June 2nd, 2019
It is hard to believe that I have already completed my second full work week here. I am finding that as I get more comfortable with my surroundings both at work and at home, time seems to be going faster.I know that it will only speed up and before I know it, I’ll be heading home.
At this point I am starting to become more comfortable with the CMS system and how to use it, which has allowed me to take on new tasks. I am still doing a lot of backlog and updating old articles, but given my increased knowledge, I am able to complete more of the process on my own. It has also become less nerve wracking because there are several proofing steps in place to ensure that my work is being looked over multiple times before actually publishing it to the live website page.
Another difference that I encountered this week was the office dynamic. In most offices everyone comes to work every day and staff meetings can be held every so often, so it is easy to communicate with everyone. However, as I mentioned last week, Maxmedia is very different. About half of the office works remotely and comes into the office once a month. This week I got to experience a staff meeting with the content team. A conference call made sense, until you take into account that half of the call was sitting in the same room. The delay from the voices talking in the room to what I was hearing on the phone was atrocious. None the less, they make it work. This major difference was super interesting to me and further explains how this office is able to stay productive when many of its intricate members are scattered across Europe.
This experience really forced me to use the teamwork/collaboration NACE skill. It also showed me how the office uses this skill on a daily basis. Through the Slack system I mentioned last week, everyone is even able to have off topic discussions, as they would if we were all sitting in the office together. I think the balance and passion for work is what makes this team work, and I am excited to learn more about it from them. Teamwork is obviously a part of almost every job and any chance to improve my skills in that area is great experience.
My high point of this week was how it ended. Friday morning I hopped on a plane to head over to London. I stayed there for the weekend with family and used it as an opportunity to step away and get some work done. I am also taking an online class through my university this summer and was finding it really difficult to get work done at home due to the great social atmosphere. So a quick trip over to London allowed me to get ahead on some work and have a nice change of scenery. After the much needed recharge, I am ready to take on week 3!
