I am coming to the end of my internship at humanmade, and I thought it would be pretty cool if I told you about my little adventure. As part of my A-Level studies (Computing, ICT & Spanish) I attended an extra course called ‘Careers Academy’ as part of this course it was required for each student to work as intern at a business of their liking, that is if the business was prepared to take them on.
I am interested in computer programming and design and also bilingual, since I was 10 I’ve a thing for computers, my dad was a computer person and I would spend all day if I could watching him do “computer things”. I’ve had that feeling that my future career was going to revolve around them, from a young age I learnt how to design graphic images on computer using a variety of different software, at the age of 15 I attended a HTML course from which I acquired a certificate, humanmade took me on. Also, my first language is Spanish as I lived 15 years in Spain so I kind of have a feeling I will be using my language skills every once in a while.
On my first day working at humanmade’s office in Matlock my first task was to build my desk, I learnt a lot from this. Once I completed this task and set my laptop up in the office, Tom Wilmot got me started with translating their plugins (BackUpWordPress) into Spanish. This task allowed me learn a lot about how internationalisation worked with WordPress plugins.
The following week I was asked to create a dummy website for a restaurant product which humanmade are developing at the moment, this task allowed me to show my creativity through the use of Photoshop. During this task Joe Hoyle assisted me by showing me how to use Photoshop tools as I wasn’t very familiar with this software. The overall result of my dummy website was simple, professional and ticket all the right boxes apparently.
On my third week my task was to translate ThemeForce into Spanish, this was a larger task for me considering the files contained a few hundred more strings than the BackUpWordPress plugin, and also I was required to implement some php code into the files through Dreamweaver, being the only Windows user in the office has its drawbacks, “I don’t get too use all the cool Mac stuff”.
On my final week I assisted Matthew Haines-Young and Joe Hoyle on the development of their websites by testing them, in this task I looked out for bugs, something in the layout that didn’t look right, and making sure buttons and links, and Facebook and Twitter widgets were working as intended, so currently I have random posts on both my Facebook and Twitter accounts and people may be wondering if someone perhaps had hacked my accounts?
Being at intern at humanmade wasn’t all about work, there would be a round of tea and coffees every couple hours, I had access to water, fruit and cake, so humanmade did look after me. Also, one thing I loved was that we all had lunch together whether it was at the local coffee shop in Matlock which I have to say makes some delicious coffee and paninis; or ate in the park. I think this creates a better working relationship with one another. Also, I like how theres an Xbox in the office, just in case you fancy a game of football? seriously, no sims 3?? what kind of world do we live in?!?
In all fairness, humanmade made my experience this summer worth the while as not only did I learn cool stuff but also got a good feel of how a business works. On that note I will finish this post.
Frankiie Bartrum, Head of i18n, humanmade