Big Internship

The interns at Big Space­ship ran the weekly office show and tell last Fri­day.  The nine of us met a few times dur­ing the week to think up a way for our col­leagues to learn about us and what we’re work­ing on at Big Space­ship.  The crew was blown away by the result.

I’ve been intern­ing at Big Space­ship as a strate­gist since June.  Big Space­ship is a dig­i­tal cre­ative agency.  Com­pa­nies and insti­tu­tions that need to engage with peo­ple in dig­i­tal space hire Big Space­ship to pro­duce play­ful, engag­ing, and use­ful expe­ri­ences that advance the client’s goals, be that to sell more prod­ucts, improve on an online expe­ri­ence, or rework pub­lic per­cep­tion of a topic or brand.  Strate­gists are essen­tially respon­si­ble for the val­ues, con­tent, and nar­ra­tive that drive each project.  In addi­tion to famil­iar­iz­ing myself with the client’s val­ues and the inter­ests they bring to a project, I research mar­ket trends and prece­dents that inform the team’s cre­ative work.

Big Space­ship is often cited for its cul­ture, which has been cal­i­brated to pro­mote cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tion across dis­ci­plines. All four dis­ci­plines, strat­egy, pro­duc­tion, design, and devel­op­ment, are involved from start to fin­ish on each project.  Big Space­ship also does an amaz­ing job of keep­ing the work­place fun and per­son­able, which man­i­fests in odd places, like the kitchen knife rack. The interns uncon­sciously repro­duced Big Spaceship’s col­lab­o­ra­tive cul­ture as we put together our show and tell.  Every­one lent their strengths to plan­ning and exe­cut­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, cal­i­brat­ing things based on con­straints and ideas as we went.

Four inter­ests came up dur­ing our brain­storm­ing sessions.

• riff on a com­pany inside joke to estab­lish our­selves in the office culture
• play a game that would help our col­leagues get to know us
• present what we do and what we’ve learned
• thank every­one for the oppor­tu­nity to intern at Big Spaceship

We decided to take the com­pany joke of mash­ing up employee por­traits to cre­ate odd hybrids to an extreme.  Tyson Damman takes each employ­ees pic­ture for PR and fun use.  Here are mine:

Design intern Car­o­line Caine strug­gled to make one pho­to­shop por­trait that took from each intern por­trait and found that the var­i­ous attempts were col­lec­tively more amus­ing than the final suc­cess.  The intern show and tell began with a slide of six mash ups:

Our game, Guess That Intern, folded into the pre­sen­ta­tion of what each of us was up to.  The crew had to cor­rectly match an object and three hints to the intern it belonged to.  This was the Big Space­ship crew’s oppor­tu­nity to jovially tease us about the quarks in our per­son­al­i­ties as they attempted to match the objects to the peo­ple. Devel­op­ment intern Nick Harde­man threw in a wild card hint, claim­ing to have no toes on his left foot.  A moment of enthralled sur­prise among the crew quickly broke into bois­ter­ous sug­ges­tions of who it could be.  Nick even­tu­ally had to remove his shoe to prove that he did indeed have 10 toes.

After each intern was iden­ti­fied, they pre­sented a slide about them­selves and talked about who they are and what they are up to at Big Space­ship.  The slide pre­sen­ta­tions were later described as a vari­ety show.  Some were funny, some were quaint.  Mine was inspi­ra­tional and to the point as I let every­one know that what I’m learn­ing here at Big Space­ship will soon be put to the ser­vice of HIV/AIDS orphans in Ethiopia.  We designed a show and tell that was fun and inter­ac­tive for the crew, and let each intern play to their strengths while strut­ting their per­son­al­ity.  I was shocked to look at my watch when it was all done and real­ize that 2 hours had passed.  It felt like it could have been 20 minutes.

To thank the crew for being so wel­com­ing and treat­ing us like full mem­bers of the Big Space­ship team, pro­duc­tion intern Toph Brown gave out coupons enti­tling the holder to one cup of cof­fee pur­chased and deliv­ered cheer­fully by the intern of their choice.

Nick Harde­man was imme­di­ately sent out on a cof­fee run, but not before he put on his per­sonal item from the Guess That Intern game: a cow suit (photo by Jamie Kosoy).

Big Space­ship cur­rently has intern­ship posi­tions open for the fall.