Incubagency

In recent months, working as a web developer has become something of an aspiration of mine.  Maybe it’s an attraction to the ‘buzz’ or maybe it’s just how the internet itself keeps becoming more ubiquitous, but I can’t shake it. And I can’t think of a better place to be interning than with the team here at Digital Operative in search of that goal.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started working here, granted the common notion of an intern as glorified office barista. Having actual work experience only in the IT support field, I guess I would have to say I expected to observe for the most part, with the occasional menial task thrown my way.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

My first week here at digital operative has been just about hands-on as you can get. So far I’ve been tasked with creating a system for bug tracking and project lifetime management and after a brief rundown on some of the approaches and methods the team here at DO has adopted, I have been given free reign on designing and building the entire project. Getting down to business and producing a project right off the bat has so far been great, even granted the learning curve in adopting new programming environments (in this case the Zend framework). All-in-all, I can definitely say that I’ve learned more applicable knowledge about web development in the past week than I did during the entirety of my last 3 months taking web programming classes at school. And I don’t see that letting up any time soon.

The team here at Digital Operative has laid out a jam-packed time line for their internship program this summer. Down the road there are plans for us to design, build, implement and manage digital marketing plans for both a non-profit organization and our own idea or project; possibly even moving in to actual client work. The idea of being part of a team that is incubating our own projects, seeing them grow and eventually come to life, has me looking forward to my next few months working here.

I’m excited to be a part of the team as Incubagency moves forward and I foresee having a great experience and learning many new things along the way. I know that I’m in for a lot of work over the next 10 weeks, but hopefully it will all result in something I’ll be happy to say I was part of.

Keep an eye out for my blog post next week as I tackle 37signals’ book Rework, my next step in integrating with the DOmachine.