Media innovation reflections: What did you learn from the NUvention Web+Media class?

In which the first Medill Media Innovation & Entrepreneurship students look back on their experience (one of a series)

Tech Speak

I’ve learned how to speak with developers a lot in the last few months, in such a way that I feel like I could be able to speak Javascript, databases, and be able to work in a role in a media company that perhaps journalists never would have considered. The biggest thing is learning how to manage different personalities, different coding styles, different management styles because that’s half the battle when you’re in any professional environment. — Nikolas Wright, MSJ ’17

Teamwork

I think I learned most how to work in a team. As an undergrad, you do a lot of projects by yourself, but this program is very team-based and it really teaches you what each person is like, especially when you’re trying to build a product like in NUvention. You learn to work with different types of people, so you’re not just working with journalists. You’re working with engineers, you’re working with IMC people, businesspeople, MBAs, everybody that has a different skill set that they can bring to the table. I think that’s something very valuable in the real world. — Reedhima Mandlik, MSJ ’17

Balance

I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned is finding out what’s going to make your product successful may have nothing to do with what you initially intended going in. It’s going to come down to a lot of tiny changes to adjust to what the market needs today, or what a customer needs today. You have to play this balancing game. — Henry Keyser, MSJ ’17

Connection

What I’ve learned the most is to never lose your connection with your consumer throughout the entire process. You need to constantly test your ideas with them. I also learned a lot about the engineering aspect of a product — to be able to connect the human side to the technical side. That is something that a product manager should be able to do. And that’s a great strength when you go into the real world. — Qiqi (Vivian) Zhang, MSJ ’17

Thinking about applying? Read through their experiences. See more information about the specialization, below:

Medill website | Video | Sign up for Medill Media Innovation newsletter | Rich Gordon’s guest column (Entrepreneurial Journalism Educators Network)