Teamwork as a Key to Success
Interning at WGBH Digital is a unique experience with an interesting balance between solo contributions and team collaboration. As the saying goes, “there is no ‘i’ in team.” Every piece of work completed adds to the finished product, in one way or another. This system is extremely effective in Digital due to the department’s culture. Employees work on open tables and there is IdeaPaint on the walls where people can jot down notes or doodle. When one employee needs help solving a problem, he or she can easily walk up to a co-worker’s desk and ask them to take a look or ask for advice on HipChat. Even when team members are working on their tasks alone, they are never truly alone. Everyone is friendly and willing to help those in need.
As an intern, I take on many roles. There are projects where I am very hands on and exciting, such as doing research for WGBH’s Lifelong Learning idea and helping run a focus group for a re-work of WGBH’s Donations website, and those where I am there to provide feedback, such as the art education video project with RISD professor Clara Lieu. In other cases, I step out of the office and run demos or test ideas, such as presenting on virtual reality with Oculus Rift and cardboard headsets or going outside and testing out videography with drones. No matter which role I take, there is always another team member taking on a different role in the same project. For example, even though I helped run the focus group for the Donations website, other team members helped design and code the website. For Oculus Rift, there is a team member developing his own apps while for Lifelong Learning, Digital interacts with members from other departments and the team is split up into smaller groups to divide the research that will later be put together as a whole.
WGBH Digital has a friendly and effective collaborative culture. Team members can easily ask for advice and provide ideas or feedback to their projects and every individual task fits like a puzzle piece to the main goal. This is the formula for success at WGBH Digital.