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@ll3399
“Letters” by MMMichelle12
RandomProcessVol2.0 (Guest Curator) Featured Comment: “The power of letters, squares and heart shape can make miracles. Very clever idea!”
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You can check out RandomProcessVol2.0’s page HERE.
Job search frustrations
So, I graduated last October. I have a Master’s in publishing and a lot of internships/experience under my belt. I’m STILL searching for a job. Here are some things I learned while job searching: 1) Internships Today’s employers don’t want to take risks (read: offer salaries or compensation) for entry-level roles. They also seem to want mid-level amounts of experience for internships and entry-level positions. In my opinion, an internship or entry-level job is supposed to be a pathway an opportunity to break in and learn the ropes. If the position has “assistant” in the title, then you should be assisting. These are meant to be roles for those just starting their careers, so why is it that “2-3 years experience is required? Why is prior internship experience needed for an internship? something is clearly wrong here. “Pre-position internships” – this is a new thing, too. Now companies want to call the first three months an “internship” so they don’t have to pay you until they absolutely feel like they want you. Basically, they want you to be doing the things you would be doing if you worked there without getting paid. I had an interview with a company that said the internship could lead to a full time paid position, but they wanted me to work full-time unpaid initially. Obviously, money should not be the only motivation for work, but it’s a pretty important one. It’s one thing to work one-two days a week unpaid, as a person could still be working a second part-time paid job. But I’ve come across many that want someone to work full-time, like this job posting that states:
Duration of Internship: Immediate Start to mid-August Hours: Up to 40 Hrs per week depending on your availability. 2 full days a week is the absolute minimum though 3,4,5 are preferred. Some work can be done off-site if desired. Days are usually 9 to 5 or 9:30 to 5:30 This internship is unpaid. However, a stipend of $20 for a full day will be provided to cover travel and food expenses.
That’s four months working full-time for only $100 a week. Travel and food expenses will probably eat up most of that. This internship was working in a law office – I doubt they couldn’t afford to hire someone for at least minimum wage. I’ve seen some of the same internships like this listed and re-listed for months, and I’m not surprised. Why should employers expect someone to invest their time, knowledge, and skills in them if they employer is not willing to, in-return, invest in the employee or intern? Frankly, I think unpaid internships should be illegal, especially where the internship is working the hours of a full-time position. 2) Entry-level roles It seems that entry-level is the new mid-level. Just as internships now require prior work experience, entry-level jobs now require anywhere from 2-5 years experience. Employers also don’t seem to know what they are looking for either. I saw an entry level marketing assistant position that required the applicant to be skilled in pretty much every area of marketing and PR, plus office admin experience. The amount of tasks they listed was enough work for at least two or three people. Job listings like this make it seem like the employer has no idea what they are looking for – and also no idea of reality. To require so much of an entry-level position is absurd, and frankly, I’m pretty sure the only reason they list such roles as “entry-level” is so that they don’t have to offer as much money. 3) Salaries Speaking of which, job salaries are also frustrating. The cost of education is going up and up – and we all know that most jobs require at least a Bachelor’s degree. Yet, entry-level salaries remain abysmally low. I also don’t like that employers ask for your “salary requirements” with you application. If you state too high of a salary, you risk them tossing your application. However, state too low of a number and you might be losing money if you do get offered the position. Obviously, the employer has an offer in mind, especially for entry-level roles. Save us all time by stating that in the job description. 4) Rejections Whether it’s not hearing anything after submitting and application or not hearing anything after an interview, the job searching process is incredibly frustrating. I recently had an interview that I thought went really well. The interview lasted nearly an hour and I thought I got along well with everyone I had spoken with. I sent nice thank-you emails after. Then, I waited. And waited. After two weeks, I emailed the person who interviewed me. The next day I got a rejection email. So, I’m just wondering when were they going to inform me if I had never reached out? Obviously, they made their decision before that, or else I wouldn’t have had my email returned so quickly, so why did it take till I emailed them to get the rejection email? Speaking of rejection emails, the next frustrating thing about job searching is having interviews you think go well, but being rejected and getting no helpful feedback. It’s always “We really liked your experience, but decided to go with other candidates that better fit our requirements”. I get that they don’t want to offend anyone or get into any legal trouble if they said something wrong, but how is someone supposed to improve for next time if they have no idea what they did wrong or how they could have been a better fit. At least if they said “We were looking for someone with more experience in (this area or this program)” then at least you know you can work on developing those areas or on better presenting yourself next time if you do have experience in those areas. Employers are also generally terrible at moving things forward when they are positive. While I was still working on my degree, I applied for an internship in July. I got an email in October about interviewing. Well, by that point I had moved on to other things and told them exactly that. It would be different if the position stated it was for a specific time frame, otherwise, it shouldn’t take a company four months to determine which candidates they want to interview. This has happened to me several times and not just for internships either. It’s annoying that companies just assume you are sitting around waiting for their response. If they’re interested, they should contact you as soon as they come to that decision. If they think you have potential, they shouldn’t expect that you’ll still be available in four months’ time. 5) Interviews I HATE interviews. I’m an introvert, and I am shit at talking up my skills and accomplishments. I think I’m just a modest person. I’ve obviously accomplished some cool stuff, but I just don’t like the spotlight on me, which is what an interview is all about. This in no way reflects on how I can do a job. Does the fact that I can’t just go into a room of strangers and brag about myself diminish my editing, social media, office, and design skills? Does it mean I’m not a hard worker with a lot of experience? No, it just means I don’t like talking about myself. I get that employers are looking for your personality and how you’ll fit in with their team, but is there not some other way this could be determined besides being grilled for half an hour on things you’ve already listed on your CV? Obviously, it depends on the company, but I think interviews should be fun and creative. How about a “show-and-tell”? Ask interviewees to bring in something that represents themselves, or give them a task that will take under an hour to complete/research to present on – a draft of potential marketing materials for one of the companies titles, for example. Not only would this allow employers to better see the personalities of the interviewees, but it would make things less formal and stuffy and maybe make for an environment where the interviewee feels more comfortable. As it stands, interviews are kind of like standardized tests. There’re people that are great at taking tests and even if they don’t really have the skills or experience, they can still pass the test. Then, there are people that have really great skills and experience, but are awful at tests. And most of the time, the test doesn’t really do a great job at determining the skills and experience of the taker and isn’t a good gauge on potential job performance.
In conclusion, trying to find a job is frustrating. Employers don’t want to take risks and they expect more education and experience for less, the interview process isn’t really helpful in finding good matches, and employers suck at following up. If anyone has any helpful tips for becoming better at the hell that is job searching, please let me know!
Beautiful Antique Book ≈ Moths and Butterflies by Julia P. Ballard
Lovely cover design
Lot’s of new book designs in the last few months.
check also: www.tecbooks.nl
Blog revamp!
In my quest for a career in publishing, I've decided to revamp my interactive media blog and turn it into my publishing blog. It'll be dedicated to digital marketing and design in the publishing industry, with critiques on current publishers' social media/marketing campaigns along with ideas of my own, as well as my own designs/redesigns (be that book covers or promo material). Enjoy!
View from #Edinburgh Castle #Scotland
My photo was chosen as a finalist for the Drexel College of Arts and Sciences' #CoASDayInTheLife Instagram contest. Please help me win by voting ('liking') for my photo, which you can see by clicking the link! Thank you!
Help me out! Fill out my survey!
I'm currently working on my dissertation for my Master's In Publishing. The topic is the evolution of ebook design and the influence of other creative industries. I have two surveys to collect primary research on book buyers' opinions, so if you have 10-15 minutes, please help me out! Thanks!
Survey 1
Survey 2
Update on proposal progress
Only 1,000 more words left till I'm finished my project proposal! Today I decided to do some mock-ups of the website and mobile version of the website for BookConnect. They're pretty rough, but they give an idea of what the user will encounter when they go to the site. I only did the view of the home page, but it still gives a good idea of the setup. Each section has a description of what kind of content a user will see in that particular part of the page:
What is Zappar? It's a clever little app that can see and recognise images and objects in the world around us, using augmented reality.
Finally back from London after attending the London Book Fair earlier this week. It was an exhausting couple of days, but I got to see some interesting seminars. One of the ones that stuck out the most was about augmented reality in publishing. There was a demonstration of an app called Zappar. It works by opening up the app and pointing it at a book or object that uses the technology. There's a little symbol that it has to read in order to activate it. One really cool example was a book about dragons where the app scanned the cover and then it opened up to reveal a dragon egg that hatched and you could interact with.
The seminar also gave an overview of what augmented reality is and how it can best be used in conjunction with the publishing industry. Of course, it has to add value to a publication and not simply be used for just gimmicky purposes. I definitely think there is a future for this kind of thing in the publishing industry, specifically for children's books, special editions, and non-fiction/text books. Although, the dragon novel was also really cool, but I can't see it being used too much for adult genre fiction.
The London Book Fair also had some really cool seminars on gaming and cross media. I'll do another post about those later.
This week (April 8th-10th) is the London Book Fair. I'm heading down tomorrow along with the rest of my class, which is definitely exciting. Hopefully I've managed to remember to pack everything I need! Anyway, there are TONS of talks going on throughout the three days of the event, so I've been trying to plan ahead and make a schedule of which ones I want to go to. I'm especially looking forward to some of the "Cross Media, Gaming, Film & TV" seminars, such as "Augmented Reality in Publishing: Wonders and Watch Outs." Since I won't be taking my laptop with me to London, I'll definitely blog about it when I get back.
The Prezi describing my project that I will be using for my pitch on Thursday. Although I might make some small edits to it before then.
HITRECORD is an open-collaborative production company, and this website is where we make things together.
If anyone is looking for a fun crowd-sourcing project to get involved in, this is a pretty fun collab going on at the moment on HitRECord.org. Basically, a user named ThadicalRadical started up this idea of the "invisible family" by writing a tiny story about them. They are just short one sentence stories about something the family did or is doing, or what one of the family members in particular did or is doing. Some of mine include:
"The invisible family perform a seance."
and "In which Sally becomes a magician's assistant."
The idea is to come up with a situation that would be strange or funny to see an invisible family doing. Then, other users will illustrate backgrounds and settings, and others still will turn those into animations. There are some up on the site already. So, plenty of easy ways to get involved here.
Plus, if you go to the HitRECord.org main page there are tons of other collabs (and you can sort by type/skill, so if animation if your thing you can find ones looking for animators... etc.).
Wu-Tang's aim is to use the album as a springboard for the reconsideration of music as art, hoping that the approach will help restore recorded music to a place alongside visual art--and change the music business in the process.
Okay, so maybe this isn't really "interactive media" related so much, but I think it's something pretty interesting to discuss. There's one quote that really stood out to me, which was:
"The idea that music is art has been something we advocated for years,” says RZA. “And yet its doesn’t receive the same treatment as art in the sense of the value of what it is, especially nowadays when it’s been devalued and diminished to almost the point that it has to be given away for free."
Does sharing art really devalue it? I definitely disagree with that. To me, the essence of art is that it is an expression to be shared. What meaning does it have if it isn't shared and interpreted by a group of people? It's pretty grandiose to assume that the only "value" of a work that counts is monetary value. I think the value of art comes from it's societal value, so artificially increasing a work's monetary value doesn't make the work more "worthy" or "deserving" or being called art than something given away for free.
And furthermore, it's just a bit over pretensious to compare a Wu Tang Clan album to Monet and Degas: "And similar to a Monet or a Degas, the price tag will be a multimillion-dollar figure."
In the article, Wu Tang discusses the "privatization" of this album and of music in general and how he (they?) thinks that is what the future of the music industry looks like. If that is indeed how the industry will work in the future, then I think the future looks pretty grim.
Competitors for BookConnect - Project Proposal
So this week I wanted to write more about my proposal and about what the market is like for this kind of app. I won't rehash what my previous posts say about the project since those are available on my blog.
First, what similar apps and websites are there?
The biggest and most well-known is probably GoodReads. GoodReads is a website owned by Amazon that allows users (as well as publishers and authors) to create profiles where they can list books they have read, are reading, and want to read. Users can also leave reviews and enter giveaways.
Another similar website is Bookish, which was started by Hachette, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster. Again, this allows for creating a "bookshelf" and reading/leaving reviews.
Facebook also has a similar app called Visual Bookshelf where users can create a "bookshelf" and share it with friends who are also using the app.
So why the need for BookConnect?
Well, even though there are a lot of similar websites and apps, they all have a variety of issues with usability and features they offer. On GoodReads and other sites, users must manually input the data themselves. This often involves searching by author, title, or ISBN, and usually leads to problems. Many times, their database simply doesn't have the edition of the book you have or you just can't seem to find it through the search. This makes your bookshelf less accurate. Also, if you're a huge book nerd like me, you likely have tons of books in your real world bookshelf, so searching for each and everyone will end up taking ages. I stopped using GoodReads because it was impossible to create a virtual bookshelf that matched my real bookshelf.
Another issue is that these sites and apps aren't interactive enough. Most of the time, you can only share your bookshelf with your "friends" and not everyone you know will be interested in it. Being able to read reviews and ratings is great, but what would be better is being able to actually message other users to talk about the books. One thing that BookConnect adds is private messaging between users, public comments/dialogue, and virtual book groups that will engage users (whether "friends" or not) outside of just reviewing books they have read. Users will be able to suggest books to other users or comment on other users' bookshelves.
**This kind of interaction could have issues (privacy, bullying/inappropriate comments), but BookConnect would keep users' information anonymous if that was the user's preference and would feature "Block" and "Report" options for offensive/inappropriate content, ensuring a safe environment for all users.
This is just some of the research I have conducted on competitors and gap in the market. I will expand upon this further in the report.
I found this via wikileaks on their Twitter feed. It's a crowdsourcing website helping to try and locate the missing Malaysian flight MR370. Going to the site will help explain how it works, but basically, users search satellite images for signs of wreckage, oil spills, rafts, or other signs of the missing flight. On the site you can see some of the progress they've made. This crowdsourcing site also helped in other accidents and natural disasters, including tornados in Oklahoma in 2013 and Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Phillipines.
When Do Memes Stop Being Funny? | Idea Channel | PBS
Given that we were discussing memes a few weeks ago, I thought this was an interesting video. It looks at why memes stop being fun, referencing the short lifespan of the Harlem Shake and Doge. It brings up some thoughts about how we view and share these kinds of things. I think, especially today, memes go out of fashion so quickly because they are able to be shared so quickly. We have so many channels over which memes can get shared, liked, tweeted, retweeted, favorited, etc. I remember back in high school, there were "memes" but they definitely lasted a lot longer. Why? Not everyone had a Facebook and Twitter (or, you know, the equivalents at the time: MySpace or LiveJournal). We shared things differently. If I saw a cool video on YouTube, I couldn't post it to my friend's wall. The sharing was done in person, as in, "Did you see that Potter Puppet Pals video? It's hilarious!" and then friend would go home after school and look it up. It took a lot longer for things to spread, which is a lot different than today where all it takes is a couple seconds to hit "post" and you've shared a funny video with all 200+ Facebook friends at once.