Working at Parliament

Back in March of this year I had the brilliant opportunity to visit the Scottish Parliament for work experience.

If you're not familiar with the place, this is what it looks like;

It's a very modern and progressive Parliament and it has a very unique feature; the document everything on video and make it available for anyone who wishes to use it. Meaning that if you ever see anything from this place on the news, it's their internal broadcast department who provided the video.

I won't delve into the huge details as I'm sure they value the opportunity to impress people on their own time. However, I will say that they are very well run and are all very professional and well trained in their respective fields. It's safe to say that whilst I was there, I felt very out of my depth.

Thankfully, I was not alone in this experience. During my time at Parliament I was also with two friends and college classmates.

This is CJ and myself on our way into the Parliament. We may look happy and full of enthusiasm but, believe me, that quickly changed to awe and confusion.

Whilst there we mostly worked separately, however, there were opportunities when we got to work together. I can't speak for the others, but I certainly felt a sense of relief when I was reunited with people of the same level of experience as myself. It's really rather daunting when you're constantly around people who have a lifetime of experience more than you.

But I digress. So what exactly did I get up to?

Well, when I wasn't internally screaming, I was working with an incredible man named Joe Barnett. If you are a professional within the industry, I wouldn't be surprised if you've heard of him. He's very experienced and is quite possibly the most intelligent man I've ever met.

Joe is an engineer and is basically responsible for maintaining all the tech at Parliament. Whilst working with him, I was shown around the building to see how everything is wired up and organised as well as informed of how much data was travelling around. What astonished me most was how much storage there was and how much conversion has to be done to allow outside sources to use the data.

In addition to spending most of my time with Joe and trying to soak up information, most of which I didn't understand, I was also taught other aspects of the broadcast office. A perfect example of this was learning about the sound and visual setup within the main chamber.

Again, this all seemed very full-on, however, with this particular instance I could at least wrap my head around it and keep up with what was going on.

Overall, my time working within the Scottish Parliament was very beneficial. It really put into perspective how much I need to learn to be able to be good at what I want to do. Though, that's not to say that my entire time there was all in an effort to make myself more humble. It definitely did give me a whole new respect for the industry and the potential employment that it can lead to, but I certainly enjoyed the experience above everything else. If nothing else, I was certainly enthralled by the level of awe I felt from the high standards of professionalism.

So, to sum up, the Scottish Parliament was cool.