Practicum has been one of the best experiences I have had. It truly has helped build that foundation needed for those who might not have experience. Practicum allows others to have full creative freedom in projects and is intuitive to work on areas of weakness. One of my goals was working on time management but also pushing myself to take a step forward on whatever brought me happiness. The projects that I took on had my full attention and I’d like to think I showed my passion through my work and dedication. Having practicum helped push my limits and practice my intercultural skills as I was able to collaborate with many of my colleagues all from different backgrounds and cultures. With that I would like to share my experiences with the many projects I was able to be a part of and will miss dearly.
Right from the start I knew that I wanted to be a part of ROAR more than anything. This was a great initiative to be a part that helped bring a voice to many topics in localization and helped support those entering localization. I have a background in education and I wanted to implement this as a resource for others outside localization and other language programs. ROAR has a lot of potential as an educational resource and I am glad to say that it’ll definitely go places with the amazing people involved in ROAR.
Initially I wanted to do audio visual and when I started the interest I didn’t expect a lot of colleagues to be interested in joining. There were 15 people and only 4 roles were available. I didn’t think it would be possible but I wanted everyone to be able to take part in the project and decided to take on the PM role instead. I decided to build committees in order to fit such a large team and thus started the audio visual, outreach, marketing, and newest addition content operations committee!
First step was rebranding and getting ROAR back up and running and I had the best team members to work with in making this happen. After teams were settled I knew that folder organization was key even more so now that we had different committees working and they needed easy access to finding documents. Each team revived their folder which was organized by them and I helped out with recommendations on file organization and arranged things where needed. I also created a ROAR- Main document that holds all important documents that are accessed often such as: schedules, workflows, account information, and roles. This document as well as file organization will need to continue to be updated which will be overlooked by the next PM. Now that files were in place I set up a new project of rebranding which marketing helped establish with a new logo and migration of website to tlm create. FInally we were able to set up time for content. The weeks after that consisted of weekly meetings checking up on open projects whether it was visual design, website updates, outreach, checking on workflows and schedules. After a long first semester we rebranded ( I helped create some of the visuals), set up workflows and schedules, and released 3 podcast episodes.
The second semester would require more time but the foundation was laid out. This was the start of ROAR Magazine. As we got up and running the podcast again now we had the bandwidth to start up the magazine portion of ROAR. This Magazine would be supported by Alain as she added in her #AskaLocalizer column and this prompted me to add in the rest of the sections I felt would be nice to include: Articles, Project Showcase, and Comics & Art. I know we have many writers within our program but also many of us are not always able to attend loc events and so what better place to have the opportunity to share our thoughts on topics in the industry but also to share our experiences of events for those who couldn’t experience it themselves. Project showcase was to spotlight our work in projects but also to showcase work from other programs. I intended for ROAR to be shared outside of MIIS and the Article and Project Showcase is a place to include others in Loc or language programs or for those who might not know what localization is and get a glimpse into the industry.
ROAR Magazine would need its own team to support the growth and efforts of this section of ROAR and I decided to form a new committee, Content Operations. Fortunately I had 3 amazon members join Kyle Chow, Harlyn Lane, and Juang-Lung Lin. I was able to meet with them, set up goals and showcase my vision for the Magazine in which they expanded on in their brainstorm document. They greatly contributed to rewriting all of our about sections in the website and in the sections for the Magazine. It made it easier knowing they had the same vision of expanding outside of MIIS and sharing our content as well as the same passion for ROAR. They will also be including a terminology section for the website and this just goes to show this team is already initiating new growth opportunities for ROAR!
Beyond training and setting up Goals for a whole new committee I remember feeling overwhelmed as the PM and not knowing what were the best next steps to take especially when managing a larger team. I decided to work on a PM guide for our upcoming PM and this guide would be updated as needed as ROAR continues to grow. One of the greatest challenges was using conditional formatting through gravity forms as we had multiple additions to our website. After trial and error I was able to get it working for submissions for the podcast, magazine and general feedback.
I didn’t think I would enjoy being a project manager as I didn’t have the best impressions of this role but I learned that I love managing people and projects. This opportunity allowed me to see the joy of when projects are completed successfully and the value that others bring and how each person’s talent deserves a spotlight. As a PM I didn’t just get to regularly see progress within projects and manage them but see my team’s productivity and excellence during the course of a year.
The last few projects will just touch on main responsibilities I had or newly added improvements.
Helped with event planning where needed, worked on finishing up rebranding of the website with new team as well as focussed on creating posts for events.
One of the things expressed within my team is that we never had the opportunity to set up in-person activities with mentors and mentees. I also realized that having a LinkedIn account would help us grow but also reach professionals easier so they wouldn’t just have to rely on email as we already get many of those as it is. With that in mind I set up some ways in which LinkedIn could be used to support our continuous growth and planned around 3-4 events/proposals of what could be done with next year’s team.
I had the opportunity to work on translations and transcreations of a Spanish from Mexico version of the Fruit Vendor game. I also had the amazing opportunity to host events with Emily Cipriani and Ruby Lee and showcase Fruit Vendor on Nimzdi Podcast.
TLM Communication Guide
This communication guide is intended to support with intercultural communication: Communication Guides.docx
Internships
Through both my internships that I held this past year I worked on quality control, editing, and translation. I worked both with my other two passions, webcomics and education.
