Category: 2017 Macmillan Cancer Support

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!

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!

Macmillan Weeks 3-5

Week 3 began with some proper work, looking into the needs of cancer patients in digital – exploring the different attitudes towards digital as well as the different ways patients use it. This, firstly, involved investigating a list of various health apps currently on the market and seeing how they worked, different features they had and in what ways they’ve hit the target market. Funnily enough, this involved actually having a play around on most of them so if I’m ever in need of health-restoration, I know exactly where to go!

With everyone at Macmillan being so friendly, people in other departments are kind enough to give you an induction into their area of work, answering any questions you may have. I leapt onto this opportunity and tried to explore various other departments such as social media, evidence engagement and video. It was fantastic to see how, for example, Facebook and Twitter are so carefully used from a company perspective, as well as how the research gathered by Macmillan is efficiently and accurately portrayed to the public. Most importantly for me though, I really enjoyed talking to the video team because of my aspiration to one day enter the world of documentaries – talking to them helped me understand the steps I might have to take to gain more experience in this industry.

We also had our first meeting for our intern fundraising event. It was pretty obvious after a few minutes that a pub quiz was the most popular option which made it quite easy to decide. With about 3/4 of the interns helping, it allowed us to fairly split up the work amongst us – with me being on questions! I met up with a Macmillan pub quiz master to teach me the ways of conducting a successful pub quiz and it seemed that it was much harder than originally thought! But thanks to him, we had the building blocks and key knowledge of how to host a great pub quiz so fingers cross…

The weekly meetings with my manager helped to keep me on track of what I was doing, ensuring I had enough work to do each week. Allowing me to sit in on various meetings and debriefs, I gained more of an understanding about our project which may eventually allow me to contribute to how Macmillan develop their digital presence in the future!

The end of week 5 has left me hitting the ground running, making it much easier to get on with work as I have a much deeper understanding of what’s going on now! I hope the second half of the internship well be even better!

PS I’ve got a great view of Imperial College’s Queen’s tower from where I’m sitting – spectacular.

Macmillan Weeks 1-2

Macmillan Cancer Support are a charity that aims to improve the lives of people living with cancer in all aspects of  life – from diagnosis, through treatment and living with cancer and even end of life. They have been growing at a rapid rate over the last few years and so you’re pretty much guaranteed to see them around! If you want to find out more information about them, whether it’s to fund raise for them or simply explore their values, the link is here: https://www.macmillan.org.uk/

My internship is based in their office at Albert Embankment, Vauxhall in their technology department – their first ever intern! Within this department there are many sections: Digital, IT security etc. but I am placed in Strategy and Engagement (S&E). As an overview, this involves helping to develop their strategy towards using digital to improve the lives of those affected by cancer… very broad I know! As my internship is 11 weeks long, I don’t have a specific project, as such, to achieve, but am part of a bigger project to research and understand how digital is best used by patients, and how Macmillan may want to develop their strategy in the future.

The first week was very much an introductory week – the first day was an induction day for all the other interns, one in each department. This involved explaining what life at Macmillan was like, incorporating ice breakers, a presentation exercise and simple guides for working at Macmillan like who we can ask for help. There is also an intern-organised fundraising event for us during our time here so we collectively made a list of possible ideas we could do for it. The first and most important thing (for me) that I realised on the first day was how well Macmillan treated their interns and how much time and effort they put into their internship scheme. They really made us feel welcomed and structured it so that we would gain the most out our time there – offering training courses and setting various development workshops for us.

The second day was their Tech Quarterly briefing day which was a day for all of technology to gather and discuss all the things that had been going on for the past 4 months…a lot of information to take in! It was a great networking opportunity and helped me gain an understanding of the organisation as a whole, the problems it faced and its ideas for the future. There were some basic team exercises where we were split up into groups, with people we’d never met, and had to come up with a world record for the company to try and break! After the second day I started to settle in and understand what work I would be doing.

During the rest of the week, and delving into the week after, I was taught how to use Outlook properly, their sharepoint, Outlook calendar and started organising meetings with the people in my department to introduce myself and explain my background and aspirations. Everyone at Macmillan, probably as well in most charities, was so friendly! It was just amazing how talkative, helpful and caring everyone is – definitely a big consideration for working in the charity sector one day.

I met with my manager in my second week to talk about the work I’d be doing, and I was given a few article to read about the project and a list of health apps to create a spreadsheet and review. We arranged to have a weekly meetings to review my progress but made it clear that I could ask anyone around me for help. There was also a careers workshop for the interns which consisted of evaluating our skills, which one we liked and wanted to develop, and priorities of values and how we might develop our careers in the future. This was extremely helpful and once again, was amazed at how much consideration had been put in for us.

Battling the fear of not-wanting to seem too keen against the desire to socialise with the other interns more, I organised a weekly intern lunch with the interns in which they all seemed to express the same fear – if any advice, I would always say don’t hesitate, seizing every opportunity means that you’ll make the most out of your time and now thanks to that initial lunch, we’ve set up a weekly pub trip too to explore a different pub every week!

At the end of the third week, we had what was called the London Takeover where everyone in the organisation would go out to a designated tube or train station to raise money for Macmillan with buckets, dressed in Green! This was an amazing end to my third week at Macmillan and it was lovely to hear the kind messages by people donating; sharing their stories of loved ones with cancer being helped so much by Macmillan.

The first few weeks have mainly be catching up on what the project is and what direction we’d like to go but I’m sure there’ll be loads more work in the weeks ahead!