Intern Feature: Michaela Stauber
If you have frequently visited our website, you may have noticed some changes in how it looks! For this, we can thank our intern Michaela Stauber. Today we talk to Michaela to learn about her work with Brass Mash.
Intern Michaela Stauber
Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a 4th year mass communication major. My concentration is USUI, or web design. I’ve gone to Cal Poly all 4 years and I’m from the Bay Area. I like to play sports - I play a lot of IM [intramural] games. I’m on a couple of IM soccer teams. I’ve worked on campus at the Center for Leadership. I like to be creative in any capacity - that’s probably why I chose to be a mass communication major.
What do you do for Brass Mash?
I am helping to do a little makeover for the website so that it’s more accessible and easy to see how awesome Brass Mash is! I’m making sure everything is aligning with the vision.
What got you interested in working with Brass Mash?
I had a friend who had been to one of the shows. She said it’s the best ever, and “you have to come!” My dad came into town one of the weekends, and my mom came in the next weekend. They were talking, and Colin mentioned that he was looking for interns. So here I am! I thought, I would love to work for this awesome band!
How do you hope to leverage this experience for the future?
I want to do web design and I feel like Colin has given me a platform to create the experience that I want. I’ve been able to map out how I’m going to go about making some of the changes I’m making. It will give me a good portfolio piece for interviews, to have something to show that I’ve helped with.
I was excited that he was looking for a UI intern, because I’ve been looking for any experience I can get!
The original website was on a template that doesn’t have a lot of flexibility. I’m in the process of moving everything onto a new template where there is more flexibility. It’ll be easier to buy the tickets - I think the new template will open up doors. Especially for the blog. Right now, you can’t have individual posts as icons and click into them. I want people to be able to search through a lot of the blogs at once and be able to click into the ones that are interesting to them. Same with the videos - it can be overwhelming to have a bunch of videos to scroll through.
What have you learned in the process of working with Brass Mash?
I haven’t worked with any bands. It’s really cool to see the behind-the-scenes of putting on a show like that - especially when it’s a local band. Colin does everything from merch to setup - he’s very hands-on. I have learned a lot about logistics behind that, and there’s a lot of complexity behind it. Just talking with Colin has been very interesting to find out what can go wrong, and how to prevent different things from happening.
I’ve also learned a lot about SquareSpace. Cal Poly’s all about learning by doing. I’ve worked with SquareSpace in the past, but I feel like I learn something new every time I work with it. Just practicing with it has been very rewarding.
