Category: 2017 Charity Insights

Filmings and Finales

So much to catch up on this blog, where to to begin, probably where I left off, week of 18th Sept.

When I didn’t think there could be more variety, lo and behold, there it was. After starting off the week continuing some policy work on the EU and some more video project work, I helped supervise a teacher training event the RAS was holding as part of ESERO’s “Misson X” programme. Learning about the Education & Outreach side to the society was really interesting.

I also attended a filming for a new episode of Objectivity, a youtube series focussed on antique objects, whilst also doing some behind the scenes research for it.

Also in my last week, I started rounding up some of the longer projects I had been working on.

  • Monday was recording the videocast project I had been working on for the library and also editing the video.
  • Tuesday I handed off the EU policy work that I had been working on the entire time, (which apparently might be handed around the organisation as an information booklet)
  • Tuesday and Wednesday, we’ve had the Prince’s Trust here performing a filming project, which I have been assisting in multiple ways such a
    • Researching various instruments such as Sutton Quadrants and Nocturnals to able to explain how they operated
    • Being interviewed on physics and astronomy, answering questions given by the public on what it would be like to visit various bodies

Round-up :

I’ve massively enjoyed working at the Royal Astronomical Society and would recommend working there or just visiting generally. A huge thanks to everyone there for hosting my placement.

Don’t forget: SPACE IS AWESOME

Richard Out!

How is your drainage?

There was a lot of time pressure in the last week of the internship as I tried to keep up with the project as it expanded. Originally I was going to catalogue the contents of 2 barns of agricultural equipment but ended up doing at least double that (Sacrewell has a seemingly endless supply of equipment). With the cataloguing done, I then had time to stay on and help decide what would happen to the 600+ objects I had spent hours nurturing and puzzling over. For the purpose of this task we adapted the game ‘snog, marry, avoid’ and created ‘sell, keep, scrap’. The skip arrived on the morning of my last day and thankfully next to nothing of what I had identified went in it. There was a sacred pile of objects to invest time and money into keeping and the remainder will be sold at auction. I let myself speculate about where they may end up…. In another museum, someone’s garden, redesigned into a piece of art or furniture. Hopefully they won’t end up unused in someone’s barn all over again!

The main aim was to keep things that could tell a story to our visitors.

GRANARY LADDER. The woodworms know to stay clear, as this ladder means business. It is chunky and heavy with well-worn indents from tired feet. It has lifted many pairs of legs and helped with hours of hard work lifting goods.

SPADE IRON. This thin iron plate with two worn leather straps may be covered in years of cob webs and dust, but to its previous owners it was a must have to complete the chic land worker look. The metal plate protects costly boot soles from wear after hours of stomping spades into the ground. How many ditches has it dug and how many drainage pipes has it buried?

Paul Genever and his daughter Kate, farmers from Croft Farm, educated me about the important topic of land drainage. A process I was previously completely unaware of. They came for a quick look at the collection and left several hours later. We tried to visualise how the objects were used and even ended up acting as horses harnessed up and pulling one of the hay sweeps. I think this was mostly for my benefit as they knew what 99/100 items were. They kindly posted me a land drainage map of one of their fields and it is so beautiful I’m considering framing it. Previously I had no idea that all that terracotta or plastic pipe was intricately woven under every field providing the perfect water concentration for the crops. It is like the furiously flapping feet of a duck bellow a tranquil mill pond surface.

I am going to miss working outdoors, the freedom to have lunch with the peacocks, hold the rabbits or lead the donkeys on a walk. The calming sounds of the mill wheel turning and the Swallows flying overhead.

A big thank you to the team at Sacrewell and the general manger, Debbie Queen. I was made to feel very welcome and valued on the project. Thank you Imperial for sponsoring my internship and in turn helping Sacrewell move closer to preserving their collection. I hope that I can come back in 3 years’ time to the permanently set up museum collection and experience it afresh. Hopefully I will be coming back as an agricultural engineer.

http://www.kategenever.com/

https://merl.reading.ac.uk/

WELCOME TO SACREWELL FARM

Open House and Meetings Galore

Been another hectic week of mixed activities at the RAS. Start off by continuing on with my EU project work , apparently leaving a multinational organistion is  quite confusing. Started reaching some conclusions on that front with the UK’s relation with the EU. On the rest of the policy front, I started and finished drafting the targeted MP letters for the RAS, and then was given the task of compiling a list of MPs with relevant interest.

Doing a little research work for the library, I helped catalogue some books to move to the reserve collection. Who knew that there used to be dictionaries of famous people, which contained their families and addresses?

At the end of the week I started a research task trying to find who had gifted an 18th century Arabic celestial globe to the RAS, which involved sifting through old records the society maintains.

I also attended a couple meetings with the acting executive director over a PhD careers event in Manchester and the working comms group of the UKSA which gave me some good insight about the external work it does with government organisations and companies. It covered events such as new scientist live and press work for the Cassini Grand Finale. (RIP Cassini ! )

On Saturday, I helped the RAS with their Open House event, as part of the Open House London Weekend. This involved showing people the library, which was used to display the archives, and answering the public’s questions on astronomy, which got quite technical, with questions like “Where is the centre of the universe”?

(Pretty picture on the right shows some cool things, the big picture showing Cassini’s map of the moon. On the left there is a “log” from the “tree” where the “apple” “fell on “Newton’s” head.)

Macmillan Weeks 9-11

As we’re coming up to my last 3 weeks at Macmillan, I have finished up on my part of the Patient Needs in Digital project. I have been looking into how the best cancer apps on the market cater to patients, evaluating what the key features are and how I personally rate the user experience of apps such as oWise and iCancerHealth. Having just finished my final report on these apps, it has been amazing to delve into the details of what makes apps successful, both in terms of aesthetics and practicalities. Allowing me to write my own recommendation for how Macmillan should focus their future efforts shows that they have put effort into the journey of work they have given me, and has been a really rewarding way to end the internship scheme. I hope as the first Technology intern, I have been of some use, even if it means knowing how they might do things differently next time, but working in this field has opened up a lot of doors in the future for potential career paths, which I am very grateful for!

On one of the days, I was given the opportunity again to go with the video team to do some filming, but this time in the Tate Britain! This was such a fun experience as I love both art and filming so combining the 2 was really exciting! I also attended a training day for “Networking that Brings Results” which was really helpful as I HATE the idea of networking – but I realised networking wasn’t just the typical image of everyone in a room talking to find what skillsets everyone has, but can be as simple as talking to someone you bump into about their work, as I have been constantly doing at Macmillan without realising!

Finally, we move onto the brilliant intern fundraising event which was the “Intern-ational day of Charity (5th September) pub quiz”! This was an absolute success as it was just so much fun getting all the interns together to run the whole thing. Being in charge of questions, there was a lot pressure in hoping that the questions run smoothly but it seems everyone had a great time. We had a raffle too, in which I won a bag of coffee (even though I don’t drink coffee…)! We ended up raising £700 which was incredible, and I can only recommend to the next set of interns to do a pub quiz too!

Overall the experience has been absolutely amazing – there was not one bit of the internship I didn’t enjoy as the work was really interesting, the interns and everyone in my team were so kind and friendly and I gained so much insight into so many areas of work which will certainly contribute to my future career choices.

I could not recommend doing this internship enough if you get the chance!

Thank you Macmillan Cancer Support!

Jack of all trades : My first week at RAS

So I just finished my first week at the Royal Astronomical Society, on an internship funded by the Charity Insights scheme, (which I guess you’ve figured out, by finding this blog). The Royal Astronomical Society is the national learned society covering Astronomy, Astrophysics and surprisingly, Geophysics. It’s nearly 200 years old, celebrating its 200th Anniversary in 2020.

The headquarters of the RAS are in Burlington House, just off Piccadilly and they are surrounded by a plethora of other societies, such as the Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Geological Society and the Royal Academy of Arts. (On the left is a pretty picture of the entrance for the RAS)

With the first week of my internship over, I’ve been working mainly between assisting with the library(pretty picture featured), outreach and education and some policy work.

I hit the ground running on Monday, being given a project by one of my supervisors, the head of library and archives, Sian. The project consisted of producing a short guide on using the Astrophysical Data System, a database run by the Smithsonian holding information on Astrophysics, Astronomy, Physics and Geophysics papers. I firstly got familiar with the system, never having used it before, and took Monday and Tuesday to draft it.

However! I was also given a policy project looking into possible arrangements of the UK’s science & technology relationship with the EU post-Brexit, specifically over arrangements regarding Horizon2020. Now this is something that has been incredibly meaty and head-racking, taking up quite a bit of my time and something that will probably take up quite a bit of my time over the remaining 3 weeks. Albeit it being confusing and lengthy (just like the Brexit negotiations!), it has been quite interesting finding and ingesting the EU legal documents on the subject.

On Tuesday, apart from the previous two projects mentioned, I partook in a teacher tour, where a group of teachers were shown the variety of activities that the RAS provides in outreach, such as demonstrations on the composition of a comet(using dry ice!) and some of the archives/antiquities they possess, like Caroline Herschel’s observations diary (The first woman to ever be paid as a Scientist, if you have time, google her story).

My Thursday and Friday continued in the same vein in regards to my policy work, but I also attended meetings regarding some other projects RAS is working on, such as a PhD careers event and assisting the City of Westminster Library. I also got my first taste of cataloguing and archiving.

So far, the experience has been a great change of pace and it’s been amazing working in an organisation which is all about space!

My next week includes continuing my EU research, drafting letters to send to politicians and helping prepare for the Royal Astronomical Society Open House on Sat 16th September, which I will also be assisting in.

Signing off until next week,

Richard

Macmillan Weeks 6-8

Now about halfway through my internship, my timetable and work was becoming more regular. Like previously mentioned, Macmillan offer training courses to their staff, which interns can join too if we email a week before – so I’ve been making a note of when to email to try and get a place. Luckily I managed to get a place on Writing for Macmillan, which was really interesting as it investigated the approach for how the charity writes and portrays itself to others. Similarly, I had an induction with someone from the Cancer Information Development team which I found very useful to discover how the charity utilises the information it has to make it as effective as possible. In line with my aspiration to go into Science Communication, it was great to try and understand the importance of target audience and the average reading age when writing.

With respect to the project I’ve been working on, I had been using the final report of the research in Patient Needs in Digital to craft a presentation to be used by the technology directorate to display the findings and what we may want to do with the results. As Macmillan don’t currently have a strong strategy in digital, it’s exciting to potentially help develop Macmillan’s future plan. Being of my generation also helps to prioritise the most important features which will be used by the public.

A career’s management 1 to 1 was also set up by Macmillan to help the interns develop their career aspirations. This was great as we covered everything from LinkedIn and my CV to how best to approach the real world of jobs! The best thing to have happened in these 3 weeks, though, was the day that the video department allowed me to come with them on a filming day! We went to the University of Arts London to film and the experience was great. I hadn’t had any practical experience up until then and they were all friendly enough to let me bombard them with questions I had about the industry.

With only 3 weeks left, it’s surprising how quickly the internship has gone by but it’s been so much fun so far. The interns have been great company too along the way but for the next blog, look out for how out fundraising pub quiz goes!

How to be Sensible about Science – End

Dear future intern,

This week was spent mostly finalising all of the work I did and archiving everything. I added subtitles to the videos that have been made. I exported them all for YouTube. I digitally organised and filed away all my work for future reference. I followed up my Ask for Evidence Campaign entries.

The highlight of the week for me, was a co-worker realising she has been pronouncing my name technically incorrectly throughout my internship and finding this unacceptable. This was during a sci-fi and fiction pub quiz we went to. We came third place! (they also went to a movie quiz but I couldn’t make that one, sad face) Next week, I will be attending a talk with them at the Science Museum. It will be a nice way to catch up.

I’ve learned a lot during my time here about what kind of career I want and how to work effectively. Since it’s a small organisation, it is run in a similar way to a team; so, I’ve been trying to figure out what makes a team thrive. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

  1. The immediate people around you. I’m the type of person that can plug their earphones in and work without any socialisation; but even to me it was obvious that the general atmosphere of the office is a prime motivator. I would say it is probably even more important than your role in the company.
  2. Getting things done. Duh. I used to procrastinate on action by trying to make a very neat plan and only following it through when I was feeling 100% in the mood in order to get the best result. Now as a general rule, I actually think having a working prototype is much more valuable. You can always iterate to improve on it. The Pareto Principle has never clicked into place in my head as well as it does now.
  3. Collaborating, but splitting responsibilities clearly.
  4. Last but not least, trusting your team. Give them freedom with their tasks, let them own it, let them fail, let them get creative and then be proud of the things they create. This perhaps applies more to management. What can I say, it worked on me so I assume it will work on other people.

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me out of all this, is that I enjoy working. I know it doesn’t sound serious, but I honestly thought I would hate a 9-5 job. It’s actually quite nice as long as you’re working on something challenging, and have room to explore new concepts.

Looking back, I can only wish the Charity Insights Scheme offered longer placements. I’ve met some great people and I haven’t dreaded a single day of work. This is all I can offer you to look forward to future intern.

Yours truly,

Koral

How to be Sensible about Science – Middle

Dear future intern,

If you are to take one advice from my entire series, make it this one. Have you ever been to barber? It doesn’t matter if you haven’t. I’m sure you’ve seen a boy in the past with a horrible new haircut and thought to yourself “How did he ever think that style was good idea?”. Well, I’ll tell you the answer; he didn’t. The thing about barbers is, if you don’t specifically tell them what you are expecting to get out of your visit, they will just give you the generic haircut they are familiar with. It’s not their fault, it’s the customer not communicating their expectations properly. It is the same when interning with a small company who doesn’t have a strict intern program. This is an advantage, you get to choose what you’d rather do! Go to them with a project and specific goals, if you want to make sure you get what you want out of it. People usually lazy out on the finding a project part of Charity Insights. They just go with a vague description of what kind of interning they will do. Don’t do this.

My second week started with me researching Maddox Prize candidates and writing up nomination profiles on them. Now, while nominees of this prize are very unusual people with interesting pasts, the work quickly got mundane. It didn’t fit my personality and it wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to do. I was more interested in learning than doing arbitrary research.

Thankfully, after a very short time of doing this, my main internship project kicked in! I got this internship with one goal in mind; learn how to use the Adobe Suite. Everything else on top of that was just extra. Looking back, I’ve learned a lot, the Adobe Suite was just a section of it; but I’m very happy about the fact that I’ve accomplished my main goal and have produced content I’m proud of in the process. Unfortunately, I can’t show you the content here because most of it hasn’t been published yet. Week 3 consisted mostly of me doing graphic design and video editing, showing my progress and alternative ideas then iterating and finalising. I doubt any of this interests you much, so that is all I will say on it. Also, I went on a picnic with my co-workers so that was nice.

I also got a reply from Turmeric+ about the claims they made in the advertisement below. For the record, they backed their words up fairly well so kudos to them. I have since made 2 more such entries for the Ask for Evidence Campaign about the Dangerous Dogs Act.

 

Yours truly,

Koral

How to be Sensible about Science – Beginning

Hello dear future intern,

A bit about me; my name is Koral, and I interned with Sense about Science in August 2017. I knew about this charity because I noticed every year one person from the Charity Insights Scheme chooses it. So, I assume every year after me, interns from Imperial will keep coming here. Therefore, I have chosen to write my blog in the format of a diary to you, dear future intern; though everyone else is welcome to read my adventures as well of course. I plan on writing 3 posts, all of them in retrospect. They will encapsulate the beginning, middle, and end periods of my internship.

Right, so first day of work. When coming into the office, the only people I knew were Chris and Ana, because I had interviewed them. They both had seemed very friendly. I had the kind of nervousness that betrays you by showing up at the last second. I got introduced to everyone by first name. I did not know anyone’s roles, and I still don’t. The office is a single room where everyone is open to communication, people tend to have things they’re currently working on more than roles. This has made me realise I’d actually quite like working for a small company. I like having a say in everything that is being done, as long as I have the competence and desire. Then I jumped into my first monday headlines meeting, where people go through the week’s work. Lots of acronyms got thrown around, my notes had lots of question marks next to them because I had no idea what was going on. Then I was given a little guidebook, a Gmail account, and access to their server. Hectic first day. Oh also, everyone has a favourite cup in the office. I personally recommend the plain ones! Next thing on the list was getting assigned a newspaper. The first half an hour every morning is spent by reading different newspapers, and then discussing anything that might be relevant to the charity. It’s quite a nice routine, I opted for waking up half an hour late in the mornings and reading it on my way. My assigned newspaper was the Metro, which I spent a shameful amount of time looking for in stores before I realised it was distributed for free at stations. They also took me out on welcome lunch and paid for everything, which was awfully nice of them.

Anyway, enough babbling on. Time to talk business. For the first week, I did some odd jobs here and there. A noteworthy part was preparing lots of folders and documents for the Maddox Prize. It certainly didn’t help that their number of nominations compared to last year had doubled to more than 100. Now, on the surface this was a classic case of grunt-work for an intern. However, I was ready to take initiative and blow my co-workers’ minds (slight exaggeration but let me have my dreams). I went to my old friend Google for advice on shortcuts. I quickly taught myself some VBA (turns out you can program in Excel, who knew!) and AutoHotKey (had to download software for this one). I also found a little .exe application called Text2Folders. These allowed me lightning speed, and I am fairly confident I made up for the time I spent researching and more. Now admittedly, this was a risky move from me. My attempts at making this work could have been for nothing, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing for the most part. What I loved though, is no one told me to stop wasting time on it. They just left everything to me. As a result, I got it done faster than expected, left them a little guide on how they can replicate the process in future years (you’re welcome future intern), made the work interesting, and gained skills from it. I think this is a good example of why you should get an intern. Worst case scenario, you do the work. Best case scenario, you provide a solution from a new perspective.

My other work included writing a Reddit post for their Plant Science Panel, and making my first contributions to their Ask for Evidence campaign! More on that later.

Until next time!

Yours truly,

Koral

Review of my great internship experience at S.A.S!

It’s the penultimate day here at surfers against sewage, and what a fun and engaging experience this has been.

Week 3 & 4:

  • During the last two weeks, I have been doing smaller tasks, such as typing up many of the plastic-free pledge names and emails into a spreadsheet (thankfully, a handful of volunteers took the main chunk out of this task!) I also made a comprehensive budget for 25 new Beach Clean boxes for schools around the country. To be more suitable for school pupils, certain items had to be altered from last year’s budget, such as 2x goggley eyes and 2x graptor, and a change from a regional reps hoodie to 4x school reps tee’s, in the hope that a small team of pupils will safeguard the box year upon year.
  • Created a spreadsheet of school contacts in all areas of UK (10x Primary, 10x Secondary schools in each), in order to later contact about possibility of becoming one of the 25 partner BCB schools.

 

3 things I was impressed with:

• The vast array of different tasks I was given meant I never once found myself bored and I always looked forward to the next day. Getting the chance to get creative for a couple of days was something that I don’t do too often, so it was refreshing and super fun!
• The links the company has with many big names in the environmental industry, such as Patagonia, was something I wasn’t previously aware of. I think it shows that the charity is heading in the right direction, and in combination of increased membership year-by-year, I believe it can, and is producing real change for our oceans.
• Last, but possibly the most important, the staff attitude and dynamic within the workplace so vibrant and positive. Everyone is focussed on their respective jobs but also everyone is friends, which is so important to achieve the campaign goals and create a fun place to work from.

Constructive criticism:
For the sake of the charity, (and whilst appreciating that it’s hard to foresee what will be popular/useful at events), I did produce some unnecessary work (Boardmasters maps & staff tally were not really used.) Although I had loads of fun making these, maybe next time ensure all prepared props are kept on top of during events, or otherwise not spend so much time on them in the first place. I feel like the time spent on those could have been spent on starting David’s mapping project, which unfortunately I wasn’t able to get my hands on to.

Overview:
Having been at the office for 4 weeks has wholeheartedly been a pleasure. Being a local avid surfer, SAS was a charity that I was aware of and engaged with for years. However, actually working intrinsically within the office has opened my eyes to how resourceful the work must be with a limited budget, and how mindful the staff attitude is. Each and every detail for all current campaigns is thought-out, ensuing that the campaigns are sustainable for the future. I truly have become friends with all the staff here and I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better internship!