Oh boy, this week had me by the throat! In a good way of course. It was social media week and we got to talk to the best of the best in tech and got to peek behind the mystical curtain of what goes into these apps that we use daily.
Monday: Cara from Penguin Random House kicked off the week with a great session on how she and her co-worker run the social media department at her company. She taught us an interesting technique that advertisers use to market to consumers called the Pitch, Plunge and Play method. We even got to have some interactive activities to split into groups and work together to create campaigns for our assigned book. My group had Jack Reacher and came up with a game named ‘Street Reacher’ (thanks josh!) and the idea must’ve been good because we won!! Can’t wait to get my book courtesy of Cara and penguin.
Tuesday: I’m going in tonight, RIP that p-… enough of that. Tuesday’s sessions started with us watching each other’s Cultural Tribe videos and I’m honestly so inspired by the talent this group has. The most surprising video goes to Lamar for being so funny and entertaining! Then we had a session led by Emma, Alessandra and Thuy with the amazing Tiktok, the home of the RENEGADE, RENEGADE, RENEGADE 💃🏽. Tiktok is hands down my most used and favourite right now so it was so fun getting to know the behind the scenes of it all. We even had a task to make a Tiktok which, I won’t lie, did make me a bit anxious to post as I’m more of a viewer than a content creator. Nonetheless, it was really fun and since I finished early, I got to speak with Emma and Thuy more about my love for the platform and our favourite current trends.
Wednesday: Day 3 was a bit of a throwback for me as it was about Snapchat and I hadn’t used the app as frequently as I used to. After the session though, I look forward to seeing the future of Snapchat. This was a full jampacked day of learning and I was a bit surprised by the content as the session leaders Adam and Eugene talked to us about Snapchat’s use of AR and how they were developing more ways to get it even better. In this session, we got into teams and worked on our Jam board presentations creating our own campaigns for Levi’s sustainable WellThread range. This was a really fun exercise, not only was it exciting using Jam Board for the first time, it was great getting to know my group and having deep/funny conversations. P.S my question for the people at Snapchat seemed to have led to people making certain assumptions about me 👀 now I will not confirm or deny these assumptions but I will say I am a grown woman now and I’ll do what I want ya nasties!
Thursday: Now speaking of a throwback for Thursday’s session, we were joined by the lovely Facebook/Instagram who was led by Laurian and Josh, with guest speakers from the company. It was a full day with loads of information and had some of my favourite speakers. They were super inspiring and full of wisdom, I genuinely wanted to sign up and work for them there and then! Joe especially made me feel so proud of speaking my truth in any environment I go into. I loved how unfiltered and straight up he explained his experience was as a person of colour going into the media/tech world. It made me realise that when we’re making people in white-dominated industries uncomfortable by our presence, I know we’re making way for change.
Friday: To wrap up the week we had two different sessions. Searchlight kicked off the morning we a CV/Cover letter workshop which helped me a lot. Anything I was confused about previously was answered by the searchlight team. Can’t wait to improve my CV with their advice. The afternoon session was all about Twitter, the session was a really interesting one as I’m someone who doesn’t use Twitter much. I tend to be more of a scroller than a tweeter. We learned about how Twitter connects brands to their platform and helps them navigate the world of Twitter as I’m sure it’s not like other platforms they market on. I really found the conversation with Rob and Jasmine engaging and educating. Rob is an account manager and I got to ask him what advice he’d give me for a job role I applied for as it’s a role he works with closely and it really helped me out. Jasmine is someone I definitely look up to as I can relate to her journey.
All in all, it was a terrific week and I can’t wait for the weeks upcoming.
