I got bumped. Not off a flight or while holding a cup of coffee, but instead from a makeup chair at the Waldorf Astoria last Monday morning. 

As the New York Women in Communications Foundation Alumna of Excellence Award Scholarship Winner, I was getting my makeup touched up for the foundation's annual event, the Matrix Awards, where myself and the 18 other scholarship winners would be presented to the organization. The makeup artist said to me, "Hun, I'm telling you now, if a V.I.P. comes, you're getting bumped." I chuckled, said that it would not be a problem, as I was a scholarship winner and relatively low maintenance anyways.  

As she leans over to grab some eye shadow, another woman comes over to say that The Wall St. Journal's Peggy Noonan had arrived.  The makeup artist reluctantly looked at me and I immediately jumped up. 

In fact, I was excited to be bumped by a famed columnist who was being presented with a Matrix Award, an honor which highlights women that have greatly impacted the communications industry.  The honorees this year included Noonan, Better Homes and Gardens editor-in-chief Gayle Butler, Disney chief communications officer Zenia Mucha, actress Glenn Close, model and business woman, Tyra Banks, the CEO of Starcom, Laura Desmond, the Today show's Ann Curry, and producer Maria Cuomo Cole. 

I was fortunate enough to meet several of these women. They could not have been nicer. Maria Cuomo Cole took an interest in my career path in sports, while Glenn Close gave great advice about not hiding your femininity in the workplace. 

After having her makeup completed, we all met Noonan in the ballroom during our rehearsal.  Even though she was the big award winner, she wanted to make the scholarship winners feel comfortable at the event.  She discussed her career with us and how public speaking scared her and Zenia Mucha.  She seemed like she could be one of us with her elegant tan pantsuit. And I thought I was low maintenance. 

Part of being a journalist is searching for information. You dig through records, hunt for unknown facts about a person, even ask people you know about a subject.  When I found out that my Digital Journalism II class would be live tweeting Diederich College of Communication Alumni Awards Brunch on Saturday, I started looking for more tidbits about the honorees.  Since the class will be using Twitter to report on the event, I figured it would be convenient to gather the awardees Twitter handles (or usernames, for those of you that are new to the Twitter world). Expecting a search with lots of names, I hunkered down, only to find that a lot of the information I was looking for would not be found.  

Only two Diederich College honorees, Steve Bertrand, the Communicator of the Year Award winner, and Jason DeRusha, the Young Alumnus of the Year Award winner, have Twitter accounts.  In this digital age, I was a little surprised.  In communications, we have seen a sudden rise in social media with platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Using these sites provides people with exposure and access to a whole new market of viewers or potential buyers. So my question to you is why not?

Some might say that they don't have time for it. You don't have to tweet every five minutes. If you have time to send a text message, you have time to tweet. Others say it's a privacy thing. Then protect your tweets. Others are intimidated or scared of the monster known as Twitter. Ask your intern with the hipster glasses for help. Especially in a field like communications, where it evolves daily, it is crucial to be connected to the next generation. With this generation, it is through retweets and hashtags, not reply or handwritten letters. 

I love talking to people. That might be what makes being a journalist so much fun for me.  When my Digital Journalism II professor, Herbert Lowe, assigned Brynne Ramella and me a story about a community garden called the Cluster II Grow and Play Lot, I wasn't sure how many interesting people I would get to meet. I could not have been more wrong. 

We met Roberta Lyles, one of the founders of the community garden, who can be described in two words: spitfire and old school. She invests herself in the children she works with in the grow and play lot and works to ensure that it remains in tact, personally kicking out drug dealers or litterers. 

We met Mary Beth Driscoll, the bubbly and passionate executive director of Groundwork Milwaukee, the organization that partnered with Lyles and Donna Handel to create the garden.  She has made it her mission to implement gardens in the inner city of Milwaukee, doing it all with a radiant smile on her face. 

We met Dave Mangin, the operations manager of Groundwork Milwaukee's gardens that span across the city.  He keeps the garden clean and infuses his knowledge of environmental alternatives with the community gardens to create a more efficient space.

We met Antoine Walker, the outreach coordinator of Groundwork Milwaukee.  He reaches out to people in Milwaukee to get them to volunteer on all of the gardens, bringing his infectious enthusiasm to each and every project. 

Roberta Lyles told us, "People say this is the ghetto. No, it's not a ghetto. This is a community." If I learned one thing from this project it is that a community is not created and nurtured by street signs or white picket fences. It is the dedication and love of people like these four that create a community that makes a difference for its residents. 

Silence. It is an incredible weapon that can be used to highlight a serious moment or make that same moment seriously awkward.  While conducting an interview, it is natural for a subject to pause and provide some silence.  This is just one example of natural sound.  Others include birds chirping outside or students talking outside a school.  Through the Poynter Institute, we watched the webinar Video Storytelling Without Reporter Narration done by The Boston Globe's Darren Durlach to fully understand the impact of natural sound.   Once the video stopped, I realized how many of Durlach's tips I could have used in the field.

For my Digital Journalism II class, my partner, Brynne Ramella, and I were assigned to cover the Cluster II Grow and Play Lot for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service.  The two of us drove over to Third St, discussing exactly what we wanted to ask these individuals who we had not met in person before. We met some great characters, like Roberta Lyles and Donna Handel, the two founders who live down the street from the garden, and representatives from the community environmental organization Groundwork Milwaukee, including executive director Mary Beth Driscoll, operations manager Dave Mangin and outreach coordinator Antoine Carter. It took a little while for Lyles to get comfortable with us, but once we got to the heart of her story, it was clear that this was our quest.

That was a key thing that Durlach stressed.  "Find a quest," he said, "and you've got it made."  He was right. We did have it made.  We had a sensational angle that involved a tremendous improvement with two inspiring figures. What was originally a story about a regular community garden turned into a story about two women who fought for their right to create a safe place in their community for kids. 

This story was missing one thing: a narrator. The sound bytes that Lyles gave us were great and added color to our story, but just based on what she talked about, she was not going to give us the nut graf.  That is where the Groundwork Milwaukee staff came in.  They gave us that succinct summary that we needed for our audio slideshow. Their one flaw was that they never said "Cluster II Grow and Play Lot".  They always said the garden or the lot.  While that was beneficial, it still did not get that introductory quote that would have made this ten times easier to produce.  

Durlach's first lesson was when you leave a story, you can't go back. While we understood the literal meaning of that, we did not grasp that figurative context of that. You cannot go back in time and capture that moment.  You get one chance. (I'm running the risk of quoting Eminem's Lose Yourself here.) You get one opportunity.  Will you capture it or let it slip? And Brynne and I missed that opportunity.  We let it slip away.  It's safe to say we've learned our lesson.