I’m Liam Northwood, and today, Thursday 8th September 2016, my time with the Digital Services team (aka the talented people behind Project WIP) will come to an end. Instead of them writing up a 'farewell' post for me, they have asked me to tell my story in my own words, so here it goes!
Last year, I was offered the opportunity to start work shadowing the team once a month while I was an IT apprentice with the Family Information Service. This gave me an idea of and an insight into the type of work that the team does on a daily basis, and a head start when embarking on what was to come next…
In February of this year, I made the move over to the team full time to complete my apprenticeship. To begin with, I was helping out with user experience (UX) workshops and some design work, before eventually becoming a trainee content editor, which was my role in the team. Going out to UX workshops was a great experience, and one which I’d never been involved with before I came here. I hadn’t previously appreciated the complexity of the various stages involved in getting an effective web presence up and running, but it was really interesting and helped me learn a lot more. Everything is based on what the audience wants, so the whole homepage and content structure is built with that in mind. Before coming here, I never really knew how this would be done, but a UX workshop with a handful of people ticks all the boxes and it was a great experience to be a part of.
Throughout my time with the team assisting Jane and Mark, I managed the ‘compliment of the day’ feature (a box on the intranet homepage detailing complimentary comments to staff from the public), published road closures and intranet news items, reviewed and updated existing content and policies, created new webpages and newsletters, and dealt with customer requests. I’ve needed to learn how to do every task I’ve done, but it’s been very enjoyable and I’ve learnt lots of new skills that I didn’t have before I joined the team.
I think the task I enjoyed most was probably creating new webpages for the site. I liked being in charge of a big task/project that needed doing, and I feel like I’ve gained skills and experience while doing this. There were sometimes deadlines for some of the tasks I had to do, but I ensured that I balanced all of my work effectively to make sure I got the tasks completed on time. If I wasn’t sure about certain things in my work, I was always supported by Jane and Mark and the rest of the team.
I have learnt and developed several new skills during my time with the team. Learning how to use the Umbraco platform was probably one of the first new skills I learnt. Because of it being the content management system (CMS) used for the main Shropshire Council webpages, I used it more than anything else.
I’ve also developed in other ways, such as in my communication skills and working in a team on a daily basis. I was always willing and motivated to learn new things and complete new tasks. Whatever was given to me to do, I always did the task to the best of my ability.
My time with Digital Services over the last seven months has been great, and an experience that I’m grateful for. I’ll take everything I’ve learnt with me into the future and into whatever I do next.