interview with victorious secret
TRANSCRIPT
JAZZ(TASTIC)
So here we are with Victorious Secret (or Emma, Simon,
Ivy, Jay, Shannie and Flavia), a group of young people who are making waves with their online magazine entitled accordingly [Victorious Secret].
We’ve been trying to get this interview for a while and (finally) our people tracked down their people and here we are!
Jazz is incredibly giddy for this interview, so be kind guys ;)
Every interview you ever wished for, but didn’t have the connections or courage to get (we stalk our interviewees and ware them down until they agree ;) )
Editor in Chief
Simon Ramsden
Managing Editor
Jay Gada
Creative Director
Flavia Vintila
Copy Editor
Emma –Zhuo Yi
Fact Checker
Ivy Huang
Executive Editor
Shannie Tu
Vic
tori
ous
Secr
et i
s:
JAZZ: Hiya all! Let’s just jump straight in because you’re still working on this week’s edition of your mag! We are all aware of some ground rules for collaboration. How would you say that they apply (or fail to apply) to your own group work?
SIMON: The bringing together of complementary skills and competences has certainly played a role in our group work. At first it was difficult as each person came from a different background and saw a question or innovation differently than another member (Marketers see one thing, information technologists another etc). However what may have started as a hindrance was soon turned into an advantage, with each member valuing the others experience and serving to knit together various creative ideas and strategies.
SHANNIE: In victorious secret, one of our methods to collaborate is that using specialty of each member, but avoiding our demerits. Since we come from diverse background and major in university and we expert at different area, we will separate work depends on our own expertise and knowledge, for example, I have ideas, but I cannot express well in English. However, Simon is good at English, thus he could help me to modify the sentences and make the report smooth after I explain to him. Furthermore, Flavia who has great sense of pretty could do beautiful magazine, so she is responsible for this part.
FLAVIA: Like my team mates have already stated, we are diverse (both culturally, academically and on a personal level) but we’ve come together in the best way possible. Everyone is assigned a task, according to their area of expertise, and things just seem to come together at the end. I’m not saying we are perfect, but through the problems we faced at the beginning (i.e. new people, new place, where the hell am I?) we have come quite close to being a well-‐oiled machine…now if only the software would always cooperate…..
IVY: hmm… good question. I think I have a marvellous group that everyone has the same goal and spare no efforts to fulfil it. We come from different countries, and have different backgrounds. Although, we met some problem because of the culture gap at first, we solved this problem and established a smooth way to collaborate with all members. We build a well-‐down communication flow and choose a good platform to cooperate with each other. An entrepreneurial team need specific roles, such as team leader, monitor evaluator, innovator. I believe everyone is capable of taking the responsibility in two roles at least. In my view, collaboration that is everyone can develop and show up their strength, and everyone know his/her role and contribute himself /herself to do the best. I think we achieve that.
EMMA: All of innovative magazines and slides are
our group properties. Although I am not sure what the mutual benefits for our group are, I think that the mutual benefits mostly come from that we share and respect other people’s ideas. There is no one want to control the whole group, which is a good illustration for the synergistic capabilities.
JAY: Referring to the background synthesis, I would say that that as the teaching method is very different from what I have studied in my country (India). It was difficult to understand this subject and style of teaching, not just me, who found is difficult but all the member understood it in different perspective but we soon made up with the methodology and adapted the innovative style and now we are doing well.
JAZZ: Fantastic! They warned me you guys were talkative. So yeah (cough), moving on: Has anything you’ve learned (good and bad) from your group work helped you understand more about collaboration? EMMA: My group members are very effective to do our work; they always focus on the most important things. I also find my partners very enjoy the process of our work, especially some parts of work regarding the innovative imagine. The bad thing is that we decided very plan very quickly or communicate on Facebook, so we don’t have enough time sitting and chatting with each other as friends.
JAY: In the early stage of our group work, it took time to collaborate as we all being from different culture and country but as weeks past the communication started developing and we formally began the talk and it helped me to understand other members, the ways each of them thinks and works in different manner which developed my interest to work in group, show performance and improved my knowledge in different aspects of the subject.
IVY: Because this is my first time to cooperate
with people who come from different country, It makes me understand how important of communication. In the past, collaboration with similar countries is quite easy, because we know each other culture, customs and behavior. But now, it is a challenge. Sometime I use improper words or expression to express my thought and it will make thing become more complicated. Therefore, I realize communication is not only based on speaking. I could write down my idea or using drawing to explain my idea as well. Next, I also learn how to control the schedule of project (assignment) is important. If we have a good blueprint first, it is easy to follow the rest of part.
SIMON: Starting with the positive I have learnt that collaboration often results in more thought out ideas and proposals, as each member has a different skill that to bring to the table (Cultural Diversity is a bonus!). Secondly communication is key for fair division of labor, and for the piecing together of assignments/group workshop reports, this can take place via Facebook (which is how our group communicates for the most part), texting, or face to face, just make sure it happens!. The negative aspects are few and far between, but perhaps developing clear deadlines and timeframes for all members to adhere to would have benefited our group; as well as more activities outside of university assignments.
SHANNIE: I think I leant more good experiences from our group. For instance, I will understand what sentences are right or not in my answer after improving from others. Another significant point makes me realize more in cooperation is that expression of Tacit Knowledge. When we think by ourselves, we only think about a part that is not complete. However, we could make idea up from other members’ viewpoint or even extend other ideas though brainstorming and discussion.
FLAVIA: Collaboration, to me, is the coming
together of a number of people in a harmonious manner; we are not those people. Yes, we communicate; yes, we acknowledge everyone’s opinions but we do it in a kind of happy chaos. I’ve learned, from this wonderful group of people, that making yourself heard does not have to be an uphill battle, that you help each other (regardless how inconsequential). We are a bit bad with time-‐management, but we have each member monitoring a different aspect of our work now, so over-‐coming hurdles is becoming our daily workout really.
JAZZ: Haha, I never thought you guys had problems to overcome. Last question and then you are free to go (because one member keeps fidgeting with her cigarette pack hehe) As I was saying, how successfully have you adapted your work style to accommodate problems/difficulties you have encountered?
JAY: We work in “kind of” different ways
from other group, as there are many other assignments and coursework, we do not spend time on table and chair for hours long and discuss nothing productive, we use the different electronic mean of communication like Facebook group chat and different software to make our work look creative and innovative, distribute work, allot time to work and the collaborate all the work together and make it for workshop iSearch with mutual understanding that helps us to save time and work more for other subjects as well.
EMMA: I always heard complaints from other
people, when they do group work, some group members tend to excessively insist their own ideas and ignore other people’s suggestion. This situation may ruin the collaboration among group members.
My work style is using an open altitude to receive my group members’ idea. I try to understand various ideas from other people, and sometimes I am likely to combine others’ suggestion with my own ideas. Because everyone has their own thinking ways or experiences to consider the same things, if we try to receive different concepts, it may enrich our own knowledge.
IVY: So far, in my opinion, we have the efficient
way to do our coursework. We take advantage of technology to cooperate with our team member. We use facebook as our discussion venue. Compared with other group, we work efficient and have higher productivity. We also user it to upload our document, and everyone can edit and review it easily. In the first week, we needed to send the assignment to each member and it was hard to do the vision control. One person summarised the file become finial file, but it still need to send back to all member. Now, document vision control become easy and clear. We are keen on this way now, but the only drawback is …. You need to check out facebook all the time. :) Sometime, unknown people will guess we are have fun in facebook, but the true is that we are working…
SHANNIE: Sometimes, we will meet some
problems and barriers in order to push our report become innovate and better. Of course, we might have different opinions from each member, then we might overcome these problems by communication, consultation and compromise as well as think the issues by other’s view. In fact, our teamwork is great and smooth until now.
Continued on next page
FLAVIA: Not much to say really, being the last one to respond kinda makes me look like I’m recycling everybody else’s ideas haha; Similarly to Simon, my groupwork in undergrad was done with my group, in an enclosed space, for hours on end. I was so tired once that I started talking in Romanian and my teammate (English) was so tired he didn’t notice for about 15 minutes. That used to be my work-‐style, if you’re being unproductive, at least pretend you’re productive with the entire group; needless to say, I’m glad we mixed things up now. We might lag behind or it might take us a while to start a project, but once each member has his/her task we all go, do our work in whichever way we prefer, share it all online, comment and give pointers where necessary and we meet up after all that (after everybody is familiar with everybody else’s work) and we put it together. It’s efficient really.
SIMON: My academic background drilled in to me that there was one way of doing things, one mold in which to present things, and one way to format an assignment. 504 has caused me to think how this style and structure can be creatively adapted, without losing the value and importance of content. This is problematic for me at first since I am what many call an auditory learner, not a visual one. Meaning I do not easily see the value of graphs/pictures over written text nor do I always agree that they fully convey an argument as opposed to three paragraphs of structured text. Moving to a magazine format therefore, was new and exciting and has helped me understand the benefits of visual aid.
Similarly most of my background revolved around completing individual assignments, whilst course is largely concerned with working at a team. I have had to adapt my usual pace to fit with the groups, which I thought would be a challenge, but it actually has not been a problem so far.
JAZZ: Fantastic! Awesome interview guys and girls!
Hope you all enjoyed our little exclusive chat with the people behind Victorious Secret and check us out next week! There’s another hard to get interview!
Now go visit Victorious Secret’s blog ;)
Bye!