New Media Internships - MasterNewMedia New Apprentice Positions Open

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If you know someone who has the talent, will and true desire to get a professional web publishing experience and credential like no other, while creating the foundations for earning a good revenue in the future, this is the right time to apply for one of the several Master New Media apprentices positions.

Photo credit: Baby

After almost a year, and following the unstoppable demand coming from tens of your emails, Master New Media is opening again its doors to a number of apprentices who are interested in learning all it takes to become effective and sustainable professional web publishers. Yes, here at Master New Media this is the time of the year when I open up again the opportunity for online internship applicants to put forth their best skills and presentation letters.

 

MasterNewMedia Internship Overview

What is a MasterNewMedia internship all about? What's the focus, objective and daily activities?

A MasterNewMedia internship is a practical learning camp in which to learn everything about professional web publishing, blogs, RSS, collaborative work, video production, interface and information design and the many other disciplines connected to becoming effective and commercially profitable new media publishers.

This internship is a serious opportunity to enter the world of new media by joining an online production team of media and marketing specialists that cover a great variety of skills and competencies.

In the spirit of bioteams, all communications within the team are shared and open so that most everyone knows about what is going on and can easily contribute his skill when appropriate.

This is not a school. It is an apprentice's shop where one learns by doing and by working closely together with a team and a personal coach. Assignments are all real, and well-executed work gets to be published. The earlier an intern learns to execute a newly learned role reliably and without additional support from others, the earlier she can move from learner to paid collaborator. Results count, not time.

The focus of this internship is specifically the one of providing a fast track "digital media literacy" learning path for the very people I would like to see working here at Master New Media. This is the truth.

In reality, and as I have clearly reported above, many of these talented people have and will go on to even more prestigious careers in bigger companies or as individual entrepreneurs. I can't really stop them and I am in fact happy that they can do what they really like.

But the experience of seeing talented individuals go on to bigger careers, sometimes thanks in good part to what they had learned here, made me rethink of the value and appropriate relationship that I want to have with those participating in the internship program.

I am in fact the one who takes the more risks in this relationship. I share openly all that I know about media publishing, invest significant personal time with my students and provide lots of tangible feedback to their learning experience. I share access to the services I use and to our newsroom accounts. I take personal time to do live voice and screen-sharing sessions to explain in detail how to specific tasks and take all of the time needed to explain the why behind each strategy and task.

In some cases I can't avoid running into smarter types who take in as much as they can, behave themselves as would-be great potential collaborators only to suddenly disappear as soon as they know enough secrets to start their own online publishing venture. (Yes, these are part of what makes that 1:8 ratio in finding good reliable people to work with. Many go on to do their things.)

So, the why I put up these internships is quite simple. I am a small growing company and just like any healthy organization out there, I too, need to continuously recruit good, talented individuals to make it grow. I don't want lots of turnaround because the skills needed to be learned are quite unique and the typical freelancer would normally take a lot of our energies while leaving little of value to us. My strategy is therefore is to grow and educate my own staff as much as possible. Go out there, find them, test them and then train them.

Internships: A Bit of History

Here at Master New Media, a few former interns, apprentices and professional collaborators have left some trace of their presence and contributions. Mostly in the form of great published content, but many times in the spirit and attitude that they bring to this fast expanding team.

In general, the largest part of internship candidates fails after a few weeks, discovering they are uncut for the task and learning at hand. Many times it is a communication problem limiting the opportunity to work together, while the clear winner in terms of what candidates fail to do properly is a lack of humbleness and of a true learning spirit.

Still too many individuals think, even before being accepted in this program, that they already know quite a bit of how web publishing needs to be done. They are not very inquisitive. They ask few questions. They are after getting in control, but not so much about learning the individual things that can make web publishing successful. And that is why they do not last very long.

As I have long learned from my good and wise adviser Susan, it takes the going through of eight to ten people before you can land a good new team member. It seems a big number, yes, but if you are out to find individuals with whom you can work for a very long time, that is indeed the ratio. Talented, honest, hard-working, passionate individuals are hard to find.

Past Glories

But there have been some good stories as well.

In 2007 two former "interns" graduated out of MasterNewMedia have landed new prestigious new media positions.

Michael Pick, first successfully launched SmashCut Media, a small production boutique devoted to create video animations, screencasts and clips to promote, market and introduce new 2.0 technologies, and then, in less than a year went on to become part of the marketing and visual communication unit at Automattic, the company behind Wordpress! His new official title is "lightbulb engineer" and his responsibility is to create visual communication so effective that people will "get the idea" of how things work and how they can be best used in a fraction of the time. Compliments Michael.

This is what Michael says of the impact of his experience at MasterNewMedia on his following successful stints:

"Oh, huge - not sure you could assign a number to that.

Besides the realization that it was possible to live and work outside of the 9-5 ratrace and travel freely around the world while doing something I was passionate about, I got to meet some great people, was given the chance to explore the new (especially at the time) and exciting screencast medium (which went on to pretty much become my career), and learned an enormous amount about technologies, tools and culture surrounding them I had previously only touched the iceberg of.

At Master New Media I was given the chance to explore cutting edge communication media, and the guidance and training to use them effectively in the brave new world of web publishing - something that has - beyond any doubt - completely changed the direction of my life since.

With Robin we were working with video and screencasts way ahead of the curve. In the couple of years since we started, I've seen things live web video streaming become increasingly popular, and screencasts become not only a hugely popular way of getting things across online, but also a very profitable business niche. Robin was way ahead of the curve on both fronts."

Livia Iacolare, one of Master New Media best article editors ever, has also landed a great position of Online Community Coordinator at Current TV Italy.

Livia says:

"...working at MasterNewMedia was one of the most important opportunities in my life, since it paved the way to my professional career.

I had the possibility to learn in a very stimulating and open minded environment, which eventually helped me develop my skills and discover what I really wanted to do in my life.

Moreover, it nurtured my desire to challenge myself and experiment new things without fear of failure, which at the end brought me where I am now."

An earlier MasterNewMedia graduate, Nicole Neuberger, has just been hired by Ericsson in Sweden to look over product design and usability of new mobile technologies.

... And More Recent Ones

In the last 12 months, I have accepted a number of new interns at Master New Media and while a few have not lasted very long, a few them have already completed their initial learning path and have now earned for themselves a professional responsibility position inside the network.

Gaetano Costa has finished his internship at the beginning of July 2008. Gaetano is a newly graduated student of Information Technology from the University of Salerno and after having worked hard at learning all of the basic newsroom roles has received an official assignment as Article Editor and Supervisor and AdSense Optimization specialist.

Massimiliano Badolati is another good recent success story. A biology "senior", Max has broken all the internship records making his contribution so valuable and unique to earn himself a paid position in our ranks in the arc of a few months. Max is now MasterNewMedia official AdSense Marketing and Optimization Manager as well as one of my most valued Article Editors now in charge of editorial content quality control. He continuously tests new ad positions and layouts and makes sure that MasterNewMedia can extract the best value from all advertising opportunities offered by our key advertising partner: Google.

Giulio Gaudiano is the one who really made the fastest career of all. Giulio joined MasterNewMedia right after the OpenCamp 2007 where I first met him. Completed his internship, (which lasted only about five months as he chose to do it intensively by working daily with me at the Rome office), Giulio went on to become Master New Media Italia Chief Editor and Partner (I share with him 50-50 the advertising revenues of the Italian edition as I do with the editors of my other international language editions). Giulio works also on the Direct Advertising front and has already been able to close multiple direct advertising contracts on which he makes extra commissions. Finally, he has been working on coordinating the relaunch of the Latino (Spanish) and Brazilian (Portuguese) Editions of MasterNewMedia (still looking for valid editors and contributors), and has been training and coaching the new editors that are already working on these.

Who Can Become A MasterNewMedia Apprentice?

Just about anyone can become a Master New Media apprentice. Whatever your nationality, culture, religion, or location you are welcome to apply to become part of this team. The recommended traits for applicants are:

• a true, passionate interest for communication, publishing and new media,


• good ability to listen and to memorize,


• significant availability in terms of time,


• ability to plan and report in writing,


• predisposition to work and communicate often with others,


• curiosity in asking and


• willingness to master all the skills / tasks required by the selected role/position.

If I had to say it in simpler words I would say: "I am looking for individuals who have the time and will to learn how become media publishing masters. If your first need is to make money now, learning is not the right road to take. Go do something you already know. But if you are very serious about placing your footprint in the future of media publishing I have created a place where you can be exposed, immersed and guided to discover how this all works in a way that you will not get even by going to the most expensive universities out there.

It takes time, hard work and good will, but if you have these, and a good understanding media and technology are all about, you do have a career to be exploited right in your hands."

Key Benefits

What are the key benefits of doing an internship at MasterNewMedia?

1) Learn by Doing

Everything you learn during this internship is generally achieved by having me or someone in my team sit down online with you and demonstrating to you hw to do something or reviewing together with you how you have executed a specific assignment. Learning in this internship is mostly achieved by doing not by reading books and manuals.

2) Have Me as Your Personal Coach

I am an extremely passionate, funny and enjoyable coach. I spend all of the time needed with my students and I share in every single detail what I know about the different skills I teach. I can guarantee you that having me as a personal coach is certainly something you will not forget easily. I may not be always distributing compliments if your work is not well above the average but you can be sure that I will tell you exactly where and how you could make it a lot better next time.

3) Work in a Friendly Team

The MasterNewMedia team is made up of about 10-12 people, and you will be working in close touch with at least two or three of these people. Inside the team there are regular online weekly meetings to review plans, progress, new assignments, issues and problems. Team members are a bunch of fun guys too and they do not lose any opportunity to send email puns to each other while pro-actively helping each other in in their assigned tasks.

4) Participate From Anywhere

MasterNewMedia interns (and collaborators) connect in from all parts of the world and I make no discrimination between those that I can meet physically and those I get to work with online only. Here is a good example: My tech and webmaster chief is a guy that I have never met physically. We work together online six days out of seven and he has been getting a $2000plus /monthly check from me for over two years now. He lives across the Adriatic sea in Croatia, a few thousand miles away from where I am, but he is probably the highest trusted and most respected team member I have. So, as you can see, distance or working online only, are in no way an handicap anymore. On the other hand having the opportunity to work physically side by side with me does offer very significant advantages, but yes, unless you already in Rome, it does cost significant extra money to come and live in a city like this. It's an option for the Schumacher's out there.

5) Use Daily Cutting Edge Communication and Collaboration Technologies

In this internship you get to learn and use many of the best web 2.0 technologies that you have been reading so much about. RSS, P2P, wikis, VoIP, videoconferencing, screen-sharing, instant messaging, mindmapping are just some of the many cool tools I and my team use in our daily work here at MasterNewMedia. So the one to be preoccupied should be you: do you have a working headset and webcam and a good connection or are you running a sloppy old computer that hangs up everytime you run more than a few things together? Think about it before applying.

What Apprentice Roles / Positions Are Available?

Here the internship positions open now:

1) Newsmaster

Role / description: News scouting, selection and publishing.

2) Article Editor

Role / description: Reviews, edit and prepares content for publication.

3) Technology and Media Reviewer

Role / description: Writes in-depth technology reviews about software tools and web-based applications.

4) Web Designer

Role / description: Conceptualizes, prototypes and executes XHTML/CSS code for the designs of our web pages, while supporting the creation of materials for specific marketing initiatives.

5) Web Master

Role / description: Maintains, edits and continuously upgrades our web infrastructure, including page templates, scripts, and back end systems, by coding new solutions, troubleshooting publishing problems and guaranteeing impeccable display and compatibility of our site across different browser and operating systems.

6) Community Manager

Role / description: Supports, facilitates and enables the growth and nurturing of a new upcoming online social community.

7) Video Producer

Role / description: Creates, edits, remixes, add subtitles and logos and opening titles to our own produced videos and interviews. Does video transcriptions, capture, encoding, conversion and video publishing in multiple formats. Maintains an organized library of digital content for re-use.

8) Guide Editor

Role / description: Edits, compiles, publishes and maintains in depth tech guides on specific topics or technology applications.

General Internship Requirements

• Education: any education level is OK, no formal academic degree required. Better if has studied information technology, media, journalism or other communication related degree.
• Language: You do need to have excellent English language skills: reading, speaking, writing.
• Internet connectivity: A broadband Internet connection is highly advised. Dial-up connectivity is not OK. You need to be able to talk via Skype and see easily video content.
• Technology: Any computer in good order or operating system is OK.
• Tech skills: Strong familiarity with web 2.0 services and tools. Foundations of HTML, blogs, RSS, wiki, and collaboration tools. Basic digital image editing.
• Other skills: Excellent writing skills. Planning and reporting.
• Time availability: At least 5 to 6 hours per day, six days a week. Minimum apprentice period is nine months.
• Character traits: Key interest: learning. Humble, curious, precise, organized, honest, direct and upfront, ironic, open-minded, open-to-criticism, team-worker, passionate.
• Location of internship: fully online (two positions available in Rome - side by side with me and Giulio)
• Number of internship positions available: 6 - 8
• Cost: free
• Scholarship and admission tests: Six full scholarships covering all of the costs for participating in this internship program are offered and paid by our educational sponsor RGU. To get to these you need to apply by writing to Giulio.Gaudiano@masternewmedia.org and you then need to pass a demanding test consisting in article writing and formatting and in a demonstration of your competency in the use of typical web 2.0 tools and technologies (RSS, wikis, P2P, blogs, etc.)

How To Get More Information

Interested?

To find out more about Master New Media internships read these articles written by those who actually went through it:

Nicole Neuberger

Michael Pick

Applications for internships are open now. To get in, write your request by sending already some information about yourself and why you want to join directly to Giulio.Gaudiano [at] masternewmedia.org and cc: me Robin.Good [at] masternewmedia.org.

Hurry up, applications are open only for a limited time.