How I reckon I did at Media 6

I joined the Steering Committee for two reasons.

Firstly, through work I thought I had a pretty sound knowledge of marketing and promotion which I thought I could contribute to the seminar series. I was really keen to use my knowledge in a different setting, be able to create the overall “brand” and be able to mould the series it into something I really liked and ultimately was proud of. Secondly, the role of the Steering Committee was advertised as an opportunity to better my leadership skills so I largely took it on as a development opportunity.

Contribution and Collaboration

The biggest collaborative effort for the Steering Committee occurred before the seminar series even began.

We had to brainstorm themes which was the first collaborative group exercise that the Steering Committee undertook. It was quite interesting to see all the different takes on themes. Some I totally connected with and some I did not. I have found throughout my uni experience, tasks that involve questions of taste are always interesting exercises and always require an element of compromise and collaboration.

We then presented and the entire body of students voted on which one they thought was best. Once Epic Adventure was locked in, the team had to come up with a design. Although majority of the design was done by Jake, I played a role in giving feedback and developing the poster to a higher level.

During the seminar series, I was largely responsible for chasing up the groups pre-seminar. This proved to be more difficult than I first thought.

A major learning from this was that groups were not necessarily pro-active in reaching out or even looping in. On top of this some groups were completely unresponsive. Perhaps it is because I am used to working in an office environment where every email gets a response, even if it is a simple acknowledgement, so hearing absolutely nothing from groups I found incredibly frustrating.

I learnt that you should never devalue face-to-face communication as that is always where you will get the most informed.

The biggest challenge of my role as “pre-seminar chaser uper-er” was the posters.

Some of the groups really stayed on brand and embraced the theme, ‘Epic Adventure’ as illustrated below.

However there were some groups that did not “get around” the Epic Adventure theme which ultimately weakened our positioning as a seminar series.

In hindsight I think we should have picked a more obvious theme to create more simplicity or reiterated the importance of the seminars really taking on “Epic Adventure” as a theme.

I was also responsible for ensuring the poster requirements were met such as having the right logos, which turned out to be more difficult and time consuming than I first thought as it often involved many edits.

I guess overall I found it really challenging to finding balance; not being overbearing but also making sure everything is in place in order to make the seminar series a success. I know what it is like to have micromanager for a boss, however perhaps taking on a leadership role has made me more empathetic to my boss! I felt myself wanting to give much more input to the seminar series but also felt the need to respect their work and the direction they took it in. Overall though, I found the seminars to be of an incredibly high level.

Proactive learning

It could be argued that this entire subject was proactive learning as there is no guide to running a good student seminar series.

Despite being in my last semester, I have never really taken on a leadership role, so my participation in the steering committee was a proactive step towards my learning. My role was largely to do with managing people and ensuring tasks were complete which is very much a logistical role that is difficult to assign hard skills too.

I don’t think I did a lot of traditional proactive learning in the sense of seeking out more information on project management. I saw my learning as very much a “learning on the job” role.

Unlike my previous media studio, there were few technical capabilities.

I would have liked to have become more skilled in design, which I continue to see as a gap in my knowledge that would help me into my future and my career and have flagged that this is something to improve post-semester. However there was a short turn around for the design and time did not permit.

Setting up systems was something that myself and the team had to do. How do we communicate with groups to ensure everything is in place for their seminar. We chose to create tools like the pre-seminar checklist.

I do however feel that I took on the role to get better at organisation and communication, which I got better at as the semester went on and have some major learning from which I can take into my career and everyday life going forward.

Participation

Although I don’t think I am ever the loudest voice in the room, I do think it is important to have your presence felt and I am satisfied that I was a valued member of the Steering Committee.

I attended all Steering Committee meetings, all six seminars and touched bases with all group leaders, so I am satisfied that I was there and that I added value.

Importantly, I think myself and others in the committee had “no job too small” attitude. I helped in preparing the gifts, carry things between buildings and guarding doors, if it was required of me.

Connections and intersections

For me, the seminar series was about learning about my options for the future through the collective effort of the media cohort.

My major learning from a leadership perspective was to make everything explicit. I think we encountered a few issues (listed above) purely because of a lack of clarity and we could have made things clearer. Our expectations, our deadlines and our requirements needed to be spelled out much earlier.

Although I wasn’t a part of a specific seminar group, I took the opportunity presented to reach out personally to the guests that I found particularly interesting and have since been asked to pass my CV and LinkedIn on in regards to future job opportunities, which proves the benefit of networking.

Being able to attend all six seminars has meant that I had some major learning’s about the industry so while I was able to explore something quite narrow and specific in my PNR, the seminar series allowed me to get a really broad overview of what it is like to have a career in a range of media industries which has definitely steered me towards some industries and far away from others.

One of the most important parts of the series is that I left feeling positive and empowered rather than nauseous about finishing uni and entering the workforce.

I am really proud of my efforts in the Steering Committee however there most definitely is room to improve my leadership skills and I need to seek out more opportunities to be in a leadership role.