« Farewell Blog | Main | Epilogue »
Working at my Dream Job
Greetings, fearless readers! :o)
I am officially in LA and sunny California! My Michigan’s driver’s license has a hole in it and my California license (with a terrible picture) is on its way. My poor little car (aka: Max and the 4 Hamsters) peddled its way all across the country but Max’s aging exhaust system needs some triage fast because he didn’t pass the smog test. So, the 4 Hamsters peddle away tirelessly under the hood while I do some price comparison shopping (thank goodness for Disney employee discounts everywhere!) and my goal is to drop off the paper work so that I can re-dress Max with a new California license plate next week.
My apartment is slowly taking shape—I would say it is just about ½ way put together. Sherman Oaks is a great neighborhood and blessedly close to work! I got to know a fellow new hire (but she works for Disney Mobile) during orientation and she said a bunch of people were jealous because word got out that I only take local streets to get to work. Hahaha! The Maw’s planning worked! :o) But all good luck must come to end at some point… I was supposed to have my digital Internet/cable/phone hooked up this week but Time Warner screwed up big time so I gave them a piece of my mind and they are now rowing a little bit harder. Apparently, threatening to take business to AT&T and the Dish Network makes them jump to attention—note to self for future needs! In the meantime, I will be using the business center and wi-fi access in my apartment building’s residents’ lounge. It’s not completely ideal, but better than being unplugged.
Other than being completely exhausted from driving across the country, moving into my apartment, unpacking, and attempting to stock my fridge with daily visits to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, I have been starting my new job at the Walt Disney Internet Group. They finally decided on a formal title: Digital Asset Specialist. However, everything says on it (and everyone calls me): Digital Archivist. There were 1 ½ days of orientation which goes like this…
Day one: Disney/ABC studio lot
Normally, the word “orientation” conjures up thoughts of boredom and the desire for extreme amounts of coffee (and I don’t even drink coffee unless totally desperate). But this was the most entertaining orientation ever—it was seriously cool! :o) There were an unusually large number of new hires at the Disney orientation—I would say that close to 1/3 of the participants were summer interns (mostly graduate students from what I could gather). About another 1/3 of the participants were bound for the Disney Internet Group along with yours truly.
Expecting the usual b-o-r-i-n-g orientation fare, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. But our morning opened up with a short documentary film on the history of the Disney Company and Walt Disney, the dude who started the entire wide world of Disney as we know it today. We continued to get familiarized with current projects and got to watch lots of movie trailers, which was a total blast. And then got a full briefing on all of the different aspects of Disney and its affiliated brands. I don’t think I could list them all here—they had logos posted on an entire wall of the room (I have pictures). It totally boggled my mind! A lot of brands I didn’t realize were part of the Disney family.
We also got introduced to the wonderful world of Disney employee discounts and freebies. As a Disney employee I get things like a Silver Pass, which entitles me to unlimited and free access to the theme parks almost 24/7, discounts in the Disney stores, and discounts with lots of other services and products (there is an entire section devoted to employee discounts on the intranet, known as The Hub). There are also plenty of free things floating around through the year as well, which I am really looking forward to! :o) But before the free things, we also went over our regular benefits—a complete health care package, 401k retirement, group life insurance, etc. It’s so nice to have health insurance again! And I was really happy to see that a company as large as Disney has such a commitment to environmentalism that they have a department that does nothing but work on reducing energy waste produced by the company and its employees—for example, if I decide to ride a bike to work every day instead of driving my car, they will pay me $2 a day as an incentive. Pretty cool, eh? So far they have a pretty significant population that car pools or takes the train—I am definitely considering biking to work because I live close enough to my office that it would be doable, good for the environment, and good exercise to compensate for all of the free food that gets handed out! :o)
Speaking of food, lunch was on The Mouse at the studio Commissary where I enjoyed a really excellent lunch—whatever you wanted you could probably find there. They had everything from sandwiches to a huge salad bar, soup bar, dessert bar, roasted meats with veggies, you name it! Ahh… the foodie in me was in heaven! The soup bar often has Walt’s Chili because apparently Walt Disney was quite a meat and beans chili fan—he used to mix cans of cheap ingredients together when he didn’t have much money and it became one of his favorite foods, so they often have chili (a more gourmet version that the budget chili) on the menu in memory of Walt.
After lunch, we went on a tour of the lot and got to see a lot of historic sights like the original animation building. There is a tunnel under the original animation department connecting different buildings so that if there was inclement weather, the artwork could be safely transported to the next place for the next step in animating. When the t.v. show, Alias, was filmed they actually shot a lot of it at the Disney studios and the scenes where she runs through tunnels is often the tunnel under the animation department. Fun tidbit there… :o) We also got to see movies in action in the sound stages—they are just wrapping up the filming of the National Treasure 2 movie, so I got to see the sets for that which was really cool. The lot has an employee center and Disney store too, which is very convenient for us. My group got very lucky and was able to go inside the sound mixing theatre—a very rare treat! They were re-mastering the sound for 101 Dalmatians that day. It’s like the studio is its own little pedestrian town where they refer to the walkways as streets.
Before I was done at the studio for the day, I stopped by the Disney Archives to see what they had in there. They have all sorts of memorabilia, set materials, scripts with famous writing in them, and personal material related to Walt Disney and his family. It was quite impressive. There are 2 floors to the archive and they also support archival materials such as videos and audio-related artifacts. As an employee, I can go anytime I like and that is just wonderful! :o) (Non-employees must get special approval from the archive department to get an appointment.)
Side note: The Disney Archives is not to be confused with my own position, which is at the Disney Internet Group (considered its own company under the Disney umbrella). The Disney Archives is definitely a more traditional archive, whereas I deal with items that are strictly born-digital (i.e. it is not created as a physical item first, even if a physical copy is made later) which are used in current projects for a functioning repository. My repository is closed—it is not meant for researchers, only for the artists and programmers who need to access various assets to be published for websites for Disney Online.
Day two: WDIG orientation
Next stop, my official home base. I found out that “the DIG” often has about 5-7 new hires each week! That’s a lot of people that they are continually adding to the team… There are also multiple overseas offices as well as smaller domestic offices. The largest is where I am working, in North Hollywood. The second largest domestic office is in Seattle. This orientation was much less entertaining that the first—lots of nitty-gritty things like how to enter time into the payroll system, etc. (You wouldn’t believe how complicated it can get, working on different projects…)
I started to get a little bit more situated in my “office” which is only temporary. I was told many times over by my team to avoid getting too comfortable in my current space because I’m going to be moving sooner than I realize to something larger and “better”. But the space is inconsequential to what is IN said space! I have a brand new multi-media equipped Dell PC desktop and a most beautiful brand new iMac. My MacBook Pro (15”) is on its way as well. Ahh… I have landed in nerdy heaven… Everything is so new that the boxes for all of my equipment were still in the trash can when I showed up.
I spent the rest of the day just customizing my digital work environments so that they are all familiar and accessible in the ways that I already find to be automatic. My iMac (yet to be named) performs beautifully. However, in classic Microsoft fashion, Outlook froze on me in the first hour that I had it open (on the PC which will remain unnamed)—it’s good to know that some things always remain the same, even when one isn’t in Kansas anymore. :o) My supervisor sent me a welcome email with a couple of corporate Wiki links left over from my predecessor. Albeit very out-of-date (going on 2 years since the last update—an eternity in tech time), I will use this as a starting point to see where the DOL archive was left at and then to make changes that reflect the current company philosophy about the sites managed by DOL.
I also explored what is known as the “Hub” – an Intranet of sorts but far more advanced than any Intranet I’ve seen anywhere else. It has video content and Flash animation all over it just like the main Disney sites. Gives me great ideas for my digital repository! :o) I also sent a couple of emails to people that I need to connect with at DIG and elsewhere. I think the nifty-est thing of the day was when I was asked to confirm my information and it said my name and underneath it said “Digital Archivist, Disney Internet Group.” The time has come to order business cards and all that good stuff… very weird to be out of the title “graduate student.”
The rest of my week will consist of meetings with my supervisor, full introductions to all of the art directors (some of whom I already met during my gauntlet of interviews back in March), and plan making for my most immediate projects and down the line. I’ll be figuring out if I’ll be going to the national annual meeting for the Society of American Archivists at the end of the summer and that should be really interesting to see from a professional perspective instead of as a student. I’ll definitely need to get integrated into the electronic records management community now.
Post-orientation(s):
I’m still a little amazed that this is my job and I am actually getting paid to figure out how to catalogue all the different pirate views of Johnny Depp, the hundreds of user-created fairies in Tinkerbell’s online homeland (“Pixie Hollow” – a very cool place that you must visit!), movie previews, and MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games… you have now been introduced to official “geek speak”), among MANY other things! I made some fantastic contacts by the end of my first week and will be meeting with the legendary Disney archivist on the lot next week; probably going to Emeryville (metro-San Francisco) in the not too distant future to visit the Pixar archivists; and I even connected with a former SI grad who has been working at DreamWorks for quite some time. My geekiest moment was getting all excited about contacting Peter Morville (Information Architecture guru and adjust SI faculty) who then wrote me back. My supervisor and I are big fans of his book, Ambient Findability.
My supervisor is a really cool person—he encourages me to make as many connections as possible and expects his entire team to be full of self-starters, which is great for me because I really get to run my own show. If I need to take care of things off-site, I’m allowed to go and do those things; this might include meetings or conferences, etc. Being well connected and highly visible is the highest priority at the moment! But all of the staff are incredibly nice and so excited for me to be working for them, it is very flattering—it makes me want to work super hard for them all because I don’t want to disappoint anyone, they have been waiting for over 2 years to get the digital archive that they really need.
I’m also getting settled into LA nicely—this weekend I will be unpacking more things and hopefully getting a little more settled. Very early on Saturday morning, I am going to the Disney employee screening of Pirates 3 in Burbank—very excited about that! :o) I also dropped by the studio lot to pick up my company picnic ticket—that is in another week at a ranch in Malibu; very exciting also! My goal is to get a picture with Mickey Mouse who will be making a very special appearance. :o) It was such a surreal experience, being able to drive up to the studio gates, flash my ID badge, and just drive right in. I wandered by some movie sets where something big was going on so that I could go to the employee center and pick up my picnic ticket. It’s like I walked into my dream world or something. :o) I think I definitely found the right career for me and fantastic people to work with; and I am ever so grateful that they found me too! It’s really satisfying to know that working hard in grad school has paid off in this way, because it makes all of those late night study marathons really worth it.
So, in conclusion, I will share with you some nifty Disney links that are well worth checking out!
Sweetest place on virtual earth:
Pixie Hollow at www.disneyfairies.com. You can visit my own fairy, Echo Lotusflame, at 52596 Sunrise Cliffs. Send me some fairy mail and I’ll probably write you back! :o)
Best screen saver:
Meet the Robinsons at http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/meettherobinsons/. If you like the T-Rex, you’re going to LOVE this screen saver! He break dances for you over and over again—it’s a stitch! :o)
Favorite animated movie trailer:
Ratatouille is about a rat in Paris who wants to be a chef, so he helps a very untalented guy cook very good food. It’s super cute: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/ratatouille/.
Favorite live action movie trailer:
Enchanted starts out as an animated princess tale, but the princess gets thrown into the real world of NYC—totally pokes fun at the whole princess thing! Very funny and I’m totally going to see this when we have a screening for it: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/enchanted/.
So, are you in love with the video content too? You can check out the HD video streaming at www.abc.com. They won an Emmy award for the quality of programming that can be found on the site. Gotta love Ugly Betty! And stay tuned for the MMOG version of Pirates—I got to see the guys testing the game and it looks really awesome. :o)
Your #1 grasshopper,
Maw ;o)
Posted by maryaw at June 2, 2007 12:35 AM
