Brainstorming

The third week of my internship has been very different to the other two. This week has been a lot quieter and I have not had that much new or extra to do. Perhaps couple of highlights for me have been a brainstorming session that I got to take part in and translating some articles from Indonesian newspapers to English.

The brainstorming meeting was very interesting and I got to witness how a group of people who work on different projects and in different areas all come together and come up with unique and exciting social media ideas for an upcoming event. It was fascinating to watch how ideas were being thrown around. Someone would suggest something and then it would just snowball from there with everyone adding to the original idea transforming it into something remarkable. I definitely found it a fun and efficient way to come up with a campaign or a strategy. It was a good experience and made me think more about how I can contribute to brainstorm session and how this kind of practice can be used in most effective way. Also, it made me realise that it is important to come to brainstorming sessions prepared and with a clear understanding of the organisation and what they are trying to achieve.

The other highlight from my week was being able to do some work for major oil and gas company regarding an event that happened in 2009. My task was to translate, with the help of Google Translate, articles from Indonesian newspapers to English for media monitoring. The task itself was quite challenging at the start as some of the translations from Google made no sense but once I had done one article it become easier as I started to understand the nature of the stories and the way they were written. I enjoyed that task as I am very interested in the resources industry as well as investor relations and think that would an area I would like to work in.

I also got to do some work for a road widening project. My task was to note down the calls and emails we have received from residents living near by the roadworks. It was very interesting to read some of those emails with people complaining about noise or dust or other issues and then see the responses that were given. I found it a great learning experience in how to respond to different issues and how to deal with people who are affected by something that happened or is happening.

Other than that most of the week was fairly quiet as mentioned before. I learned how to keep myself busy even when there is not that much work to do. I spend my time either reading industry related news or reading old media releases and familiarising myself to consultancy’s clients. I found those activities, even though not exactly tasks or jobs that I was given to do, still more useful than just sitting behind a computer feeling bored. It definitely opened my eyes once again to the ever changing pace in a consultancy and taught me how to find things to do even when there might not me that much to do.