The very late at night just finished my second last uni assignment (ever!!) last post

Well what a ride.

My internship at AVHI is all done, my final copy of my report has been sent in to turnitin, and I'm reflecting.

Funny, I think the most important thing I learned at my internship is do NOT let anyone who isn't 100% literate in html coding work on the website (it was Sean, the owner, and now he's probably going to be paying a lot to fix it). But at least there is a hard copy version with everything written down that I planned out, so that's a plus.

The most exciting news, however, is the contract that AVHI just landed with VenuesWest at Arena Joondalup. They're now going to be hosting a one off event with the potential for more based on the success of the first one late this year as a christmas do. It's an absolutely huge deal for such a small company, and the staff Sean met with to discuss (with a few pointers from yours truly as I wasn't allowed in!) were super excited too.

So something good to go with the something slightly bad of the website.

I've enjoyed this internship so much, I've needed the flexibility I got out of it and being able to make proper decisions and explain why I made them and be absolutely confident that I can back myself. Confidence (or faking it til you make it - I'm a very firm believer in that one) will get you so so far in life, let alone in PR.

I remember starting high school and being the shyest, meekest little thing ever. I wouldn't talk to someone unless they spoke first and constantly second guessed myself with a healthy sense of paranoia about what everyone else was thinking too.

Now all these years later (oh god I feel SO old) I'm about to graduate university and I've booked a one way trip half way around the world all on my own. Confidence and pretending not to be afraid even though you feel like you want the ground to swallow you up have been the two most precious things I have ever gotten in my life, and I've been able to use them wholeheartedly (and only a little bit faking it!) during this internship.

Goodbye scared little 12 year old, hello the rest of my life.

On Organisation and Communication

After such a hectic time the last few weeks things have stalled a little bit over the last few days.

Work on the website is much more extensive than we thought (and will turn out to be quite expensive) so I've been drafting up things to put on there when it finally get's up and running again.

One of the things I've noticed in my time at AVHI is that there is a distinct lack of organisation. Now this isn't as much of a problem as it could be in a large organisation; with only a few employees and only a few communication channels open with potential clients, the information flow is manageable. However I can't help but think how much easier it COULD be, and how much it COULD become a problem as the business grows (because it is growing, and hopefully will grow even more with some of the ideas I'm putting in place). 

It's not that everything is a shambles, because it isn't, it's just...very all over the place. I am by no means the most organised person in the world; but I am a little bit of a control freak. Even if my things are disorganised, I know where they are. At AVHI 'things' are just everywhere. A receipt here and a planning there and equipment and pricing lists and just everything all over the place.

It has made it a bit difficult to come in as an outsider to the business and try and sift my way through everything. As I said, it doesn't adversely affect the business at all, but good organisation can make everything run so much smoother, and I've found that having good organisation generally leads to good channels of communication. 

A Clean Slate

Very very busy at the moment.

When I sat down with the manager to talk about what I'd be doing I didn't realise exactly HOW much needed to (or could) be done. I knew that with a pretty new start up business I'd be working from more or less a clean slate, which was one of the things that attracted my inner control freak (I'm used to being a manager at my job, that's my excuse!), but as it turns out a malfunction with the website means it's a completely new slate.

Most of AVHI's business comes through Gumtree, because of how many people use it to search for...well, everything. So in the process of redesigning the Gumtree ads to be more professional - we have one overall one for the company and then a few bundle packages for hire and an installation one - which all direct to the website, I realised that in the changeover to a new website (which was being finalised when I started my internship), everything except the homepage was lost.

So now I've got a chance to help redesign the new website! Working with the manager we're coming up with all new content and turning the web page into a place that showcases AVHI at it's best. This means I'm going to be calling up some of the bigger old clients (just before I came on board they secured a half a million dollar installation for a traveling businessman's holiday home) to get some feedback from them, we've got pictures from old hires and installations, and we're looking at setting up a blog, which will be my responsibility.

I'm pretty excited to help redesign a new website, but it means looking through competitors to see what 'standard' is, and then figuring out how we can beat it.

So busy busy!