It's all about perspective.

Cliche's aside, I really have found that working as an intern has the opportunity to provide the most incredible opportunities. Even though you're not being paid, and sometimes it may feel like you're doing monotonous work, it introduces you to a lot of new things, and even the smallest of jobs develop skills and career scope.

Last week was the end of my placement at Scitech and I finished my final day with an incredible, eye-opening networking opportunity, as well as an offer to continue my internship! In a matter of hours I felt both inspired, acknowledged and appreciated. I feel incredibly lucky to have landed an internship at such a fun, dynamic and inspirational organisation. My supervisors have been my mentors, and have week in, week out, put in extra effort to make sure I was given projects that would both challenge and educate me in my professional career.

After sitting down for coffee with one of my supervisors, I came to realise how much I have truly learnt and been exposed to through my connection with Scitech. What I have learnt through school, I have had the opportunity to implement in a professional work environment. I have also developed invaluable connections with people and organisations in the field of communications, and have been provided with insight from my supervisors/mentors of recommendations for how to get to my dream career.

Working in a not-for-profit organisation has allowed me to dabble and develop my skills in a number of communications and public relations areas, an opportunity I may not have been given working in a larger/different company or organisation with a bigger communications team. At Scitech, it's a close-knit group who each work on all communications efforts both individually and quite often collaboratively; a great place to be exposed to pretty much everything!

Working for Scitech has provided me with a number of networking opportunities I didn't even realise were possible prior to my internship. I've mingled with representatives from a number of sponsors including (but not limited to), Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, and also, DISNEY (which was a pretty big deal for me)!

Long story short, I've accepted my offer to continue working for Scitech, and will do so till the end of semester before my part-time job gets busy in the lead up to Christmas sales. I've already been given challenging tasks, one of them being relieving a supervisor while she takes three weeks annual leave. Of course, being that I'm only there twice a week I'm not required to keep on top of all of her work (it has been shared between myself and another supervisor), but I've still been given some pretty big shoes to -temporarily- fill, and it's a great feeling, knowing that the team trusts me to get the job done. I'm looking forward to seeing what else is in store from now until the end.

So all-in-all, a very successful personal and professional experience that I'm hoping will positively influence my future endeavours! For those of you who have also completed your internships, I hope it was equally as rewarding, and for those part-way through, these are just some of the things you have to look forward to :) Like the title of my blog says, although you may be given small, seemingly insignificant jobs to begin with, it all adds to the bigger picture and is testament to your character for getting those jobs done. It's all about perspective, everyone has to start somewhere.

I've actually really enjoyed reading about everyones experiences, and look forward to hearing about many more!

Natasha Weeks
Bentley
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Keeping buzz-y

Over the last two and a half weeks I've been involved in a number of different communications endeavours at Scitech. It's incredible to experience first-hand how much preparation, organisation and effort goes into the promotion and delivery of each and every exhibit, exhibition and event at Scitech. The end of August and beginning of September saw the Scitech After Dark: Top Secret event and RoboCup, two completely different events targeted towards opposite demographics and organised by the same amazing group of people.

RoboCup has by far been the highlight of my placement so far. 400 primary and secondary school students flocked to Curtin Stadium on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 August for the WA RoboCup. RoboCup is an educational initiative that aims to foster and promote shared learning, development and research in the world of robotics to students across Australia. The WA competition saw robots dancing to music, playing a game of 2-on-2 soccer and negotiating challenging obstacles in a specially built arena while performing a rescue. The event allowed networking opportunities with journalists and photographers, as well as, yet again, incredible insight into the support Scitech gives as a not-for-profit organisation to the education of children. Social media was used to promote Scitech's involvement in the event across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter platforms, as well as a media release in the lead up to the event, and a post-event media release with photos and a list of the winners, sent to local newspapers in a number of different circuits around the state. RoboCup was supported by Rio Tinto, also a major sponsor of Scitech. 

Scitech After Dark is a unique, biannual event showcasing Scitech's current exhibition in an atmosphere created specifically for those aged 18 and over - NO kids allowed! On this particular occasion (August 31) the event was themed 'Top Secret', inspired by James Bond and based around the espionage exhibition by the same name; guests went undercover with their trench coats and spy gear to solve the mystery of the stolen computer chip. The night encouraged "fun without the kids" and as usual the popular event was just a few tickets from selling out. Unfortunately I was bedridden with the flu for the event, which in all honesty I was really disappointed about, but I assisted in some of the communications preparation which certainly impacted the success of the night. Media event listings were distributed to local online websites, family and adult-oriented, a media release was written up as well as a draft for a post-media release. We also lined up a competition with Experience Perth in which promoted the event on their website and allowed three viewers the chance to win 3 x double passes to the event. Photo's from the night were uploaded to FaceBook and it definitely looked like an enjoyable night was had by all!

As well as working on events, I've also been exposed to more behind the scenes communications tools used at Scitech, such as Joomla for website management. I was given the opportunity to write an online article for the Scitech homepage (www.scitech.org.au) about a new exhibit launching in anticipation of the October school holidays, 'The Visible Hive'; a live bee hive that allows visitors to observe what really goes on inside a bee hive and the roles each kind of bee plays in the 'bee world' (bees can even exit and re-enter Scitech through a clear tube allowing visitors to observe the neat processes of pollination). I'm now experienced with adding content, media and formatting to online websites while following the tone of voice and theme preferred by Scitech to appeal to both young and mature audiences. Unfortunately, because the exhibit hasn't been launched yet I can't provide a link to the brief website article, but it will be published and ready to be included in the appendices of my report. I'm also currently working on a media release for the bee hive in preparation for the launch. Writing content for both the website and the media release was a lot of fun; even though I was writing for varying audiences the vocabulary was playful and I was encouraged to use as many bee puns as possible!

With the October school holidays coming up, the communications team have many plans in place to push their exclusive holiday programs, promote new exhibits and enhance awareness and involvement on the closing exhibition. I've sent out media event listings, as well as a media release to local newspapers for their 'school holiday' sections, and even content for both 'What's On at Scitech' for the City West Newsletter, and a Scitech ENews article through the use of 'MailChimp', another web content management program.

I've also been working on each of Scitech's social media platforms but that's an ongoing project, and this blog post is already long enough! This Friday (20th September) is scheduled to be my last week on internship, so I will post a final blog outlining my final achievements, experience and performance afterwards.

That's it from me for now, over and out 99!

Natasha Weeks
Curtin University, Bentley

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National Science Week!

National Science Week was from the 10th-17th August, and it was crazy. I was unable to find the chance to write a blog entry over the last few weeks due to my typical hectic schedule juggling work with Uni with my placement, but thankfully I wrote myself some fairly thorough notes so that it was still easy to share the experiences.

As the largest state with  diverse population, National Science Week works to showcase the science, technology, engineering and innovation that drives our communities and our economy; it is an annual event, which this year incorporated a new range of events and activities celebrated through art, film, comedy and theatre (National Science Week 2013).

Scitech's involvement in National Science Week included the festival event on Saturday the 10th August, and Science Cafe on Wednesday the 14th August. National Science Week Festival was a day of celebration and family fun, incorporating science, education and entertainment for all ages. It was also a great way to introduce some of the headlining organisations showcasing their science endeavours over the week. The day kicked off with a live broadcast of the 720 ABC Perth breakfast program, followed by interactive science displays by local organisations. Dr Chris Smith from The Naked Scientist also provided some entertainment! Fundamentally, my role for the National Science Week Festival was mainly carried out post-event through media event listings sent to local websites promoting events and places to visit around Perth, and making up a list of scheduled social media updates to add to HootSuite touching on the daily highlights of National Science Week.

Science Cafe was an event held in Winthrop Hall at UWA for 300 secondary students from schools around WA - completely different atmosphere. Students were invited to spend morning tea with around 80 inspirational scientists from a range of organisations including UWA, Curtin University, ECU University, Murdoch University, Scitech, DEC, CSIRO,WA Museum and SKM. Sarah Lau from the Chem Centre hosted the event, which gave students the opportunity to speak one-on-one with scientists to find out what inspired them to take up science and where their science careers have led them. Chris Smith from The Naked Scientist, also made an appearance at this event as a keynote guest speaker. My primary role at this event was to liaise with the photographer and assist him in getting quality photographs of a balanced range of schools across several media circulation areas. Part of this was making sure students had their name tags on display so that they could be identified later. I also assisted my supervisor, Charlotte, with noting quotes by guest speakers as potential leads for the post- event media release.

The week following Science Cafe, Charlotte and I sorted through the photos that were taken at the event (part of being a NFP means time is frequently consumed performing such tasks), put together the post-event media release and emailed it through to relevant media contacts! 

Phew! Getting a behind the scenes look at the impact of NFPs on education and science in younger audiences was an awesome and very rewardable experience!

That's it from me for now, until next time...

Natasha Weeks
Curtin University, Bentley

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The start of something new

Hello all!

My name is Natasha Weeks and I'm a full-time student at Curtin University in Bentley, Western Australia. This is my final semester (woo!) of my Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Marketing and Public Relations. This has certainly been an eye-opening journey for me so far. Exciting doors are opening that I want to just leap through after graduation!

I have been patiently waiting for PR393 since the start of my degree, and after two and a half years of classes, towards the end of last semester I landed an internship opportunity at Scitech WA. I began my work placement -twice a week- just under three weeks ago, so I've now completed the first quarter of my 20 day placement. I am now fairly settled into my work environment and can comfortably discuss Scitech as an organisation, as well as the activities I'm destined to be involved in during my time here. I'm really excited about working here because in all honesty, Scitech takes the cake for coolest place to work at voluntarily!

Scitech's mission statement illustrates that it is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to increase awareness, interest, capability and participation by all Western Australians in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Scitech 2013. http://www.scitech.org.au/our-mission/notices/our-mission/Page-2.html). They are West Australia's leading science education centre and offer a number of experiences for visitors of all ages and demographics. Scitech features exhibits, live shows, an in-house CSIRO lab, Australia's largest Planetarium - Horizon, as well as an extensive touring program that visits every regional and remote community across Western Australia.

As you can probably tell just from the above paragraph, there is always a lot going on at Scitech so it's a really exciting atmosphere to be a part of. My first week included a lot of getting to know the organisation, so discussing the IT Policy and the use of photo release forms (a lot of the time we work with children and schools), and reviewing the company's five year plan; their vision, key programs and financial targets which gave me a good idea of the direction the organisation was headed.  I spent a lot of time meeting all the friendly faces around the office and sat in on a couple of awesome shows with the kids (getting to know the company, I swear!). I also spent quite a lot of time on data entry for maintaining customer feedback and inputing coupons from discounts, I started during the school holidays - the busiest time for Scitech - and although the process seemed monotonous at the time, it's actually given me a great idea of how Scitech's target stakeholders - their guests - view the company.

During my second week I went behind-the-scenes of Scitech's social media and now understand the uses of HootSuite; collating all social media platforms onto one handy tool, and Mention; a communications tool used to monitor an organisations online presence by highlighting FaceBook comments, Instagram posts, websites, blogs and everything else you could possibly find on the internet with the word 'Scitech', I felt a bit like a spy!

National Science Week, Scitech's 25th Birthday and Scitech After Dark are major events coming up, so I've been doing work on draft media releases (gulp!), and archiving media clippings that date back to as early as 1988! That was extremely interesting, it brought back a few childhood memories for me as well as gave incredible insight into the history of the organisation and the contrast of events and exhibitions from then and now.

Here at Scitech there are also other projects I've begun working on - they're stories for another time :)

We learn things in class, but it really doesn't compare to getting out there in the real world and putting textbook knowledge into practice. This really is a new, exciting experience! Good luck to everyone. Though we're all in the same position, each of us will have unique experiences and I'm excited to read all about them.

Over and out!

Natasha Weeks
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Bentley

Goodbye and good luck!

Well the semester is wrapping up and along with it, the PR 393 unit....after letting out a big sigh of relief to get the report finished, I started reflecting on the unit and just how valuable it really has been.

I am really glad that it is compulsory for PR students to complete work experience, I can say for myself that it does build confidence and improve skills before entering the workforce.

I have been at Scitech for close to five months now and in that time I have settled into a public relations role and the highs and lows that come with it. From extremely busy days when the phone doesn't stop ringing to days where you get to meet incredible people - one of my highlights during my time at Scitech was interviewing a PMH volunteer for a Scitalk story. This lady was so incredibly inspirational with the work she does helping kids in oncology wards keep up with school work, it really made my week!

Its also great to read that other students have secured paid positions at their organisations and I am happy to announce that I also have secured a position at Scitech and will be working there 2-3 days a week.

Good luck to everyone for their future endeavours and have a great semester break!

Charlotte

Bentley Campus

PS. I also hope you all get to relax a little bit before exams... Scitech had the launch for their new feature exhibition, Whodunit? tonight which I highly recommend for people who want to take a break from study and have some fun!

The media guide…surely there’s an easier way?

When filling out the intern update form I was struggling to think of a task that I really don’t enjoy and then I got it…media lists. Such a tedious task, yet necessary and vital to a media relations role.

As part of my internship at Scitech, I am required to regularly update the media book, which is in a Word Excel document and consists of metro and regional print, radio and television outlets.

The most important information that is used frequently is the name of the organisation, the office address, postal address, first point of contact, staff names (specifically the Chief of Staff, Manager and journalists) and contact numbers. So all these components of information need to be found easily through the internet, media guides, or other sources.

Scitech currently subscribes to 'Margaret Gee's Australian Media Guide', a quarterly publication consisting of contact and general information for a wide range of media outlets from all across Australia. I had heard about this publication during previous PR units and had always thought that it was the best source…until now.

Even though it is probably the best available, it still has some flaws, which to someone having to use it every day, become very evident…

1. The Media Guide is not free.
2. As a quarterly publication it does not give the most up-to-date information. Office location, postal address and first point of contact usually stay the same over time but journalists and staff are continuously changing, and it is important for PR practitioners to be aware of these changes.

For example, just last week I had an altercation with out-of-date information. There are two newspapers in the X region, the ‘Y News’ and ‘Z Echo’ (sorry for the vagueness!), and recently a reporter contacted me asking for pictures for an exclusive story. We had it this journo’s name under ‘Y News’ in our media book and therefore sent the pictures to her email address at that outlet. The next day she contacted me expressing that she had not yet received the pictures and when I asked her to again confirm her media outlet, I realised that she had switched outlets to ‘Z Echo’ – an update that had not yet made it on to the Margaret Gee Media Guide. So not only did we (most likely) annoy the journo by not sending the requested information asap but we practically gave their direct competition their exclusive story on a platter…not good!

As well as being available in print format, Margaret Gee’s Media Guide is also accessible on a website however, this contact information is also not updated regularly on a bi-weekly or monthly basis.

So I guess the point I’m trying to make is, couldn’t there be a better way of storing media information and making it accessible to the public?

Charlotte

Bentley Campus

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines

Hello everyone,

It has been a while since my last blog so I thought I would give you a quick update on my internship at Scitech…

I have now been at Scitech for close to six months and during that time my level of involvement in PR tasks has certainly increased from the basic media book updating and media monitoring to overlooking projects and generating publicity for whole departments.

Recently my supervisor went on a two-week holiday and during her absence I was approached by the Scitech CEO with the task of gaining publicity (specifically an interview with ABC radio) for a project run by Scitech in collaboration with Rio Tinto. This was definitely a task that my supervisor would normally handle so at first I was a little overwhelmed but then realised it was a great opportunity to have a first hand insight into what my supervisor’s job entails.

The Scitech and Rio Tinto project called ‘Beijing Bound’ is a year long process, which involves regional high school students partnering up with Rio Tinto research supervisors, to create their own science research project. The projects are judged and the students who claim the top two spots are flown to Beijing with their Rio Tinto supervisor, to take part in the international Beijing Youth Science Creation Competition.

So after doing a bit of research on the project and talking to various Scitech staff involved, I wrote up a media release and sent it to the media contacts at ABC North West, as both the students chosen for the Beijing trip were from the Karratha region. The next morning at 9am I received a call from the morning show producer at ABC North West, wanting to do an interview with both the students in half an hour.

A bit frazzled from only just waking up (as it was my day off from Scitech), I realised that it was still a school day and both the students would be in class so getting them ready for an on-air interview in less than half an hour would be problematic…

After a stressful few minutes of trying to convince the school receptionist that this was important enough to pull the students out of class, and that I needed the science teacher to call me asap, the receptionist finally promised that she would pass the message on. Getting close to the deadline given to me by the ABC producer, I finally got in contact with the science teacher, explained what the interview would be about and organised for the students to be let out of class.

The interview lasted about seven minutes and despite the frantic organising beforehand, it went off without a hitch. Initially I wasn’t too sure how happy the ABC producer was with me about the interview being set up very close to the deadline but in the following two weeks she conducted another two interviews with the students (and Scitech staff who accompanied them to Beijing) so I realised that close deadlines are just part of a producer’s job and nothing more.

There were a few instances similar to this whilst my supervisor was away which confirmed two important things about media relations and how they will affect me if I choose this as my career:

• Even though media relations is all about deadlines it doesn’t necessarily mean stress – I just have to be more organised!

Gaining publicity for regional activities (tours, school visits, etc) is my number one priority and these are all activities which I can easily be made aware of prior to the event and therefore get well underway on before the deadline.

However, when it comes to impromptu tasks (like the media requesting an interview, information or pictures) I need to prepare for anything that may be thrown at me. For the above case, I could have talked to the school and science teacher before contacting ABC North West to get a direct contact number and to make them aware that an interview may be conducted with the students at any time.

In terms of other tasks, I am now taking home any relevant information with me on a USB stick, so if I am contacted by media whilst out of the office, I can still send them any info or pictures that they require.

• The first point of contact needs to be available 24/7

My mobile is definitely not ‘attached to my hip’ - I don’t take it everywhere and if I do, it is usually on silent and in my bag. Since putting myself (instead of my supervisor) as first point of contact on all of my media releases, I have been more aware of having my phone on me at all times and have had to let go of the ‘if you don’t know the number, don’t pick up’ way of thinking.

So despite having occasionally felt like I was being ‘thrown in the deep end’, achieving the assigned tasks has been extremely rewarding. Although there have been a few mishaps along the way, these all add to the experience and are necessary for me to be aware of in order to improve and prepare for the next task.

I hope everyone’s finding their internship to be very rewarding too and that the looming final report deadline isn’t causing too much stress!

Charlotte

Bentley Campus

Intro to my internship at Scitech – time and resources in not-for-profits affecting PR

Hi everyone

Late last year, with 2011 fast approaching, I decided to start looking at work experience placements in order to find somewhere and settle in to the workplace before the heavy university work load once again started.

Finding in-house public relations more appealing than consultancy, I approached a few small West Australian companies in the music industry before hearing word that Scitech in West Perth was seeking a work experience student.

Bearing in mind what Zoey from Purple Communications had talked to our PR Consultancy class about (in terms of how to approach companies and potential employers), I emailed the Marketing Director and PR Coordinator at Scitech with a job-specific resumé and attached cover page, asking if we could meet and discuss what I could offer them as a work experience student.

In mid December I was interviewed for the position and commenced later that month, working two days a week with the possibility of cutting it down to one day a week if my university load got a bit much to handle.

I have been at Scitech for nearly 20 work experience days and have just recently been employed as the Public Relations assistant, which I am really overjoyed about, not only because it has made me feel valued in the organisation but because getting paid has alleviated a lot of pressure with working many hours at a second job.

So my role in the PR/marketing department is easier to define after a brief explanation of Scitech’s business operations…

Scitech is a not-for-profit science education institution that relies heavily on 60% of its funding from the state government, support from leading industry figures and partnerships with a variety of businesses. The organisation’s aim is to make science accessible to everyone, so not only are operations conducted in the City West venue, Scitech also reaches schools, teachers and centers in metropolitan and regional Western Australia. Additionally, Scitech liaises with science institutions worldwide to rent exhibitions to and from them – Scitech is world renown for designing and building high quality science exhibitions.

In the past, due to extensive business operations and limited time and resources, the PR Coordinator focused mainly on publicizing metropolitan and internal events, tours, etc and the regional aspect of Scitech took a low priority. This was not because it is not as important as metro activities (one of Scitech’s largest departments is the Outreach team that coordinates and runs regional tours) but because the regional tours vary in details, type of tour, and sponsors involved, and therefore require a lot of time to personalise media releases and send to and communicate with, various media outlets across WA.

So this is where I come in. My top priority at Scitech is to promote and gain publicity for the regional tours. I have to liaise with the Outreach, Early Childhood and Professional Learning teams to find out the tour details, understand the aims of the tours, the science concepts of activities being run, etc and then write up sometimes only one media release or many for each tour (depending on if they have are including a community session, or how long the tour is - if it is beneficial to do a pre, during and/or post tour release).

It has definitely been challenging to get my head around all the different departments of Scitech, the extent of their operations and multitude of programs – we often have people telling us that they had no idea that Scitech did more than what goes on in the City West centre – this alone is a huge weakness which the business needs to overcome.

As well as promoting regional tours, I have been writing up a collection of short articles for the next edition of Scitalk – a quarterly publication sent to our Scitrekkers (members), corporate partners, sponsors and other stakeholders. I have also been gathering data and collating it in Excel documents to evaluate PR activities, updating media contacts, organizing for Scitech to attend various events to conduct ‘buzz marketing’, and interviewing participants and taking photos at Scitech events.

All in all I am really enjoying my time at Scitech so far. Scitech staff are very open and welcoming and the working atmosphere is such that everyone feels like they are valued. It’s refreshing being part of an organisation where the top directors and even the CEO make an effort to say hello and have a friendly chat as they walk by you in the corridor.

My supervisor has recently left on a two week holiday so it will be interesting to see if and how this will affect me – if I get any larger tasks that my supervisor would usually deal with and if I gain more confidence by being ‘thrown in the deep end’ with these tasks.

I hope everyone else is settling into their placements well and I look forward to reading/hearing about other’s experiences.

Please feel free to comment or ask any questions.

Until next time,

Charli

Bentley Campus