容充分执行。在后期计划的评估部分，采用举办项目的数据分析及对合作举办方及其观众进行满意度电话/电子邮件访问调查的方式进行评估。 经过前期周密的调查分析及制定切实可行的宣传推广计划，以及中后期的严格执行与分析评估，“town hall meeting”宣传推广计划得以顺利完成并取得了预期效果。该项目除得到学校外事办的支持，还受到学校师生的欢迎并得以在暨南大学、中山大学、华南师范大学及华南理工大学成功举办。通过此次项目的宣传推广计划的实施，我们意识到仅靠此次的宣传活动是不够的，项目的宣传需要一个连续的过程及多元化的推广方式，这样我们才可以在原有的基础上更上一层楼。关键词：互动交流会 媒体公关 新闻发布abstractthis paper presents a detailed report of a project implemented to publicize the town hall meeting (thm) program by adopting the media public relation theory. we held a press conference before we launch it in guangzhou. thm program is a very good resource for the students to improve their english skill and know more about the u.s. society. based on the hypothesis that under the successful publicity of the program and ten thms could be held at different universities from march 15 to june 15, 2007, a six-week thm publicizing project was carried out. scientific research methods of customer survey, such as telephone, email and face to face interviews, questionnaires, and swot analysis were used in the identification, analysis of problems and project evaluation. project framework, flow-chart of activities with timings and portfolio keeping were used to monitor the project implementation. with the efforts from all the project members, the project has finally achieved its goal. the thm was well received by the teachers, students and the government officials and it was held at the universities as planned. the project hypothesis has proved to be reasonable and applicable. the project successfully achieved its objective, i.e. it met the customers need and wants, and the press conference was an effective tool on the promotion of this new product.key words: town hall meeting, media public relation, press conferencetable of contentspages1. instruction .2. summary of the preliminary research . 122.1 problem.22.2 problem analysis .2.2.1 current situation of the town hall meeting. 2.2.2 needs and wants analysis .2.2.3 swot analysis . 23453. project objective and hypothesis description 3.1 project objective 3.2 project hypothesis 4. project rationale .5. project design .5.1 planning of activities .5.1.1 activities planned to take place 5.1.2 critical path of the planned activities 5.1.3 time-scale of activities .5.1.4 people involved and their responsibilities .5.2 cost analysis .5.3 plan for monitoring and evaluation of the project 5.4 project framework .5.5 risk analysis .5.5.1 the potential risks analysis 5.5.2 protective measures to be taken.6. project implementation .6.1 general introduction of time, place 6.2 the working steps of implementation 7. project discussion.7.1 the result of the hosted town hall meeting7.2 date analysis.7.2.1 the previous problem analysis 7.2.2 customers feedback.7.2.3 records of the implementation of project7.3 results discussion.8. conclusion .bibliography appendix i: the project framework .appendix ii: customer needs and wants survey.appendix iii: critical path of the planned activities 7778999101112121314141415151515161619191919192022232526appendix iv: activity flow chart with time scaleappendix v: customers feedback .2728effectively improving town hall meeting in guangzhou1. introductionpublic affairs service of the u.s. consulate general in guangzhou handles public affairs requests, and manages the u.s. governments official information, and organizes all aspects of public diplomacy activities for the u.s. consulate general, guangzhou. it creates, promotes and coordinates informational, educational and cultural exchange programs in guangdong, guangxi, hainan, and fujian, which to serves u.s. national interests and strengthens and develops u.s. china relations. our office provides many programs like u.s. speaker program, international visitor program, digital video conference, weekly forum and american movie night.we are going to launch this interactive speaker program from march to june, 2007, which is called town hall meeting. according to wiki encyclopedia “a town hall meeting is an informal public meeting derived from the traditional town meetings to those meetings, everybody in a community is invited to attend, voice their opinions, and hear the response from public figures and elected officials, although attendees rarely vote on an issue. in todays heterogeneous communities with large populations, more often, town hall meetings are held so that people can influence elected officials in their decision making or to give them a chance to feel that their voice are being heard. there are no specific rules or guidelines for holding a town hall meeting. if the turnout is large, and the objective is to give as many people as possible an opportunity to speak, the group can be broken down into smaller discussion groups. participants all hear an opening presentation and then group-up to discuss and aspect of the presentation. each group appoints someone to summarize their groups discussion”. our thm is an interactive speaker program which will provide a good opportunity to the audience to share their view with the speaker instead of just listening from the speaker. during the presentation, the audience can interrupt the presenters talk and share their different view or ask question so that their voice can be heard. the design of the program is to stress on the value of knowing american cultures and society, improve chinese students and teachers ability to speak american english. it also designs to highlight the american ideas and perspectives through interactive discussion provided by u.s. consular officers. the topic is to be related to american culture, economic or other insensitive aspects. our main responsibility is promoting the town hall meeting to the students and teachers at the universities.however, due to this program is not be well known by chinese audience. we face a problem on how to promote the program to the teachers and students at the university. since the foreign affairs policy, all of our activities at the university should permit and organized by the foreign affairs office (fao) of the university except the teachers invite us to give this meeting at their class. so our goal is to let more and more teachers and students know about our program and arouse their interest to host or listening to our town hall meeting.as a program assistant, it is urgent for me to design a project to publicize this program so that more audience will be reached. we have used the questionnaire, interview and the swot analysis to make the plan of the project. base on the research results, we decided to use the media public reaction to tackle the problem. we held a press conference; invite the journalism from difference media organization to attend this conference. the positive report on our program was not only helping us to spread out of style and idea of the town hall meeting to our audience but also helped to deliver correct message to the local official. our excellent relationships with the press also help us to make the goal of our project be a success.2. summary of the preliminary research2.1 current problemwe face a problem on how to publicize the program to the teachers and students at the university. since the foreign affairs policy, all of our activities at the university should permit and organized by the foreign affairs office (fao) of the university except the teachers invite us to give this meeting at their class. so our goal is to let more and more teachers and students know about our program and arouse their interest to host or listening to our town hall meeting.2.2 problem analysis2.2.1 current situation of the town hall meeting1) our office profilepublic affairs service of the u.s. consulate general in guangzhou handles public affairs requests, and manages the u.s. governments official information, and organizes all aspects of public diplomacy activities for the u.s. consulate general, guangzhou. it creates, promotes and coordinates informational, educational and cultural exchange programs in guangdong, guangxi, hainan, and fujian, which to serves u.s. national interests and strengthens and develops u.s. china relations. our office provides many programs like u.s. speaker program, international visitor program, digital video conference, weekly forum and american movie night.2) financial statuswe have $3,000 usd for the promotion of the town hall meeting. among them, $ 1,000usd paid for the transportation and travel to other cities, 500us$ as representation fund, 1500us$ will paid for the publication and book donation, and 2,000us$ will paid for the over time. 3) human resourcesthere are three people focusing on the promotion of the town hall meeting. one is my boss darcy zotter, who is the public affair officer and has twenty years experiences in the culture office. another one is our information assistant zhou hong. her responsibility is to keep contact with all the press organizations and invite the press to attend our press conference. and i am the program assistant. i work at pas over fifteen years and i also maintain very good relationship with the universities and academics in our consular district. we still need to recruits two to three consular officers as speaker to give a talk and discuss the question with the student at our town hall meeting. 4) customers profilesconsidering the tight schedule of our officer and the budget, we focus our customers at the key university in guangdong province. we divide our target customers into three groups:a. the first group is set for the teachers who is teaching or researching on field of the american study.b. the second group is set for graduate students who are going to study abroad.c. the third group set for under-graduate students. this meeting provides the opportunity to the student to learn about the american culture and practice their english.2.2.2 needs and wants analysis in order to get a clear understanding of the interest of our target customers, we made a face- to-face interview to two focus groups. the first group is the teachers who is teaching or researching on the u.s. field at the university individually. the group consists of two professors of u.s. research institutes of zhongshan university; two professors of u.s. research institutes of jinan university; one professor of english school of guangdong university of foreign studies and one professor of history school of south china normal university. the second group is the student representatives from different universities. they are including students from zhongshan university, jinan university, south china normal university, guangdong university of foreign studies and guangdong business. (see appendix iii)the results showed that 90% of the teachers were interested in hosting our program to let their students study u.s. in the respect of culture, education, economic and history. they commented that this experience is not only helping their course study at the field of the u.s., but also give them an idea for their planning to study aboard. it is not easy for the teachers to find out a good speaker for their class due to the communication and cost problem. 100% of students welcome this face-to-face communication program. they would like to improve their english skill and know more about the u.s. society. they used to get information resource through the poster, website and notified by their teacher. 60% of students are planning to study aboard after they graduate and 20% not sure yet. so they hope to know more about the visa process and regulation to the u.s, through the official channel and how to acquire the scholarship for their study.some teachers suggested that wed better to communicate with to their university fao to ensure the process can be run smoothly.2.2.3 swot analysis1) strengtha. the town hall meeting is provided by our office by free of charge. the university does not need to cost any expense except the poster. b. all of our information is provided by the u.s. government, it is precise and updated information compared with that of the service agency.c. town hall meeting is different from the lecture. it gives more chances to the audience to talk and discuss instead of just listening to the speaker. it is a very interactive and creative program. audiences are encouraged to raise their question at any time during talk or share their different views on the same topic. if the audiences are quiet, we arrange a host to ask some tough question to our speakers.d. all of our speakers speak genuine american english. e. the town hall meeting is performed in the evening, it can avoid the time conflict with the students class.f. the discussion and introduction of u.s. history, economy, education and social life may enhance mutual understanding between the people of the u.s. and the people of chinese. help the students who are going to study in the u.s. to suit for the american society in advance.2) weaknessa. this program should be approved by the fao of the university. otherwise it cannot be held even though the teachers and students very interested in.b. our officer must travel to other city for their duty, so they may not participate in the activity even they have signed in. this may disappoint the university because they have advertised to the students.c. since all our activities are concerning the foreign affairs, it may be cancelled at any time for the security problem or the sino-u.s. relationship.d. we only have three people to working for this program. i am the only one person who works with our chinese contacts, so i am very busy on telephone, writing letter and email back and forth for one program. e. the program cannot be held during the summer and winter vacation of the university.3) opportunitya. because the university town was built, majority the students in the university have moved the university town to study. since the university is located at the suburb of guangzhou, the transportation is not so convenient for the student in the evening, so they lack of speaker lecture and activities. we may try to arrange our program in the university townb. we may also create some universities, which are near guangzhou like in zhuhai, foshan, and jiangmen. i think these universities may not have many resources as those of guangzhous. they are no so far from guangzhou.c. guangxi, hainan and fujian are belonging to our consular district. we can try to create some program in these areas. 4) threatsa. more and more consulate in guangzhou realizes the importance for the culture promotion at the university. especially the british consulate, which held many interesting activities like english competition, english teaching to attract people to learn more about their country in all field. they may provide more flexible fund than us to support their program.b. the university have more fund to invite more qualify speaker or foreign teachers to their university.c. more teachers have opportunity to visit to the u.s. through their exchange program or other channel. they may have the information through visit and their contacts in the u.s.d. students have many activities organized by their teacher or the student organization such as english conner and english competition to practice their english. e. the fao may not allow us to advertise our program at their university in order to limit the audience. 3. project objective and hypothesis description3.1 project objectivethe problem that i will research is on promoting our town hall meeting at the universities due to lacking people to hear about our service and program. the aim of my project is to find better strategies to publicize the program so that more audience will be reached. the objective is to make this program are well known and interested by the teachers through our press conference at the library of zhangshan university. 3.2 project hypothesistown hall meeting is a very good program for the students and teachers to learn more about the u.s. culture and the improvement for their english. it is hypothesized that if we can successfully publicize the program, we my host ten town hall meetings at different universities from march 15 to june 15, 2007 at guangzhou consular district.4. project rationalethe problem we were facing was on how to p