New Mediazone Blog starts here and now!
So, buckle up for new faces, new posts, and most importantly, complex analogies.
Before getting into the meat of this post, let us cover the background that facilitates the operations of Mediazone.
Training is a very meticulous but rewarding process. It was my very first training experience and, in many ways, it was comparable to boot-camp. The challenges of training combined with my inexperience felt overwhelming. But this was quickly changed by icebreaker activities. The icebreakers included a variety of intriguing team building exercises. One of those exercises happened to be very personally memorable as it pushed me to write about this experience, i.e. the Giant Jenga!
Training is a mandatory process for all Lab Assistants, but it functions as a propeller for all the newcomers, a.k.a the “Newbie’s”. It is the final tribulation before Newbie’s become fully-fledged Mediazone members participating in all kinds of Mediazone work.
Now back to Jenga. You might reasonably ask yourself how something so rigorous can involve Jenga of all things. Well before getting to interact with any equipment you need to first interact with your fellow crew members. These are very serious exercises, which is exactly why a complex analogy is necessary in this case.
At Mediazone, Jenga is played slightly differently. It is a team effort where one individual plays the role of “hands” and the other individual plays the role of “mouth”. Hands can grab and pull out Jenga blocks but they can’t speak. Mouths can only speak to give directions and are forbidden from moving their hands. I filled in the role of mouth, and I definitely felt the difficulties of communicating as an immobilized coach. Luckily we did win at the end.
I guess this analogy is not that complex after all, now that I have explained it. It’s a pretty straightforward communications exercise; how well can you give or follow instructions under pressure? And how can we effectively communicate when faced with a set of unorthodox limitations? With that said, this exercise was a deeply valuable lesson for Newcomers like me, because Media Organizations use very specific language and clear communication is the key to it all.
So, if you happen to like Jenga, boot-camps (the good kind!), and audio visual, Mediazone might be the right place for you to learn all about the Media industry, and all the unique people that form its communicational core.
Naser Abdulla
Mediazone Student Lab Assistant
