Assignment 1A Reflection 2
Professional Practice within intercultural and global contexts
Over the course of 5 months at my junior software engineer internship role at iOn Sport, I was required to work and interact with various types of people. This was especially normal for small businesses that are required to share the office common space with different companies. For my case, the organisation had shared the office space with another organisation where I was interacting with the same 4 people every day of my internship.
However, towards the end of my internship our team was preparing for a job that was different from my regularly responsibilities of programming. We were required to work on a Saturday and drive 2 hours away from the office to livestream a women’s international cricket game which would be broadcast to fans all over the world. This was especially nerve-wracking as this was the first time interacting with clients rather than co-leagues.
On the previous day we needed to setup and pack all the equipment for the livestream. The procedure took up the whole day which signified that I would not be able to work on the regular software tasks I have been normally undertaking every day since starting the job. New to this type of work, I was given documentations and training how the equipment worked with our software. It was a very long and tedious process which required me to take down notes and create diagrams to ensure I wouldn’t forget the fine details on the day.
It was morning of livestream and we safely arrived at the Brahman Ovals, the venue where the Fairbreak International Cricket Match would be held. When we unpacked our equipment and brought it up to the setup area, we scouted the location for safety hazards and tried to find the best angles for our broadcast feed. Inexperienced, I closely followed and watched my supervisor to provide him necessary feedback of how the live footage looked. Although, I do not watch cricket games, I applied similar logic and viewing angles from the other types of sports I watch on TV. We had two cameras: one for close-up of cricket players hitting the ball and a wider-angle camera to capture more of the action and scenery.
The second part of livestream was a lot more daunting due to the fact we have not tested the microphones for outside conditions and that we had to change setups often to accommodate different commenters. This was an issue when we had to switch microphones between each commenter. As there was no formal schedule of which commenters were on it was difficult to try to explain how the audio worked to each of them. It further became apparent, interacting with these individuals that some had previous experience professional doing commentating as a job and others having none. It became increasingly harder to manage these commentators as I couldn’t talk to tell him if they needed to slow down talking or speak louder due to the fact my voice will be heard on the live stream. I was slightly disappointed that the livestream had many issues and tried to fix while it was live. As they were no documentations about troubleshooting audio, I had consulted my supervisor on the best way to fix the audio. He said that I should trust my instinct and only raise issues when audio would be unacceptable. I thought his answers were vague and little unprofessional and informal to the point it felt a bit awkward trying to communicate my supervisor during the livestream.
I had chosen to raise this issue during the half time break, as our voices would be picked up by the microphone. I informed my supervisor of standardising the method of setting up of the microphone when swapping between commenters. This required me making up gestures and call signs to effectively communicate with limited words. Before the stream started again, I talked to each commentator and taught them my call signs if I had a problem with their audio. This was shown to be effective when the second half of the match had flawless audio quality and there was no need for me to moderate them.
From this incident, I learnt to quickly raise issues my supervisor and provide a solution that required creativity problem solving skills. In the future placements, I would be thorough in double checking all the equipment by ensuring the documentations and troubleshooting procedures are provided to ensure that we can conduct our job properly in a professional environment.