An internship at the Department of Transport was the Right Move!

An internship at the Department of Transport was the Right Move!

Interning at the Department of Transport I have had the opportunity to be involved in the promotion, maintenance and ongoing development of a new Transport app, Right Move Perth.

Right Move Perth is a new free smartphone App created by the Transport portfolio – Department of Transport, Main Roads WA and the Public Transport Authority (Transperth) – to better inform Perth commuters regarding incidents, conditions and events that may impact their journey within the Perth metropolitan area.

The new App provides real-time information on incidents, including roadworks, crashes, traffic signal faults, to train and bus service disruptions, major events taking place, project information and weather warnings. Right Move Perth also lets you save your favourite routes and notifies you of incidents that might affect your trip around metropolitan Perth.

 

 

Right Move Perth is available on both iOS (Apple) and Android platforms and can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play for free. If you haven’t download them now!!

 

Currently I am working with my internship coordinator on rolling out a communications strategy for Right Move Perth.

 

This has included:

 

Recruiting and supervising eight flyer distributers

On April 1 and 3 eight distributers recruited from Integrity staffing sported Right Move Perth T-shirts and distributed iPhone shaped flyers throughout the CBD during peak morning, lunch and afternoon periods. I was tasked with liaising with Integrity staffing to find suitable people for the job, mapping out the locations for the staff to be placed around the CBD and also periodically checked on the distributors throughout the day supplying them with additional materials and answering any questions they had.

 

After each day of flyer distribution a rise in the app downloads was recorded through google analystics which was satisfying to know that the work I was doing was contributing to the success of the app.

Twitter page

@rightmoveperth is the official Twitter page for the app. My internship coordinator and I worked on a tweet schedule which included daily tweets about events, planned maintenance, CBD projects and tips for using the app. These were then entered into a system called hootdeck which automatically tweets that are scheduled on a certain day and time, pretty cool!

 

This task also involved responding to any questions or feedback tweeted on the page and retweeting appropriate posts from MRWA and Transperth pages. Initially I was incredibly nervous when completing this task as I was conscious of tweeting correct and professional information with no spelling or grammatical errors to the 575 followers of the page (which includes news and radio pages, perthonalities and members of the general public), I also didn’t want to retweet anything controversial (political or otherwise) that could result in negative media or perceptions from followers. However once I got the hang of it I actually enjoyed the interaction with users and reading their comments on the app.

 

 

Feedback email:

Similar to this I also respond to any queries or feedback that comes to rightmoveperth@transport.wa.gov.au  the Right Move Perth email address. This is the primary source of communication for users to reach the Right Move Perth team. This involved coordinating responses, contributing to the resolution of issues and appropriately referring issues for resolution.

If you have downloaded the app and have any queries or want to provide feedback, make sure you email the above address and I will be happy to respond to you!!

Over the next few weeks I will be working with the Right Move Perth team to decide development options for stage two of the app which will include things such as parking information and cycling.

 

A Big Help. .

I know that I have now done one blog too many but I felt like there was so much more to share about my experiences in the 'real world'. 

Following the oZAPP Award Roadshow I checked off another step in the PR plan I established at the beginning of my placement. The 2012 oZAPP Awards is a competition following on from last years WApp Awards. Both competitions have the same concept, however the competition is now national and is open to all states throughout Australia. 

Following the launch of the winning concept from last years awards, I developed a media release and fact sheet and distributed it to all Western Australian media outlets. Tim and Leon, the winners from last years awards, were at the roadshow event and once again I was able to meet the people I had been writing about so often. Their app, the Big Help Mob, is a fun, creative approach to community service, attracting hundreds of people who had never volunteered their time before, to helping out causes throughout WA. The ABC news report on their app can be found here. For more information on the WApp Awards and the winning app click here. 

Official oZAPP's photo: Left to right: Leon Delpech, Bill Tai and Tim Kenworthy

Once the media release was completed and sent out, my next task was to update the national educational institution database and develop an information pack on the awards that could be distributed to all Universities and TAFE's around the state to generate awareness among university students. These information packs included a cover letter, fact sheet, media release, social media links and poster. 

I also had the chance to challenge myself by writing a package for a client. I spent a day researching and developing pages on the company, the experience of the team and the the proposed establishment. This experience taught me that my writing strength is in PR media and plans and it is a lot less natural for me to write documents of this calibre. Throughout my placement I had the chance to work on them twice and my supervisor sat down with me and went over the way she altered them for the client. I learnt that it is definitely a lot harder for me to get this work out but I definitely want to practice and learn how to do it for the future. 

Being my last week the work load was massive as I worked through to have everything completed! I took out the PR plan i developed at the beginning and had a meeting with my boss about the next steps and how the PR could be altered to attract a larger audience. I also had the opportunity to experience the planning, execution and aftermath of a radio interview that took place and how feedback is given to the client, and social media comments responded to. 

The experience working on this event has been amazing! It has taught me that you can't always anticipate the reaction of the media or the public and that sometimes your original plans need to be altered in order to gain greater success. The concept of the awards is incredible and it focuses in on a developing industry, however for some reason the public and media's interaction has been limited and hasn't taken off as anticipated. I have also learnt that every client is different and you have to speak and deal with them in a way that shows them how integral each part of the plan is without undermining them. On top of all these lessons, one of the biggest lessons I had was at our goodbye drinks. The social media coordinator was on Facebook and the alarms went off and within seconds all three people were on the phone and social media responding to the issue. The lesson: there is no weekend for social media and it is essential that you monitor it at all times. PR does not sleep and you never know what can happen out of the office! 

It may be the end of my placement but its not the end of my experiences at 32DSG. I am staying on a day a week to see how the oZAPP Awards pan out and have been assisting here and there, taking on every learning experience that I can!