Hi, my name is Mason Force and I’m the outgoing corporate webmaster for the Rocky Mountain Student Media Corporation (RMSMC) at Colorado State University. I’ve spent a lot of time with student media in college, working as both a reporter for the Collegian and a podcast host for KCSU. As a computer science major, however, I eventually sought out positions that would make use of my web development experience. I was excited to accept the position of corporate webmaster about a year ago, and since then I’ve had the chance to continue my involvement with student media and work with modern web development technology- a win-win situation!
The corporate webmaster position is unique because it meant I got to work with just about everyone in student media. I’ll admit, the title itself also sounded really cool. I coordinated with the staff for the Collegian, College Avenue Magazine, KCSU, CTV and the advertising department. Working with all these people kept the job interesting and kept me on my toes- it meant I needed to effectively communicate technical aspects of web development to people with diverse backgrounds and experience. It also meant that I needed to learn to be self-sufficient. I encountered many problems that were new to more senior staff members or outside the scope of their experience. Fortunately, there are loads of online resources about our platforms, and I’m now more confident in my abilities to work my way through tricky situations.
As I worked for RMSMC, I was also thinking about my career after graduation. I applied for positions all over the country, but the one I wanted the most was a full-time professional services job at Amazon Web Services (AWS), a division of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud-computing platforms for companies and individuals. I was excited to interview for this position in January, and I found that many of the experience-based questions they asked were relevant to my time at RMSMC. I was able to refer to my experience working across departments, trouble-shooting problems with our online resources and creating a new corporate site from scratch as the corporate webmaster. Apparently, they liked what they heard! I am excited to share that I received an offer for this position with AWS and I have since accepted.
I’m very grateful for my experience as the corporate webmaster. While I did many things to prepare for this job at Amazon, the opportunity to work in a technical position at a professional media company as an undergraduate was truly unique and extremely valuable for my future career. I’m ecstatic to be starting my post-graduation career at my dream job, but I’ll never forget the great times I had with Rocky Mountain Student Media. Thank you!
Mason Force, RMSMC Class of 2020
