The Summary Internship

Discovery Phase

In order to make the mini-conference as effective as possible, we sought survey input from students, educators and agency leaders. 100% of students and professors surveyed had directly witnessed the impact of the pandemic on internships — confirming that this was, in fact, a universal and relevant problem for these groups. 88% of the responding students had personally had an internship canceled, postponed or otherwise disrupted.

We also used the discovery phase to collect information on what students were most eager to learn from their internships as well as what educators and professional agency employees said they most hoped students would glean from an event like this to inform our “curriculum.”

Having dramatically confirmed our assessment that an event like this could be beneficial (and well attended!), we announced the event one month out on social media, through email, on our website and through digital advertising.

Planning Phase

Using the input we gained from discovery, plus a healthy dose of “what did you wish you knew before beginning an agency job?” put to our staff, we hosted an internal kick-off meeting to share the data we had collected and our plan to manage the project.

I facilitated a discussion on how best to structure the two days of sessions and what each would cover, as well as who felt they could best speak to each topic. We scheduled the next check-in and jumped in with both feet. Fortunately, our staff had a lot of public speaking and academic experience, so I was confident the sessions would be well organized and well executed.

The conference was to be two mornings, about 8 hours total, with optional Q&A lunches to follow each set of sessions. The second day we would host breakout sessions defined by career path that would allow students to self-sort into a creative, digital or strategy focus. We decided to use Zoom Webinar to collect registrations and host the conference and breakout rooms.

The Conference!

Of the nearly 400 registrants, about half attended the conference, with most returning the second day. The webinar’s chat was extremely active both days, with attendees chiming in to announce their states and countries of inhabitance as well as plans to exchange notes and connect with one another. Students attended from as far away as Dubai and several cities in India.

I was extremely pleased to see that the Q&A function within Zoom Webinar was blowing up, with Black Sheep employees staying well after their sessions to continue answering questions via chat.

Both days of the conference were free of technical glitches (thank goodness!) and highly interactive. By the end of day two the attendees had launched their own LinkedIn group and Slack channel to stay in touch and continue the exchange of ideas. It was a success.

Post-Conference

While the mini-conference seemed to be a substantial success (and the content accompanying #thesummaryinternship on social media agreed), we were interested in collecting any relevant takeaways we could get our hands on. After all, this could be a recurring event for students — especially now that the majority of our curriculum was already in place.

We collected all decks, materials and Q&A in one place for easy after-the-fact access by students and released it in a follow-up email with a link to provide feedback and testimonials.

“Thanks a lot for today y’all! Can’t wait to hear more tomorrow! Glad to have [virtually] met so many new people — looking forward to potentially working together and creating awesomeness!”

— Aditya Shah