The End of The Second Week

So I wrote this blog Monday sitting on the bus. Not really sure if it was a good idea to flaunt the computer or not, but Bram reassured me by saying to act like I was on my way to a $50 million pitch and all would be good.

I spent a lot of my last week at Ascentium job shadowing Chris Wong Project Manager, and researching the Target Audience for the Sameunderneath project.

With job shadowing Chris I learned more to the in’s and out’s of a PM. The most valuable advice to take away from him was to create lasting relationships with clients, which allows for potential new projects. It is important to seal the deal with clients so that they prefer to work with your agency whenever any projects may come along.

Aside from the advice from Chris, things were slow at Ascentium my last day. Some people were out of the office. About half way throughout the day the Wii was broken out. I think it had hit that point were things were at a good stopping ground and people could re-group through various creative outlets.

Christine Vo and I over our weekend trip to Seattle brainstormed the idea that instead of the teams (Kiwi and Lattice) breaking apart for the entire six weeks to develop their own projects we thought it would be more beneficial to collaborate as one team and bust out the research. We asked our teammates and everyone is on board with Luke, Kim, Melissa and Bryan highlighting good points to consider about research being specific to the team’s project. With a plan in place to address these problems we got our group Basecamp account created and began sharing research.
The following are the reasons why we thought it would be a smart idea to collaborate during the research phase:
more time to work on executing our creative outcome
opportunity to get to know each other better,
work with a more diverse group than we are now
see how a larger agency works
the finished designs would be better for the final presentation

Another part of my last week at href="http://ascentium.com/fp/Default.aspx">Ascentium was a 101 for Customer Relationship Management with Christpoher Bates. You can watch the first half of that video here. Sorry it is only half the camera unfortunately died.

Here is the chaotic, but understood whiteboard diagrams to go along with the presentation.




There was also an interview session with Kevin McViker, Managing Director for Ascentium. I had the chance to talk with him about the day-to-day aspects of his job, educational and professional background and his favorite parts of working with Ascentium. That video can be viewed here.

To top off the second week, we had a productive second day of the team project. After about six hours of being cooped up in one room, with a short lunch break, Lattice decided we needed a sixth opinion on our ideas thus far, and chatted with Mason. By the end of the day we were ready to get out in the sun, but were also able to create milestones and to-do lists. Each team member is now acting in their respective roles and the project is making considerable headway. I think this weekend will serve as a good rejuvenation period.

I would put some of the content online from our Lattice meetings, but unfortunately due to the mildly competitive environment we COLAB interns are facing, the content of our pitch is to remain confidential until August 15th.

In hindsight of the first and second week, all I have to say is “My, how six weeks is hardly anytime at all, but serves as a great opportunity to really jump into an internship carnival that has become known as COLABORATORY!”