A day in the life of our Digital Producer, Soph
Soph joined the AD team last year as a Digital Producer, bringing with her a wealth of arts and culture, ticketing and project management experience. We wanted to share what she gets up to in the AD Studio and how she contributes to projects with some of our biggest clients like Honolulu Museum of Art and The Zoological Society of Milwaukee.
What made you pursue Project Management as a career?
I found a really cool course at university that sounded fun and interesting and I’ve been doing things that sound fun and interesting ever since! I’ve always been quite an organised person and I used to run events and produce theatre shows as well as working as a lighting tech and a stage manager. I’ve always leaned towards organising things and liked being in an arts and cultural space.
If you weren’t a Digital Producer, what would you want to be?
Something fun! I’d probably be an archivist. I did my undergrad dissertation on archiving live performances. This led me to do a post-grad in information management and preservation. That allowed me to become qualified as an archivist, as well as a record manager and librarian.
As a Digital Producer, what is it you do at After Digital?
Digital Producers here at AD are a good combination of Project Managers and Account Managers. So I’ve got some retainer clients who’s accounts I look after on a day-to-day basis. They often email if they want new things added to their website or if there’s a bug and I help them. Maintaining a healthy relationship with clients is a big part of the job. That means that we often see projects right through from proposals to launch.
Describe an average day for you at After Digital.
We have a couple of overseas clients so I usually start my day by checking what emails may have come in from them. Then, we have standup – a 15 minute checkup where the team can explain our tasks and raise any blockers. It's a good way for everybody to get on the same page first thing in the morning.
Then, I’m usually testing things for the developers, replying to client tickets and updating retainers. Aside from general admin, I then start working on projects for the rest of the day, that includes client meetings, chatting through budgets, and working with the other departments.
What is your favourite part of your job?
Getting to work with so many different people. I can easily spend an entire day on calls – be it with clients, partners or the rest of the AD team. I like that I get input from such a wide range of people.
What is the first thing you do when starting your working day each day?
I make a cup of tea! Other than that, I always check for emergencies and reply to any urgent messages.
How do you unwind from your working day?
I might go to the gym or give the cats a cuddle.
Top 5 tips or tools that you would recommend for everyday use?
Console logs - This is great for bug solving. It gives you much more information and it points the developers in the right direction for identifying problems. This speeds up the problem solving process a lot.
Workona - This is a tab manager app. As a DP, it's great to be able to group things together for each client. As I spend a lot of time jumping between projects, apps like this make it easier to pick things up later.
Miro - A total lifesaver. It’s a virtual whiteboard, really intuitive and clients love it.
Google Workspace - Working collaboratively and remotely with your team has become extremely important and the Google workspace means that almost everything can be done effectively whilst out of the office.
Slack - I spend most of my time on there so it’s definitely an essential.
What advice would you give someone thinking about pursuing a career in Project Management?
Whilst there’s a lot of interesting courses and methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, Scrum, Six Sigma, PRINCE2), don’t get too tied down trying to follow it step by step. You can try and follow things in the predicted routine but things crop up and foil your plans, so know that your project will never run perfectly no matter how hard you try to plan it.
Does project management sound like the role for you? We’re hiring! You can work alongside our amazing developers, marketing team and designers to build long lasting partnerships with some of the biggest names in arts and culture, ecommerce and education. To keep up to date with our team, subscribe to our newsletter and make sure you follow us on Linkedin, Twitter, and Instagram.