From the early beginning I wanted to do my internship in Amsterdam. I was interested in working in the Holland as the Dutch companies are known to be very innovative, especially in the creative sector.
–> How did I find my internship being from Germany without much knowledge of the Dutch work environment? I choose the elective Making Media for my summer semester 2018 in which our coordinator hosted weekly Meet & Greet sessions with representatives from the local media industry. After the class was over we were able to have a talk with the guests and I got the chance to talk to Michel from Submarine Channel. Six months later I started my internship at Submarine Channel.
Quick Introduction: Submarine Channel is a daughter company of Submarine B.V., a multiple awards winning Dutch production outfit based in Amsterdam. Submarine Channel, in particular, is a non-profit foundation which focuses on digital and interactive storytelling as well as interactive documentaries and Virtual Reality productions. They develop and produce a variety of projects as well as distributes and pitches them at industry related events such as national and international film festivals. Their projects include entertaining content as well as socially relevant content such as The Industry: The Dutch Drug Economy.
During my internship from September until January I worked on one project mainly: Meeting With Remarkable People – an interactive web documentary based on 12 short films and additional visual material. I was asked to coordinate the communications between the Greek film director, his team, the production company and their requests for the functionalities and content arrangements on the website. I learned how to work with WordPress editing and maintaining the content. I further learned more and more about different functionalities of creating and maintaining websites as I worked closely with the developer who explained the technical aspects to me. Furthermore, I enjoyed learning more about this new perspective and liked to have the possibility to also create parts of the content myself such as writing synopsis, and loglines. Submarine Channel consists of a small team only, but this way I got to know my colleagues much better. For me it is also very important to have colleagues you get along well and have a good connection with. This makes work enjoyable.
As the Communication department of UvA wanted us students to create a research useful for the company. My colleague Yassin, impact manager at Submarine Channel, asked me to investigate the company’s stakeholders’ current perception and opinion. Submarine Channel wanted to increase the engagement of their target audiences online and create a new external branding strategy for the company, specifically focusing on social media. Therefore, I conducted a survey and distributed it among the social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Here, I was able to apply my knowledge of my Communication Science courses and use them in a specific situation in practice.
Unfortunately, I also have to address one negative aspect: During my time at Submarine Channel I found myself and other interns being misused for cleaning chores. The administration department of Submarine B.V., which overruled Submarine Channel, decided to forward chores and cleaning tasks to all the interns of their sub companies, even though they were not part of our contracts. I mention this here as these posts are supposed to provide information and suggestions for future interns. I therefore recommend strongly, in case you ever find yourself in a situation in which a company asked you to fulfill tasks which are not part of your contract, to speak up about it. I did it and experienced support by my direct colleagues who encouraged me to write a complaint. Eventually this lead to a meeting among the administration, the interns, and my supervisor. The meeting was successful as we were not asked any further to take over chores. Further, it resulted in them hiring cleaning staff. Hence, I recommend to speak up and complain if you are feeling mistreated. My personal experience taught me this and it was successful.
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