Deliverable: Reflect in a blog post on your portfolio site: with a year of Vivero experience under your belts, what advice do you have for new Fellows about the idea that this job involves learning how to do your job on the fly?
My biggest advice for Vivero fellows is to trust the process! Do the trainings and read through the documentation website well. I found it very uncomfortable to be not an expert on every single software, but if you know the very first thing about a software, you probably will be successful in helping most people. People usually just need help with the first steps and then will be successful after that on their own, so focus on learning those steps and skills and then the rest will come to you overtime. For example, the hardest part of StoryMaps is learning the maps, sidecars, and just how to set up the website itself (and how to login…it’s finicky). The rest is pretty self-explanatory. You’ll probably become really knowledgeable in one or two sites with your project(s) as a fellow, and then can be an expert on those. That’s why it’s great we do shifts together, because we have such a breadth of knowledge between all of us. We can always ask each other for help and to share if we know someone is really good at one thing. That’s also why its so valuable for us to collaborate on our trainings! I’m excited to expand my WordPress knowledge and hopefully further my knowledge of Omega, and other sites.
Leave a Reply