Just eight days until the big opening of LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, the Sporting KC staff got the chance to have some fun on the pitch in our staff soccer game. Whether it’s official or not, we’d like to consider our few games of pick-up soccer to have christened the stadium for competitive play.

It's a challenge and definitely has a steep learning curve, but working with Sporting's video software is exactly the kind of thing I hoped to learn this summer.

It wasn’t all fun and games today, though. The morning meant more stats research for Callum Williams‘ broadcast notes, but I got to dig into some multimedia work this afternoon at LSP in the videoboard room where we worked on sponsor graphics for LSP’s two main screens. Though it may not have been the fanciest work, getting familiar with the systems and board operations was a great first step.

Familiarizing myself with different types of media is really the point of taking on an internship like this. As a Print/Digital News student I’m constantly writing—and that’s a good thing, writing is my specialty and I’d like to make a career out of it. But the ability to serve an organization in more than one capacity is what’s to be an effective journalist these days (and it’s a helluva boost to market myself to potential employers). Being familiar and comfortable working with technology and across media platforms makes me twice as marketable (or more) to future employers than someone who only has experience writing.

I don’t mean to say that only convergence journalists will be getting jobs after graduation, but I am absolutely saying that even though you may specialize in writing (or broadcast, or photography, etc.), being comfortable working with video, audio, the internet or multimedia is a must in today’s journalism world.

It’s already been a challenge, but I’m excited to take it in stride and pick up a variety of new skills along the way. Of course, working at a state-of-the-art new stadium sure doesn’t hurt.