Is the internet an 'out-of-control monster?"

The World Wide Web is now 30 years old, with millions of websites and growing. But without it, the Internet would not be as global as it is now.

I don't think the internet is an 'out of control monster' but I can see why people would think that. It has scarily become a major part of our lives, and the way society is now is so different to when I was a child.

I first started using computers when I was 8 years old, and I would spend hours on our family one until my eyes would hurt. I would wake up early on the weekend just to catch a few more sneaky hours before my parents threw me off or my brother wanted a go. I had a Facebook account (when I wasn't supposed to) and other social media, and I started speaking to loads of 'strangers' who I met on virtual gaming websites, some of which are still very good friends to this day who I have met up with! Some would argue I was exposed to the Internet too young, but if anything, it's given me years of experience and I now love everything to do with tech, social media and digital content.

It can be a scary place. So many things could have gone wrong as a young child on the Internet, but back then it wasn't as developed as it is now. I'm glad that I'm not a 8 year old right now in 2020. Things are so different.

Would I give up the internet in exchange for 1 million? Definitely not! I would be bored out of my brains, and that means I wouldn't be able to do what I love or work in my dream job. Although 1 million would probably mean I'd never need to work again, I wouldn't be able to communicate with my friends who live in different countries, I wouldn't be able to stream my favourite movies and TV shows on Netflix and Disney+.

If the web had not been invented, it's hard to say whether life would be worse or if it would be improved. Let's compare:

Improved

• People would be forced to socialise and meet in person, which I think is healthier than hiding behind a screen all the time.
• There would be no toxic social media influencers, trying to get you to look and dress a certain way and make you feel bad about yourself. This is something I feel strongly about because if someone looks 100% perfect on Instagram, it's normally a lie thanks to Photoshop. People would be more confident with themselves, instead of feeling insecure by constantly seeing this stuff everywhere.
• We would be all-around healthier. The Internet can be addicting and being able to think freely without a keyboard warrior attacking you online because they don't agree with your opinion is just messed up.

Worse

• I and a lot of others would never have met our close online friends. Sometimes I think they're even more trustworthy than the friends I see every day.
• The internet has allowed us to be a modern society, we rely on the Internet for lots of jobs these days because it allows us to do things in more advanced ways. If the internet wasn't around, we would all still be working in offices or other boring jobs.
• The internet has helped lots of extraordinary things happen that wouldn't be possible without it. It's hard to imagine a world without all the things we have right now. We're lucky.

I think giving the rest of the world access to the Internet would definitely improve their lives. It would allow them to feel included with the rest of the world, and really feel part of something. Right now they have absolutely no idea what's going on with the rest of the world, they're completely isolated and aren't informed about major events that's happening.

Twenty-nineth week! (20/7/20 - 24/7/20)/Principles of Coding Training 1

This week was a rather short working week as I had training on Thursday and Friday.

On Monday, our G-Cloud 12 submission was sent off! No more G-Cloud! It feels like I've been working on it forever honestly. Our services are going live in September after they review our application.

As Nikki requested, I made some updates to the e-Learning parts of the collateral. We now have 2 pages, one for Bespoke and one for Off-the-shelf content. I have also been conversing with Nikki and Aaron about coming up with an e-Learning marketing campaign, we're having a meeting next week to talk this through.

I've been helping Simon with some Pipeline data, I put it into a word document then transferred it into a pretty PowerPoint presentation.

Tiffany also suggested that I create a new Mailchimp account to just use for our weekly videos, as people have been unsubscribing because they don't want to see them. This also means that people wouldn't receive release notes! Making a separate account for marketing makes sense now. Simon made the update video this week. I had to redesign the template because I couldn't transfer it from the old account, and now I can't schedule emails in advance! I'm going to have to wake up at 8am to schedule the emails on Friday.

Lewis has suggested that we post on social media about one of our colleagues Scott when he is working whilst travelling. We're coming up with ideas for posts at the moment.

Newsletter 2 is coming along nicely... I designed a nice golden looking congratulations to Poole who has won 12 months free Job Planning from the last competition. We're sending it out on the 3rd of August, the first working day of the month.

This week we were also told our Citizenship Project has been cancelled due to Covid-19.

On Thursday and Friday, I had the first part of my Principles of Coding training.

 During these 2 days we covered: The History of the Internet, Hosting, Web Servers, SEO, File Formats, Web Indexing and Crawlers, Cookies and Building Websites.

Although coding isn't a major part of my job role, knowing about how websites are made is useful when making changes to our own website and working with SEO. Learning about web indexing and crawling is also useful when it comes to SEO as well, in regard to what information from our website shows up on search engines.

I have been completing the HTML5 course on Codeacademy and saving the badges to put into my report as well.

Twenty-eighth week (13/7/20 - 17/7/20)

This week I was on Annual Leave, but the week before I made sure to schedule the 60-second update video for Friday on Mailchimp and social media.

I also completed a short COVID-19 Return to Work course for City & Guilds, I uploaded my certificate to Skilsure and my badge can be seen on my work signature and Linkedin profile.

Twenty-seventh week! (6/7/20 - 10/7/20)

This week I've been making a few adjustments to our website because some of our testimonials are now out of date, I have now removed all of the ones from past clients and replaced them with new feedback, including a quote from Sangeeta from Barts, one of our most dedicated clients.

I worked with Nikki and Zaheer on completing our G-Cloud 12 applications for e-Learning and e-Rostering this week. We finally completed it! Monday the 20th at 5pm our submission will be sent off and I am on annual leave next week so we will be going over it again quickly sometime on the day.

Nikki has also asked me to create new diagrams and update the e-Learning part of the collateral. Before we had just one diagram for 'off-the-shelf e-learning' now we have one for 'bespoke' as well. I will be working on this when I am back from my leave.

I helped Zaheer with a presentation he and some others were doing to a potential client, I rebranded the slides and made them look prettier.

We have now booked a hall in November for our 'comeback event'. We still have lots of things to decide on for this, but time is on our side.

We had our marketing catchup on Monday and our weekly team meeting on Wednesday as usual.
Team meeting

Twenty-sixth week (29/6/20 - 3/7/20)

This week I finished the first Equiniti newsletter for the new clients with the help of Simon, and Tim sent it off on Wednesday. In this newsletter, we are running a competition to win prizes including free job planning for a year. We're using SurveyMonkey for people to apply. I've also made sure to create awareness for this on social media.

On Monday I had a catchup call with Tim, Simon and Rob to go over the collateral. All done! Apart from the fact we forgot to include e-Rostering...which I was never told, and we need to create features and benefits for MSF.

On Wednesday we had our usual weekly team meeting. Simon wants me to do a 'marketing update' on the call next week! Just great! I am very nervous.

G-Cloud 12 is due on the 20th of July so we have 2 weeks to get the e-Learning section done. Nikki has started doing it and I'm going to help her when I can.

I have a meeting with Will next Tuesday about ZOHO.

Regarding the demo slides, we have now created a vision and I've made a table of trusts. I'm just waiting on Rob to send me the PowerPoint so I can add these and make them pretty to use.

Rob did the update video this week. As usual, I scheduled this and posted it to social media.

As Tuesday was the end of the month I also collected our social media and website metrics, as well as writing my monthly report to Simon.

Me and Rob have new ideas for the showreel, and we've created 'dummies' using PowerPoint so show how it will look. We're looking at clips to use for the products, e.g. a nurse on a computer.

I helped Jane by sending her the latest Cortex collateral, and I corrected some spelling mistakes. I also sent all of our Job Planning collateral to Simon.

There was another small email Rob asked me to make pretty into a template to send as well.

Finally, Aaron added me into a LinkedIn group with escalla and others where we ask them to like and share our reports in return for likes and shares.

Escalla
I finally finished bksblive *properly*, I had 2 more English parts that needed to be to level 2.9. I did a progress check on both and got to it! Yay!

I filled in my review document from my review with Emma with my answers and feedback.

I also finished off my Business Principles report and submitted it to Skilsure. Emma gave me some feedback and corrections to go over.