Name of technology used: Newsletter publishing

Name of Intern: Candace Merrick

Describe the success story:   
My success story...I think that my biggest success in this Internship is the newsletter.  For this project I worked with two teams: the team of Interns that was made up of the project team as well as the Cisco team.  Some of my accomplishments on this project included:

• Developing a process for continual updates to 21S website and newsletter using the project management cycle
• Developing a mechanism to track potential stories for use in the newsletter, website, News@Cisco, and media pitches
• Generating creative ways to convey program updates and demonstrate progress
• Working with clients to discuss their needs and help build platform for them to convey their messages
• Developing process and schedule for collection of news stories as well as guidelines for creation of articles
• Also reported 21S Newsletter project status to Cisco stakeholders

Through these steps I gained experience with creating a newsletter and mapping out a news site and how it relates to a project.

To achieve the goal of completing this newsletter the team had to go through several steps.  We:

1. Surveyed clients and stakeholders to find out what their needs were in relation to this newsletter/site
2. Brainstormed to decide what types of stories would be included in the newsletter/site
3. Brainstormed to decide on marketing strategies
4. Assigned a role and responsibilities to each team member so that no one person had to do everything
5. Reported back to our client frequently to be sure we were still in line with their needs and when necessary changed our course to align with those needs
6. Created a project plan which included assignments for each team and a schedule to keep us on track
7. For the creation of our logo we consulted with a graphic designer who did a great job of giving us a logo that conveys the objectives of this program
8. The most important thing we did was to seek feedback from our clients and DOT management.  Because of their experience their feedback has been very valuable.

How did this activity/project benefit the teachers, students and the school?
This newsletter was a great opportunity to share the stories of the teachers, students and interns who have been involved in or affected by this program which was the goal of the project.  There are great things happening at the schools involved in this program and their stories need and deserve to be told.  So many times great accomplishments are made and no one ever hears about them so it’s been my pleasure to inform the public about the great things happening through this program.

What (skills, knowledge or attitude) did you as an Intern learn from this experience?

While working on this team I think the most important skill I learned was how to work on a team and to adjust to and understand the varying work styles of different individuals on a team.  During my entire education I have worked on group projects but none of those compared to this one.