Fin.

The intern adventures are coming to an end. It's bittersweet.

I find myself not wanting it to be over because I don't feel like the job is done. There are so many pages on the site that need tweaking, the shop isn't as fully functional as I'd like it to be, and figuring out the shipping rates has become a personal challenge that I HAVE to solve because it shouldn't be that complicated.

Final work session as an intern tomorrow. *sigh*
but...

The future is bright. :)

Gotta be kidding mE commerce

I've never been a huge fan of writing code, well html... basic was fun. I've reevaluated the value of knowing coding languages since working with a website designed for people who don't know html. I often find myself knowing that there's an easier way, but not being able to use it.

I've been trying to make pages on "our" site have products available to purchase, I have mistakenly made very pretty product category pages, but cannot for the life of me figure out how to add products to pages for specific audiences.

Argh! Wall hit. :/

Time flies

Final presentation presented, and the intern adventures are over... not really, or officially, but it's an ending of sorts.
The blogging requirement is killing me, I have been writing so much, I don't have words left.

I'm going to miss seeing my fellow interns present about their week, and the wealth of knowledge, and experience the past eight weeks brought. It's been an enlightening experience.

I ship you not.

In the continued intern adventures...

The site's looking good.

We've got ecommerce enabled.

Products are up for purchase.

OMG, figuring out shipping profiles on WordPress is a headache and a half. It almost seems like they have a paid solution for every issue we're run into. But for a start-up, funds aren't always available, and I'm trying to get things working on as close to a shoestring budget as possible. I don't want to keep having to say "Well here's this option that seems like it'll work, but you need to shell out cash to fix this issue."

If you don't hear from me, I'm lost in the morass that is WordPress FAQs/forums about shipping. Please send help.

Magical mystical marketing plan

In the continuing internship adventure, together with my partner in marketing madness, another milestone has been achieved. A first for me. We created and presented (on rather short notice) a marketing plan for the start-up we're working with. It was interesting to sit down and parse through the knowledge we've gained about the company and condense it into a comprehensive plan to help grow the business.

I'm glad to report it was received well, and we didn't totally suck.

Awesome sauce

I feel blessed to be working with such an amazing group of people. Sadly I haven't been able to take advantage of many of the networking opportunities after our weekly all clinic meeting, but this week I finagled it into my schedule.  I had a great time getting to know the other inaugural CDE interns better.

So much talent in one place should be illegal, we could take over the world!

Photo credit to our waitress and Brendas phone.

It's alive!!

Website published-ish

...but the links aren't pointing to the correct domain.  ack! and the new e-commerce plugin is another layer of learning. double ack! But... I love rtfm moments, because learning how to fix something and then fixing it makes the knowledge stick.

My bedtime reading tonight is about making changes to php files and editing backups to update links efficiently.

Content-ment

This week I had the opportunity to pursue elbow modeling in addition to my other endeavors. It's gonna look awesome on my resume! So interesting. Much random.

Sooo, on the continued intern quest for awesome sauce....

The work I'm doing with the CDE is too fun to be work, which is my favorite kind. I'm working with amazingly smart, funny, and innovative people on a project that I find both rewarding and challenging. It just doesn't get better than that!
Today,we finally got the website done enough to "publish it." With all the blog content up to date, I've finally gotten to delve into the fun that is site building with WordPress. It's been slow going, but I hit a point last week when everything clicked and I've been making a ton of progress since that point. Pages have been built, Woot! Content upon which I'm content to put more content.  It's been a good week.
:)

Light bulb moments

I'm a night owl, most of my best ideas come in the wee hours. This morning was no different. I had a breakthrough moment a bit past midnight when I finally figured out how to get the shop/products page I'm working on to include actual products and prices... kind of important if you're trying to sell stuff. So I was plugging away at it until nearly 3am, worried that I'd forget how to do it and wanting to firmly set the process in my brain before finally giving my brain a rest.

I love light bulb moments. The feeling of finally truly understanding something I've been struggling with is amazing! That it's making my job easier is just the cherry on top of the cake. I absolutely love the work I'm doing, it challenges me, and knowing that what I'm building could spread awareness to help save lives and bring relief to people I'll never know is really motivating.

Numbers

I hate math, but I like numbers.
Here are some numbers from this week:

In the quest for intern awesome sauce...
65: Blog entries completed to date (combined personal and internship related)
1st: Certification completed
5: webpages updated

You gotta be shipping me

The continued intern adventures...

After the great relief of finishing up consolidating all press and social media postings onto the blog for my incubator company, I went through for a quality control check. Making sure everything is cohesive, I didn't make any spelling errors, properly cited articles, used blockquotes...all of that fun stuff. With a few minor exceptions it looks good... except there's an issue with the titles. If an entry has a lengthy title, it overlaps and covers the navigation menu. The good news is I've figured out the problem and how to fix it, the bad news is I have to go through and individually edit nearly 60 blog entries.

In other news, I was able to use knowledge from my time as the shipping department for Dreamcatcher.com to answer some questions about which shipping carrier is most cost effective. In doing so, I chatted up my brother who gave me great info on what they're currently using for shipping which verified my own research. The conversation turned to analytics and AdWords, and due to his frustration with Google, I may have a new position back with Dreamcatcher, which is awesome because I really miss working with my brother.

I'm Certifiable... or something like that.

In the continued intern adventure, I passed both AdWords Fundamentals and Search Advertizing exams today, which means I now have a certification in Google AdWords! I can check that off my list of stuff to get done and focus on getting my blog entries up to date.

That feeling of Accomplishment... and death

Almost a month into the internship experience, it's amazing how fast the time goes. I've been working on migrating/creating content on the company blog and until just now, I felt like it would never end. I just migrated/reposted the last article. I've recreated everything that has ever been posted to all of their social media and written entries for every single mention in the media. A grand total of 60 published postings, with a few unpublished as I can't track down links to the articles online and feel wrong copying and pasting articles. Surprisingly,  The Detroit News makes it hard to link to older articles.

So, after spending the majority of my day posting blog entries and doing my best to create unique and engaging blurbs about very similar articles, the last thing I really want to be doing is blogging. I think I decided to write tonight because it gives me the opportunity to write something that isn't about infant mortality.

...but then the statistics run through my head, and  I can't stop thinking about the numbers.

I read earlier today that in developed nations 1 in 10 babies with hypothermia die, while in developing nations that 9 in 10 babies with hypothermia die. Those numbers made me really stop and think.  Then I ran across an article about how in the early 1900's, Dr. Martin Couney, the dude who invented the infant incubator had a preemie sideshow on Coney Island. Nurses would show off preemie babies, some as small as two pounds, and people became aware that there was a need, and hospitals started ordering incubators for premature infants. Sometimes, it takes something extreme to shock society into recognizing a problem. If it took a preemie baby sideshow to get people to recognize that incubators could save lives in the 18th century, will it take the equivalent of  an internet sideshow graphically showing infant mortality to realize a solution today?

Blaaahg

I should be writing here at least twice a week, but I've been writing so much elsewhere lately, I'm kinda burned out. Which sucks, because I really like playing with words.

 *backstory*
As part of an internship I am doing over the summer, I'm partnered with an incubator company. A very promising startup that needed help with their digital marketing. So far my role has been to populate a blog page on their new website - migrating content and creating new posts. I am really enjoying creating a cohesive blog with engaging content, showing the timeline that tells the story of the company I'm working with, but... In the past two weeks I've posted 36 blog entries and writing for my personal-ish blog isn't high on my list.

...except that

 Blog entries are required for the internship.

I love to write, longhand, with a pen and ink. I have a hard time crafting words on a screen and wish I could do this with a nice flowy ink pen. With a pen I could draw something which expresses what I'm feeling.

 

I have a love hate relationship with the internet.

I can't wait to go from moving and tweaking existing content for the company I'm working with to creating new engaging content.

Different is good

In embarking on my internship adventures, I am super impressed by the eclectic thinking of the entrepreneurial minds I'm now working with. It takes a special kind of person to take on the risks and challenges of starting a business from the ground up.
I found the following article breaks down the uniqueness of the entrepreneurial mind.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/22/8-things-entrepreneurial-_n_5492407.html?utm_hp_ref=small-business

Crowd sourced funding for startups

I've been working with a startup company for an internship over the summer. Working with people who believe passionately about what they're doing and being part of something driving social entrepreneurship is amazing! Having a glimpse into the workings of a startup has changed the way I view things, and the following is an example of that.

I ran across this article  earlier in the week that has gotten me thinking. Here's the thunks: First, isn't this what Kickstarter does, second, this is how really bad investments happen while amazing innovations hit the market.

So I'm just getting to know the company/people I'm going to be working with and starting to get a handle on what I'm 'sposed to be doing. I gather that I have a lot to learn, and that it's going to be a fun road learning.