Entry 1 : First few weeks at iVEC

Hi all,

My name is Shaleeha. I started my internship at iVEC, an Australian based research company not too long ago. The first initial meeting with my marketing manager, David Sattherwaite was rather interesting. I went in for an interview and I was shown around the research computing facility. It was huge! We spoke about working around my uni schedule and I decided to go into work twice a week to complete my internship hours.

Information on the company

iVEC is a joint venture between the four public universities in Western Australia and CSIRO. iVEC has been operating since the year 2000. iVEC aims to promote scientific and technological researches and projects by providing supercomputing capabilities. I am now part of the marketing and communications team.


Meet my fellow intern, Chris Williams from ECU.

 

Chris is majoring in journalism in ECU and is in his final year. David reckons we make a great team as I look at things from a PR perspective and Chris can do so from a journalist point of view. 

During the first two weeks of the internship, we were required to analyse the current communication plan for iVEC and update the plan accordingly to the events taking place at iVEC. Drawing on the knowledge that I have learnt from my PR units at uni, I was able to take on the task with confidence. We had to do a SWOT analysis and come up with communication goals for the next few months. Although this may seem dry to many, I felt this was a great 'warm-up' to understanding what the role of a communication manager is all about.

David, my marketing manager also made sure we understood what branding was all about. He provided us with materials that aided us to fully understand the concept of branding. 

It was a great to go back to understanding core concepts before starting on any major projects. Also it was a friendly working environment, and I felt so comfortable with regards to asking questions. The first two weeks of internship has provided me interesting insights to the real 'real-working-world'. One of the key factor that I took home was that, in order to draw up a communication plan, one has to engage in extensive research to fully analyse the company, in order to come up with a strong communication strategy. Every aspect of the communication strategy has to be covered in detail. There  are plenty more stuff that I would like to talk about in my upcoming posts. Stay tuned! 

Regards, 

Shaleeha Hajamaideen

16343652

Curtin University

Bentley Campus