It doesn’t feel like a month since JR left the office, yet the time since then has seen an awful lot of change here in the office. Already we are looking for a new intern! Details below:
Are you into blogging? Do you like customising web applications like WordPress and messing with flickr and youtube?
If you’re a bit techie and are interested in any sort of new media career we have an internship that will give you a good leg up.
Come and join us in our brand new offices in Brighton, we have a project for you involving a WordPress installation, a web designer, a marketing agency and a couple of sales partners.
Come show us what you can do and we’ll give you some excellent CV fodder.
Start with us straight away and stay for 2/3 months depending on your availability. We’ll cover your accommodation costs and provide a weekly allowance for expenses.
To apply please send a CV and cover letter to pete.taylor@acumenpi.com
So if you’d like to come and work in our brand new office (due to move in in 1 week – blog update to follow!) then please do get in touch.
Very much look forward to hearing from you!
- Chris / CJ
Tally ho! Friday January 29th was my last week as TSR intern.
It’s certainly been an interesting week. Today I’ve been working on a few final things on the TSR wiki, tidying up this-that-and-the-other, and making sure all my loose ends are collected together. Earlier in the week, I’ve been happily typing away at a few things – some analytical, press release style things looking at the results from a couple of recent TSR surveys, and writing some helpful guides that may soon be appearing on coursework.info. I’ve also been looking at some interesting TSR related statistics – general trends in page views, posting levels and that sort of thing. I can’t say it makes much sense to me, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Outside of the office, we had a little midweek shindig on Wednesday, a joint-celebration style event, marking the recent birthday of site admin (and general good guy) CJ, and marking my imminent departure from the office, Brighton, and most probably, general site activity. For, if you didn’t know, I still live in the dark ages at home, and my continuous lack of internet shall plague me longer than the horrific antics of the drunken staff. (It’s ok, they don’t really get drunk, they’re sensible…)
I’ve enjoyed my time here, and I am certainly sad to be leaving. But as with all most things like this – university, holidays – I’m quite happy to be heading back home – where food will be made for me, clothes will be laundered for me, and I can sleep in my own bed. And what is next for me? Well, for the next two weeks I will be rubbing shoulders with the city slickers in London, where I have two weeks work experience scheduled with The Guardian newspaper. Smugness mode enabled. I’m a little bit nervous about this, I must say; but I’m sure the experience will be great.
So, for the last time I sign off from the TSR office. Who knows if I’ll ever be back here again. Will life (on the forum) be the same for me? Watch this space.
JR
This week a new career section went live on The Student Room released in partnership with The Guardian.
New TSR Jobs and careers section
The page is designed with job seekers, school leavers and graduates in mind and will develop over time to feature the best career editorial content from The Guardian alongside the best shared experiences and peer advice from The Student Room.
Everyone that completed our Student Buying Habits Survey was entered into a draw to win a Brother printer or 5 Ryman stations packs worth about £85 each. Well we just drew the winners and they are:
1st prize of Brother printer – Kaytee9912
5 runners up: FadedJade; GurlGamer and 3 Guest users of TSR who haven’t yet given me their name (i’ve emailed you all though)
Congratulations to you, there’s a slim possibility you’ll get the goodies before Christmas!
Thank you to everyone who entered the draw
J
This weekend we had our annual official moderators meeting. There was bowling and most of sunday was spend talking through opportunities and plans for TSR. The highlight for most however will have been the saturday evenings boat party down the Thames. At one point in the evening awards were given out to recognise the moderators that have gone above and beyond the call of duty and the winners were:
Best Mod Newcomer – letsdothetimewarpagain
Lifetime Achievement Award – Helenia
Moderator of the year 2009 (as voted for on the night by the other moderators) – randdom
Acumen Intern of the year – Jonah Ramone (JR)
Runners up in Mod of the year category were: Ilex Aquifolium, daniel_williams, F1 Fanatic, Rainy, Dalimyr, Athena, Helenia, Wildebeest, -skyhigh- and Craghyrax
Thanks to everyone that attended for making it such a fun weekend and congratulations to those winners, the runners up and the whole team for being brilliant!
Do you have strong opinions about what it’s like living as a student or young person in the UK today? Do you feel your views are being represented adequately to people that can influence government policy that relates to students and young people?
We have a survey running on The Student Room at the moment to find out how empowered students and young people feel and whether TSR could have a role in providing them with a more direct voice to government.
Complete The Student Room political representation survey here
Complete the survey to be in a draw to win one of 8 £20 Amazon/Topshop/Topman vouchers.
We’ll be publishing the findings in the new year…
Another week, another blog, because I’m free, and no one else is. Basically. Little Henry the ball is still outside, and probably freezing his proverbial gonads off in Brighton’s winter weather. That’s right, we’re nearly at Christmas and our weather is cold and almost perpetually raining. What else would we expect? Actually, today had been pretty dry, surprisingly, so it’ll probably rain when I am walking home from work or something. Not that I want to tempt fate or anything.
So what’s NEW I hear you cry? Well, today I’ve been looking over the post formatting of the TSR awards, which I am sure everyone will be glad to hear, should be up and running pretty soon. Whilst half of last year’s successful people are now gone (who the hell was WOLLSMOTH and how did he ever come 3rd in most famous? Who even still remembers him? These questions will abound if you look at last year’s winners) some are still around and likely to be fighting it out for those awards again. Obviously I don’t mean actively fighting, that would be absurd.
Since my first main task of completing the Further Education page that I linked last week (actually it may have been the week before) I’ve been working on a couple more pages. First, I’ve been helping with the finishing touches to a newly designed careers hub, which is well on its way and should make it nice and easy for people to search jobs through TSR. Imagine that. Job searching without even having to stop procrastinating? If only TSR had an essay and revision bank you could even study while procrastinating. Oh wait, it already does…
The second thing I’ve been working on is a set of resources for students in university who are considering ‘dropping out’, which when it’s finished should be a really great resource – since the majority of the General University Discussion forum has confirmed that there is very little help for those considering dropping out.
It’s December now, and pretty scary to think that another year is almost through – thinking back to where I was this time last year is a pretty interesting thing. Dissertation on the horizon, graduation still seeming far away on the horizon… Who knows where I’ll be this time next year? Maybe I’ll break into the staff blog to give you my update, or maybe (probably) I’ll still be floating around on TSR being all immature and stuff. Most likely the latter.
But, what does December bring every year? That’s right, Christmas! And things are heating up round here, while the world outside gets colder, as we’ve lots of exciting Christmas parties and things to have while you all do your mock exams, revise for real exams or work on essays when you’d rather be feasting on all that glorious turkey.
Elsewhere in the office the others are typing furiously to meet their deadlines, so thank god there should be a couple of new arrivals in the new year to relieve the work load. I’m sure you’ll hear more about that from Chris or Jamie when the time comes.
Whilst I feel typing away like this is a wonderful use of my time, I better stop rambling. Not very time efficient, and that’s bad for business. Until next time, stoke me a kipper.
Good day! I now have my own account to write things up from, so here’s my first official blog.
I’ve been down in Brighton for a little over a month now, and while I’m still very much enjoying the chatter in the office (if not the choice of radio…), the recent weather changes have not been welcomed. Lots of rain and lots of wind. I got absolutely drenched on my way to work on Monday and everyone laughed at me; so I carry a towel in my bag now.
Alas. I’m sure you’re all dying to hear what I’ve been up to recently. Well, I’ve spent a lot of time working with the wiki, mostly on one of two tasks. The first is the now completed ‘Further Education’ hub, which can be seen here http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/A_Guide_to_Further_Education . That’s right, I coded that whole page myself, html and all. Pretty impressive, right? In addition to that, I spent a fair bit of time writing up a lot of those new articles, and getting in touch with third parties to provide us with some other useful information.
The other thing I have been working on is the university resources; mostly the University Guides, which you may have seen the odd thread about in one or two university forums. We’re currently testing the new look page mock up and hoping that people will give us some feedback, but most people seem reluctant. This is still very much in the development stage, but I’ve seen some screen shots of what it’ll all look like, and well, it’s going to be good when we get it implemented. I’ve been promised the chance to learn some more about the business side of things over the next few weeks, which sounds really good. There are so many interesting facts and figures to do with TSR that I’m sure most people would be pretty surprised to hear.
I can’t really say much about what the other dudes are working on, since they all do stuff that’s far more important than what I do, but they’re all working really hard on their respective development and advertising tasks and what have you. This sounds quite a lot like propaganda, and tbh it is; but I’m being paid, so I don’t mind too much :$
In other (similarly FASCINATING) office news, there’s another intern in the office right now, and no one knows who. Isn’t that exciting! </insert ‘teehee’ smiley here.>
I think that’s all I have to say. Keep it real, TSR fans.
In addition to the Commercial Manager role we’re also advertising for a web trafficker to manage our advertising inventory, optimise campaigns, and produce reports. The full description is available here – Ad trafficing job
Maybe see you in our Brighton offices 
by Chris Newson on October 23, 2009
in TSR News
Know anyone who would make a great Commercial Manager and want to be part of the fast-growing, Brighton-based team behind the phenomenon that is The Student Room?
They’d be responsible for our sales strategy and growing revenue through our sales partners. It’s a key role for us, so if you know anyone who might be interested please do encourage them to check out the job description and get in touch.
So, recently we announced a new TSR intern, and he’s speaking to you now. That’s right, it’s me, Jonah Ramone, now just JR. Why I couldn’t have my own account to make this little blog? I don’t know, but hey ho.
It seems like a long time ago now that I found an announcement saying there was an internship available with TSR, the site that I’ve spent (read ‘wasted’) so much of my life on. I guess that’s because I kept waiting and waiting to be told I had been successful. I jest. After the inital application was sent of I was optimistic I must say, hoping that my knowledge of TSR would set me above other candidates, but my history on TSR could have served against me! :$ Anyway, a quick task, a phone interview, and ANOTHER task later, and I get a phone call when I’m lying in bed from the office’s very own J, telling me I’d been successful. Which I have to say was most excellent news. Finally I was going to make my post-graduation time count for something, and get some useful experience along the way.
I’ve been down in Brighton now for almost a week, and I think I’m just about settled. The guys in the office are all pretty cool (believe it or not) and they’re not working me too hard (just yet). They all seem really busy atm, and it’s quite eye-opening to realise just how much there is to do. They’re in an out of meetings all the time while I sit here with my two computers (that’s right, count them, one, two 
). So far I’ve been looking over the academic forums and the wiki, correlating all the information that’s there, and working out what could be added in the very near future…
Those hawk eyed people among you may well have noticed a couple of threads I’ve started in the General Secondary Education forums as I look to get the userbase involved in the project. That makes my work easaier. You may also have noticed my announcement (I’m pretty proud of that I have to say) and my brand spanking short username, which seems to be getting more thumbs downs than ups, but at least I look like one of the gang. Almost. I need a red name but they won’t give it to me because I’m not cool enough. Actually it’s because I’m not a moderator so it would be naughty of me to have their privileges 
Anyway, it’s a really good atmosphere, the guys all seem to have a great sense of comaraderie and have been very welcoming to me – they must be scared of my negative reputation power – but whatever the reason, I’ve enjoyed the first week and am looking forward to being involved in developing a lot more stuff on the site.
Not really sure what else needs to be said tbh, so I guess I’ll leave it at that and go and get CJ to read over this and to put it up. It’s been nice knowing you all. Just imagine I’m signing off with the sexface smiley which seems to be covering the forum atm. Great addition to the team. The smiley, not me.
So that’s the lot. Goodnight, New york! – Glen/JR
Due to an impressive array of applicants, the time and thought taken over deciding our latest intern position was somewhat greater than we anticipated. In the end it came down to anonymously comparing tasks completed by the applicants, in which we ended up with a clear choice, incorporating their own writing style as well as suiting TSR’s needs.
Joining us in the office sometime later this week, is long term TSR’ian known to many users as ‘Jonah Ramone‘, or Glen to those that the Tetris wizard personally.
So watch out for Glen’s input on the site and wish him all the best. No doubt we’ll be updating the blog with his input as and when.
- CJ
Ever wondered which the most popular forums are on TSR? Well it varies depending on whats going on in any given month…
In total 641, 881 posts were made on TSR in August, schools, colleges and universities were on summer break and exam results came out. Below are the top 10 forums on TSR for August based upon posts made into those forums.
1st Chat 96778 posts
2nd Health and Relationships 63795
3rd General Discussion 33599
4th Fashion and Beauty 22395
5th A-Levels, ASs, A2s, VCEs 21404
6th Society Chat 18727
7th Football 15917
8th Clearing, Applications and UCAS 14028
9th Medicine 12373
10th Music 10430
Of course this top 10 is based on members posting, it doesn’t take into account Guests and Members ‘lurking’. We’ll cover which forums get the most views another time….
It’ll be interesting to see how things change next month when everyone goes back to school
Following the summer internship undertaken by yours truly, we are pleased to announce the opportunity for another, more editorially orientated intern to work at our office in Brighton for approximately 3 months, from sometime in September.
We’re looking for anyone with an interest in writing for the web and managing web content, to be involved in the reworking of the TSR FAQ’s, developing a series of new site sections as well as some editorial content in the wiki. An ideal candidate would be a graduate, perhaps in journalism or a related field wishing to gain valuable experience. Although all applicants will be considered.
Also, as Acumen has a partnership with The Guardian, we would be able to offer some time to spend working with them, being involved and gaining insight into their web content areas at their HQ in London.
We will pay for your accommodation during the three months as well as a living allowance. Also, after having to house hunt for rooms myself I’m sure we’ll be able to lend a helping hand in finding a place to stay should you need it.
It should be a great experience and something that will look good on many a CV, as well as the general awesomeness that is Brighton and TSR HQ.
If you are interested or require more information, then get in touch by email at chris.mcnair@acumenpi.com with a CV and covering letter by mid-day, Monday 14th September.
